#but in any other country in the world this would spark national outrage BECAUSE ANYONE DYING IN SCHOOL IS NOT NORMAL!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

astraystayyh · 6 months

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We recently learned in our media class about the four indicators that reveal a country's use of propaganda to justify its actions/build a national and international consensus over its stance. This is exactly what Israel is doing now. Please read this to learn more about the Israeli propaganda (with sources) :

i. Establishing a distinct "us" versus "them"/"the others" divide: The Israeli media has been actively engaged in crafting a narrative that portrays Palestinians as sub-humans and animals, that deserve to be killed, butchered, and deprived of essential resources such as water, electricity and fuel. This dehumanizing narrative serves to rationalize the grave atrocities committed against Palestinians, reducing them to mere statistics, rather than acknowledging them as fellow human beings who have the right to be protected as well.

A recent example of this dehumanization (that encompasses children as well) is Israel's Prime Minister's words in a now-deleted tweet, on Oct 16, stating: "This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle."

This is also a common practice in Western media as a whole. In the context of conflict, the choice of words plays a significant role: Israelis are often described as "killed," and Palestinians are referred to as having "died" (example of BBC). The distinction can be seen as a way to omit Israeli responsibility, portraying the deaths of nearly 10,000 Palestinians as a result of circumstances beyond its control, rather than the outcome of deliberate and targeted actions.

ii. Use of emotion instead of logic: a stark example would be the whole international outrage that was first sparked due to the false claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies. This fake news was confidently shared by U.S. President Joe Biden, who later admitted that he had never actually seen any pictures of such events, neither did anyone in the IDF because there was never any instance of 40 beheaded babies (source) (also trust me if Israel did have any pictures of killed children they would not hesitate to share it)

CNN journalist who first shared this fake news has later apologized for being "misled." (which isn't the case that was a conscious choice of the news agency but that's another conversation)

Israel knew what it was doing by sharing this particular false information, they knew that the simple imagery of such a horrifying notion, even without concrete proof, would be a strategic tool to garner international support through emotional manipulation.

They are still trying to use emotion when it comes to children particularly to sway the public opinion : Israeli government spokesman has shared images of "fallen teeth of burnt children." This post has been debunked by dentists, pointing out many contradictions in the pics that conclude that these are props and not the teeth of actual children found in rubbles. (source)

(Meanwhile, there are factual documented videos and pictures of dead Palestinian kids and babies, decapitated, injured beyond belief, tangible proof of the war crimes Israel commits and yet the public outrage isn't the same, because Israel has already established that Palestinians are lesser people)

iii. Attempting to Influence Both Elites and Ordinary Citizens: In addition to their efforts to secure international support from world leaders, Israel has employed a multifaceted approach by spreading advertisements that regular civilians view. These ads serve to rationalize their actions, and they are strategically placed ahead of unrelated programming, including children's shows or games.

This tactic aims to integrate their ideology into various aspects of our lives, in order to promote their agenda and inundate us with recurrent pro-Israel messages. This strategy capitalizes on the psychological principle that the mind tends to retain information it encounters most frequently. (a more detailed video explanation)

iv. media manipulation tactics : For example, the night before Israel bombed the Baptist hospital in Gaza killing more than 1000 people, BBC published an article with the headline "Does Hamas build tunnels under schools and hospitals?" giving way to a "justification" for the heinous, war crime act that is bombing a hospital, under the guise of targeting Hamas hidden bases.

The use of the Israel-Gaza war as a headline for the news leads us to believe that this is a war with two equal (or slightly disproportionate) parties who are both able to defend themselves. Whereas this is a genocide led by Israel (a powerful military with international backing by the world's most powerful nations- U.S, U.K, France, Germany.. to cite a few) and CIVILIANS. Because those are the people that Israel is targeting, by bombing hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, refugee camps.

It is a genocide, an ethnical cleansing, an attempt to eradicate entire families, then to relocate the survivors out of Gaza, making it impossible for them to reclaim their land, and resulting in a total takeover of Palestine by Israel.

Another manipulation example (because there are so many) is the first and most prominent question that many Western journalists ask their guests: "Do you condemn the attacks of Hamas on Oct 7?"

This question completely disregards the root of this entire conflict, which is the 75-year ongoing colonization of Palestine. By omitting all the previous crimes against Palestinians that led to the attack (the killings, the wrongful imprisonments, the torture, the stealing of land…) these 'journalists' actively manipulate the public opinion, portraying the Hamas attack as unprovoked, when you cannot possibly expect a colonization to have 0 resistance.

And an honorable mention to the zionists who are trying to morph the anti-Israel stance into an anti-Jew one. This isn't about religion, I've said this once and I will say it again, Jews around the world are condemning the actions of their government. Just recently, Jews were arrested in NYC for standing against Israel. (source)

This is a humanitarian cause. We're humans, this is the one denominator factor that unites all. We read about previous genocides in history. We wondered how people could support the killings of innocent people, men and women, and children and babies. It is happening right now again, and media propaganda plays a significant role in shaping public perceptions.

I couldn't include everything here but please, I urge you to use your critical thinking. Don't believe everything the media tells you, and this is coming from a graduated journalist. We learn about propaganda and how to counter it, which also means we learn about how to manufacture it.

So don't be gullible, boycott the companies who support Israel (mainly HP, Siemens, AXA, Puma, Israeli fruits and vegetables, Sodastream, Ahava, Sabra. check BDS for more information) and urge your governments to support the ceasefire. We have a voice and we should use it, even if we're uncomfortable, even if we're scared. Do it. By staying silent you become complicit in genocide.

#free palestine #palestine #gaza strip #free gaza #propaganda

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seymour-butz-stuff · 4 years

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Calls to end racial injustice continue across the country following the brutal murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was killed by the police. Floyd’s death has sparked a global movement and brought awareness to other violent deaths. While protesting racial injustice in Omaha, Nebraska, a young Black man was killed by a white bar owner on May 30. While police took the bar owner, Jake Gardner, into custody for shooting and killing 22-year-old James Scurlock, Gardner did not face any charges. Prosecutors of the case argued that evidence depicted that Gardner was acting in self-defense, Daily Kos reported.

On Tuesday, three months after the incident, a grand jury charged Gardner, a man with a history of violence, for killing Scurlock. In total, Gardner faces charges of manslaughter, use of a firearm in commission of a felony, attempted first-degree assault, and terroristic threats. If convicted Gardner could face up to 95 years in prison, the Omaha World-Herald reported.

“I’m more anxious now than when I was flying to Iraq,” Gardner told ABC News affiliate KETV, prior to the charge announcement.

The decision to charge Gardner follows community outrage over the decision of local prosecutors to not initially charge him. This national outrage led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, Frederick Franklin, who looked into the case more thoroughly. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine chose not to initially charge Gardner because he concluded Gardner fired in self-defense after Scurlock jumped on his back following a group altercation. He also shared video footage, which he alleged did not include any racial slurs in the audio, as bystanders had said they heard.

During the news conference Tuesday, Franklin noted that he initially thought he would come to the same conclusion as Kleine, but more evidence was found in recent months, including evidence related to activities Gardner was partaking in prior to coming in contact with Scurlock. He added that Kleine should not be criticized for not pursuing charges earlier.

“That evidence can reasonably be construed as an attempt to use a firearm for purposes of killing someone,” Franklin said. While the evidence was not described, Franklin confirmed to the Daily Beast that material from Gardner’s cellphone, Facebook Messenger account, and a video from inside his bar was provided to the grand jurors. Additionally, investigators interviewed at least 60 witnesses. While the video did depict Scurlock jumping on Gardner and the two in a scuffle, Franklin shared that newly obtained evidence since the initial investigation “undermines” that Gardner was acting in defense. “And that evidence comes primarily from Jake Gardner himself,” Franklin said.

Despite accusations by Gardner’s relatives and some employees that he is racist, the case was not charged as a hate crime, the Omaha World-Herald reported. “There’s been discussion about whether Jake Gardner is a racist,” Franklin said. “I’m not commenting on whether or not that evidence was presented to the grand jury. … Being a racist is not against the law.” Commenting on the allegations of racism against him, Gardner told the Omaha World-Herald that neither he nor his father are racist. “My family has never said or acted negatively towards anyone based on their skin color or anything of that nature,” he said. But while Franklin did not blame Kleine for his inability to charge Gardner earlier, the Scurlock family attorney, Justin Wayne, expressed otherwise. Wayne called Kleine’s decision a “rush to judgment” and double standard despite Kleine claiming he did not fear a grand jury and was open to it.

“These are not easy decisions,” Kleine said Tuesday. “We make them on a daily basis. When you’re talking about the death of an individual, there’s a lot of emotions, a lot of things that come into play. … We petitioned for this grand jury; we were not afraid of it. They made a decision and we’ll see what happens.”

Speaking about the decision to charge Gardner, Wayne said that “while this family is thankful,” this moment is not a time for celebration. “It was their brother, his son, that lost his life,” he said. “It’s also kind of a disappointment, a reminder, that it was a tale of two cities.”

Now that Gardner has been charged, he will have to either turn himself in or face an arrest warrant, Franklin said. His case will move to trial in which Franklin will serve as the prosecutor. While Gardner is finally being charged, this case depicts the inequality prevalent in our justice system. Without petitioning for a grand jury and public outrage calling for a special prosecutor, the Scurlock family was granted no justice despite investigations. “The fact of the matter is, if you’re black growing up in Omaha, and you brandish a gun, and you run from the cops, and you threaten somebody, you don’t walk away with a $200 fine for disorderly conduct,” Wayne said.

Gardner, an ex-marine, has a long history of arrests and criminal charges and despite this walked away with no charges after murdering Scurlock. Had he been a man of color the situation would most likely have played out very differently.“This isn’t about being vindicated,” Wayne said. “It’s about justice,” James Scurlock II, Scurlock’s father said.

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csykora · 6 years

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hey! i’ve heard u mention sasha’s media reputation a cpl times... me being a new caps fan, i’m curious—what’s the scoop regarding sasha and why he doesn’t play in the nhl anymore? & why ppl didn’t “like” him or whatever... sry if this is confusing!

Hello!

Not a confusing question at all.

Part of how I made things confusing is that I often jump back and forth between Russia and North America. Semin has a different reputation for different reasons in Russia than in North America, and neither are directly the reason he doesn’t play in the NHL anymore.

There are three fairly separate things here, so I’m going to trying to pull them apart more than I have before.

Prolonged Intro

There are players in the NHL who shouldn’t be there, and players who aren’t who “should”.

Garret Sparks and Calvin Pickard are not in the NHL. No one is really arguing that Curtis McElhinney is a meaningfully better goalie than they are: if things happened to be different, one of them would be dressing for the Leafs. But it happens to be better for the franchise as a whole to have Backuphinney do his ‘80s thing behind Freddie and give Sparks and Pickard more experience in the minors.

There are a lot of plugs and guys here because their contracts just happen to work out or coaches just happen to have certain tastes or someone else happened to have an inconvenient injury.

The geek squad were saying Michal Kempný was an NHL-level player years ago. It just happened that no NHL team wanted to play him.

Japer’s Rink recently said André Burakovsky shouldn’t be “in the same breath as Semin.” They didn’t mean Burakovsky shouldn’t be in the NHL, necessarily, but it struck me that many fans would just think, “Well, he happens to be in the NHL now, so he must deserve to be there. He must be a better player than anyone who isn’t.”

Burakovsky is beloved as a person, and that colors how his fans see him as a player.Brooks Orpik is despised as a player, so that colors how people see him as a person.

I’m not arguing for Complete Objectivity. For one thing it’s not possible, and I don’t think it would be fun. But my point is that I’m pretty much against the idea that athlete’s careers are about what people deserve, positively or negatively. It’s a way we make sense of complex, coincidental arcs of events. It makes a satisfying, sexy story, as sports media would put it.

But when we think that way, we logically have to think that way about everybody—if something happens to one person because They Deserved It, what about everyone it didn’t happen to? If something good happens because someone is a good person, what about the many very bad people who good things happen to?

So this is not going to be an especially sexy answer.

It is in fact a stupid answer, about a bunch of soul-wrenchingly stupid things that happened to happen to Sasha Semin and not some other guy. Strap in.

1. Russian Reputation

I wouldn’t say Semin has a bad reputation among Russian hockey fans, but the Russian Hockey Federation broke up with him pretty brutally in 2014.

Semin took the fall for Malkin and Ovechkin after the national disaster of the Sochi Olympics. By national disaster I mean disaster for the Russian State. The State wanted to use Sochi to show their power to the world, and instead they got shamed for months on NBC. And then they lost, too.

Russian media sold the story that the Russian team lost because the players didn’t love their country that much. It wasn’t about skill or talent or style of play—Russia was still the best at all of those! Real patriots would have proven that Russia was the best. The team just didn’t care enough.

So it was really convenient to have this photograph:

Semin has probably been semi-addicted to tobacco through secondhand smoke his entire life. I’ve talked before about why I kinda hate anybody getting mad about athletes using, and that’s one reason. Tobacco is massively common in Russia, with over 60% of Russian men using cigarettes and 51.1% smoking daily. Like most countries, the highest rates are in lower-income, rural Eastern Russia than in the Western cities.

This is kinda embarrassing for the State. The State would like to not look like they’re behind Kazakhstan in any measure of development. And they especially don’t like smoking, because it looks bad.

You know how Nicklas Bäckström got Ovechkin into chewing tobacco? (If you didn’t, sorry, now you do. They both use a fair bunch.) The State does not care about athletes using tobacco. They care a lot about athletes smoking, because someone might see. So Russian athletes are ordered not to smoke, and so any Russian athlete who does is violating orders.

Three of Semin’s teammates are also in that photo—they just happened to be boring, so nobody cared so much. Russian hockey fans in general didn’t care that much. They got to have their initial wave of outrage, reassured themselves that the national team could totally have won if only….

Statistically speaking then they had a soothing cigarette, and then they forgot about it. It helps that Sasha has a gently dreamy face and immediately won a Gagarin Cup.

The Russian Hockey Federation still cares a whole bunch. Semin was guaranteed to play at Worlds the next year, and then suddenly he wasn’t on the roster. He hasn’t played for Russia since.

2. In North America

There are a couple threads here.

The reason many Caps fans didn’t like Semin is they fuckin loved the guy. It’s not just me saying Semin was the Caps best player when they traded him, that’s from RMNB. Work your way back through any Caps blog, and there’s so much love there.

The reason many casual fans didn’t like Semin is that, frankly, they didn’t understand the hockey they were watching.

Semin’s pretty much the halfway point between Bäckström and Ovechkin: he has spectacular aim, a canon of a shot, chronic wrist injuries, a tendency to go on hot and cold scoring streaks, and rock-steady top-of-the-league possession metrics. He’s the best skater on any team Evgeny Kuznetsov isn’t on, so once he has the puck, you’re not gonna catch him to get the puck back.

Imagine evaluating Bäckström according to what you expect Ovi to produce, or grading Ovi against Bäckström’s skillset. That’s kind of what would happen with Sasha, because fans would see him shoot and score and then grade him more harshly for not scoring consistently all the time. A lot of the time he wasn’t scoring, because he wasn’t shooting, because he was playing for possession. (Or he was shooting and sometimes he was missing, you know, like shooters do.)

A lot of those fans called to trade him after every playoffs. They also wanted to trade Ovi, so that’s why I don’t listen to hockey fans.

The reason the Capitals management didn’t like Sasha was that they liked him fine, actually, they just wanted to feed his agent to an alligator.

Let’s establish that some people are good at negotiating complex financial agreements, and some people, let’s even say most people, are not. Most athletes are not, and that shouldn’t count against them. That’s why agents exist.

A lot of people like telling Malkin’s story of escape from Magnitigorsk as a daring one-man adventure. That’s understandable, but it forgets that Malkin had someone to buy him a plane ticket, someone making calls and someone expecting him on the other side.

Ovechkin’s agent is his own mother. Arguably, Ovi’s here today because during the ’04-’05 lockout, Tatyana Ovechkina told her son not to resign in Russia. She made a bet, and it paid off when the lockout ended three days later.

Most Russian athletes don’t have that somebody.

Keep this picture in mind. Picture this next bit happening to some kid who might’ve sat next to you in Statistics, and if he passed it was only because tween Evgeny Kuznetsov was loyally making him flashcards. Imagine that kid’s suddenly the main source of income for several generations of his family, too.

When anyone talks about something Semin decided, they’re talking about what his agent decided for him. Semin did not speak English and does not do math; he was honest with the media that he had no fucking clue what his agent was saying in negotiations.

If you google Mark Gandler, you get top results in English like, “Mark Gandler is nothing less than the Prince of Darkness.” He has a long history of making deals that North Americans do not like. I can actually see the case that that’s not his job, his job is to get his mostly-Russian clients and himself paid by one team or another, and NHL teams aren’t as sacred as they like to act. I’m kind of not on board with the idea that players should take NHL teams’ offers as an honor and put the franchise first. But a lot of NHL teams have gotten pissed at Gandler over the years, and the consequences of that land on his clients when deals fall through, not on him.

First, Semin happened to be playing in the city of Tolyatti when he turned 18, so the Russian Armed Forces in Tolyatti drafted him. Tolyatti insisted that Semin had to complete his two years of service in the same district where he was drafted. Very conveniently, they had a very bad hockey team right there for him to play for! So Semin returned to the KHL during the ’04-05 lockout, instead of playing in the AHL like the Caps wanted him to.

Lots of English coverage calls this ‘confusion’ over his military service, since other NHLers were waived. It’s actually simple: HC Lada sucks. Semin was worth more money than the team.

When the lockout ended, Capitals filed a complaint against Gandler, attempting “to compel Alexander Semin’s agent and the Russian hockey team Lada Togliatti to return Alex.” The judge issued a restraining order against Gandler to stop him shopping Sasha to teams that weren’t the Caps.

Things stalled when HC Lada ran out of money and dropped Sasha, along with 15 other players’ contracts. Gandler…promptly shopped him to another team that wasn’t the Caps.

The Caps filed again and at this point the same judge told them to shush, presumably because at this point Semin only had three months of service left anyway and it wasn’t like the NHL had a leg to stand on contracts-wise. Everyone agreed that Semin would return to the NHL for the 2006 season, which he did.

In DC, Sasha and Ovi and then Nicky stole the show and dragged it up and down the ice. They were real real good.

But while Tatyana Ovechkina negotiated Ovi’s lifetime deal right off, the Capitals never signed Sasha for more than a year or two at a time. Every year was a contract year, so every year had to be a career year to justify his value. I don’t know who was asking for what, but as the Caps’ cap problems grew, constantly haggling over one of their stars didn’t seem worth it to them.

In 2012, Semin led the Capitals—yes, including Bäckström—in possession metrics. He was arguably the best player on the team. His penalty minutes, which had been a problem at the start of the season, trended down and were pretty fine by the end, showing that he was adapting to the radically new game play of then-new Coach Hunter.

You know who struggled under with the coaching change? Alex Ovechkin did. Coach Hunter thought Ovi was a spoiled defensive liability, told him to play right wing instead of left, and took away his favorite snugglebuddy. Ovi resentfully on the top RW bumped Sasha down to play with rather less dynamic Swedish centre Marcus Johansson. He scored less goals there.

RMNB jokingly-not-really-joking credited Johansson with axing Semin’s career.

But setting aside scoring, other measures of Sasha’s play like his stable possession and lower PIMS show he was one of the few players who adapted to the new coaching style at all. You might notice Dale is no longer with us.

The Capitals management didn’t not resign Sasha because of his play.

They made an offer, and Gandler made and offer, and both parties finally told the other to go fuck themselves, and Semin dazedly signed with Carolina instead.

By the way, Mark Gandler is now represents Dmitry Orlov.

You’ve probably never felt that level of existential dread while looking at a picture of Dmitry Orlov before. He has a couple years left on his current contract, don’t worry about it.

Why don’t non-Caps fans like Sasha?

The Scene:

It’s 2008. Sidney Crosby is twenty years old. He has not yet done any of the things he’s accomplished in the decade since then.

Ethically speaking, he is on TV too much for him. He’s been on-camera since he was a child. He has to plan escape routes and take back hallways wherever he went and couldn’t stay with his teammates. His fans are starting to try to out him to the media and wreck his life.

Saying he should have bee on TV as much as he is comes off like parents on Toddlers & Tiaras who say their daughter loves competing.

Dialogue:

Semin says Sidney Crosby is a very impressive athlete and very dull human person. So does every honest Canadian.

Semin thinks traditional Canadian men’s hockey with its obsession with shooting is boring and small, smart, play-making skaters are interesting. So does every other Evgeny Kuznetsov fan.

Semin also thinks that even “dead wood” would look like a star if the NHL propped it up in front of a camera as much as they did Crosby, and that’s the line that ticked Mike Milbury off.

Guys, my soul is seeping out of me in protest against the idea of giving a fuck. I adore Alexander Semin. I do not give a fuck whether he enjoys watching Sidney Crosby play hockey.

It affects:

the hockey game that Semin watches at home for fun on his evenings off

end of list

This is a league where Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin said live on-air that the Sedin twins might be fucking each other. The bar for Mean Comments about your competition is so, so much higher. It’s an opinion, and one you would kind of expect from someone whose job was to stop Sidney Crosby winning all the hockey.

Sidney Crosby is exactly as Sidney Crosby as he ever was. If you love his hockey, his hockey is the same hockey.

The only thing that is hurt by someone not enjoying Sidney Crosby’s hockey is the NHL’s Sidney Crosby brand.

The only thing hurt by someone saying Sidney Crosby is on TV a whole bunch is the NHL’s Sidney Crosby brand.

NHL media getting upset over that…kind of supports the observation that the NHL has invested a lot of time and money in Sidney Crosby’s brand.

It’s also inescapable that NHL media had created the Crosby-Ovechkin rivalry to begin with. They made a simple dichotomy. Anything one got was going to be framed as something the other couldn’t. And since Crosby was getting the attention, he must deserve it, and Ovechkin must not.

That’s what this was. Try telling Canes broadcaster Tripp Tracy that Semin was jealous of Crosby’s spotlight for himself: the man deserves a good laugh. I’m sure Semin sincerely does find Crosby’s hockey dull, because many people outside North America do.

But his basic state of being is probably “recklessly in love,” so he got pissed, and he said something that, yes, would have been better to keep as an inside thought out loud.

And NHL media fluttered into a tizzy of, ‘HWHaaat? Hwyyy would Alexander Ovechkin’s best friend not love Sidny Crosby? A scandal.’

People said dumb shit and wrote dumber headlines and pestered Crosby until he said something about showing Sasha exactly how special he was. I can’t muster the energy to comment on how sweetly gay that sounds because my heart is curdling because that’s not how enjoying hockey works.

Women’s hockey fans, European fans, and now Leafs fans all think that playmaking super-skating is as-or-more fun as traditional men’s Canadian hockey, and it’s fine. You can force them to sit and watch as many of Crosby’s goals as you want and yes they will see the goal on screen and say, “gosh, yes, that was indeed a goal, my dude,” and no they will not suddenly stop liking what they like.

Anyway half a decade passed and Milbury and McGuirre and other talking heads continued to call Semin a failure and “a cancer” and suggest the Capitals never won because those Russians just don’t care enough.

I’ve posted some of the milder excerpts before but I genuinely just do not want to type the keywords I would need to pull them up right now. RMNB has a fair few in their archive, and over the years it was enough of a known Thing in the League that other commentators would bring it up.

3. Why’s he not playing in the NHL?

Because Montréal management fucked up, pretty major.

That’s not me: take it from Matt Drake over at SB Nation, and also math:

“His case is one of failed asset management by the Canadiens at its finest.”

Montréal acquired Semin in 2015 to complete their hopeful high-scoring line of Alex Galchenyuk and Lars Eller.

You know how Lars Eller did a great impression of Lars Nicklas this year? Yeah, that’s straight-up what he does. The Canadiens designed a pirated version of DC’s top line, a Lars in the middle, Alex G to race and shoot, and Semin to counterbalance them. And it was a pretty good bootleg!

…for the 15 games the Habs let Semin play.

“They posted a Corsi-for percentage of 59.3%, launched 55.9% of the shots while on the ice, and had a superb 73.7 shot attempts per 60 minutes played. It seems that the coaching staff expected them to be better though, and I can’t account for exactly how that could be.

I assume it had something to do with the lack of goal production. They only had 50% of goals for at even strength, contributing five goals and having the same number scored against them. The thing is, they were only shooting at 7.8%, so there was definitely room for that to improve, and for the goals to come. Had they kept putting up the other numbers the way they were, simple logic dictates that those goals would indeed come.

Individually, Semin was perfectly solid. He stood at 55.5% Corsi for, 54.8% shots for, 51% scoring chances for, and had a woeful shooting percentage of 5.9%. … It may interest fans to know that his 55.5% even-strength possession mark was good for first on the team, tied with Max Pacioretty.

…

Once back in Russia, he had no problem producing. With Metallurg Magnitogorsk, he put up 14 points in 20 games, and added another 15 points in 23 playoff games on the way to a Gagarin Cup.

Habs management missed a trick.

You mighta noticed my good good boys Galchenyuk and Lars Eller don’t play for the Habs anymore, either. Habs management has missed a lotta tricks whenever they’ve gotten ahold of a non white-North American (I am including the ones they still have. Pour one out for poor Price and Patches.) All love in the world to my former-fellow fans, but the management is fucked.

Not playing Semin wasn’t their worst fuck up, but it cost them a chance (not a promise, but at least a damn chance) at the championship in 2015. And also cost them my heart. Whatever.

#Sasha Semin #long post cw

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monicamarupilla · 5 years

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The #DressLikeAWoman Online Community

Hashtag activism is very prevalent in our society and it has helped address some very important issues and fight for very important causes. #DressLikeAWoman came about “after claims surfaced that U.S. President Donald Trump likes female staffers "to dress like women” (Nathoo 2017). There is a discrepancy between the way men are expected to dress and the expectations of a woman’s appearance. This paradigm of the proper dress code of a female sparked an outrage of women all over the internet. This is when the hashtag DressLikeAWoman was created and there have been so many posts to it ever since, on various social media platforms.

With the hashtag, women are able to take it upon themselves to address the gender stereotypes and gender roles that otherwise would be brushed under the rug or escalated. Much like the woman above pictured with her son, many other women have become empowered by #DressLikeAWoman. This empowerment has brought women together from all over the nation. The hashtag has helped create a space for these women to express themselves as well as giving them a sense of community. The numerous posts using the hashtag go to show how big of a community of women was created to support one another and stand up for themselves. Most importantly, stand up against men like Trump and their expectations of what a women must be, do, or dress like.

Having the ability to build relationships online is a new affordance of social media and the digital age in general, however, there are benefits and hazards to it. The greatest benefit is once again, having a community, having a space specifically for you online. Not many people are lucky enough to have this. Especially for women, who are a gender minority, having an online community of females is extremely liberating. The twitter post above says “Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked female”. Women do not need to live up to these expectations of how they should look in and out of the workplace. Having this online community is what helps them to express their feelings towards the issue. But with any online space or interaction, there is a threat of harassment and backlash. People can take to the same community to post memes or harsh comments about the movement in order to get to these women. What they don’t know is that the sense of belonging and community that these women feel is far too powerful to let opposition feel even a bit relevant.

The relationships curated from the #DressLikeAWoman movement are formed and maintained through access to the hashtag. The great thing about hashtags themselves are that you can click on them and be directed to an archive of posts and content. For a woman, being able to go through these posts is an invitation to meet other women online, especially ones who stand up for the same beliefs. This basis is what ultimately shapes these connections and gives meaning to the individual relationships as well as the whole community. Women can maintain these relationship by following one another and liking and commenting on posts. They are one click away from finding a plethora of people just like them. Being that the online and offline are enmeshed, these relationships can then be taken offline, to set up meetings with women and further the impact of the movement. For example, a #DressLikeAWoman rally was arranged in February of 2017 through a website called the Action Network. The invitation read: “We invite individuals and organizations committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion and those who understand women’s rights as human rights to join our local groups of marchers in representing the rights and voices of progressive loving humans around the world”.

One issue that arises with online communities like this is issue of privacy and surveillance and specifically, the concept of censorship. Social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter have hosted communities like #DressLikeAWoman for years now and while they allow for freedom of speech, there have still be times when posts have been censored. Potential censorship is an issue because “sometimes speech isn’t seen as acceptable on social, regardless of the intent of that content” (Morrison 2015). Each platform has their own community guidelines.

Trump is not the only one who has expectations of how women in his administration should be dressing. In her forward to the book “Dress Like a Woman: Working Women and What They Wore”, Roxanne Gay writes: “you will see how women have dressed for their work, both in and beyond the traditional workplace. You will see how that dress has evolved as the role of women in contemporary society has evolved. And you will see that sometimes, dressing like a woman means wearing a pantsuit; other times, it means wearing a wetsuit, or overalls, or a lab coat, or a police uniform”. It is clear why women are so outraged by this social issue. Women are firefighters. Women are cops. Women are doctors. Women serve our country. So why is their work attire expected to be high heels, skirts, and red lips unlike their male counterparts? Not only do women have to deal with things such as the glass ceiling but now a certain workplace dress code just to satisfy a man?

As I scroll through the hashtag on Twitter and Instagram, I am blown away by the number of women that continue to use it to this day. It is so easy to see how important of a social issue this is and how much it means to women, as it should. There is no reason to sit back and let an administration tell you how to be you. #DressLikeAWoman has impacted society as well as individual identities and it would not have had as big of an impact as it did if it were not for digital technology and social media. On a macro level, the women in our society have gotten a sense of community and adopted a mindset where they no longer take shit from anyone. These connections are facilitated through online interactions. Individually, the modern day woman finally has a voice, a place, and her people. The woman taking part in this hashtag know that they are not alone and that this issue is finally being addressed. That in itself is such a powerful thought.

Sources

'Dress Like a Woman' hashtag takes off after alleged Trump dress ...https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/dress-like-woman-hashtag-1.3967413

"Dress Like A Woman" Twitter Hashtag Nails The Absurdity Of Dress ...https://www.bustle.com/.../dress-like-a-woman-twitter-hashtag-nails-the-absurdity-of-d...

https://www.thecut.com/2017/02/tweets-show-trump-what-it-means-to-dress-like-a-woman.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/03/style/trump-women-dress-code-white-house.html

https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/stevens/ct-life-stevens-friday-dress-like-a-woman-20180302-story.html

https://twitter.com/hashtag/dresslikeawoman?lang=en

https://www.adweek.com/digital/censorship-vs-activism-on-social-media/

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zloyodessit · 4 years

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Russian propaganda set to stage "Ukrainian trail" in US, EU protests

Taking advantage of the raging protests in the US and the EU, Russia is preparing another move to compromise Ukraine in the eyes of international community.

Against exposures of Russian involvement in all major destabilizing efforts, from cyber-penetration of Bundestag websites in Germany and coronavirus hospitals in the Czech Republic to fueling violence and looting at US protests, Russian are now clearly trying to offer a false trail to shift suspicions away from themselves . And this false trail, obviously, will be an infamous story about Ukrainian nationalists partaking in and even almost "supervising" protests.

The thing is that now, in the gray segment of the internet, (which is traditionally used to launch fake news at their initial stage) this time through information resources of the unrecognized "republics" in Eastern Ukraine, an massive spin is underway, claiming that Ukrainians with combat experience are allegedly set to be deployed to support protests.

Such information is disseminated by the so-called "intelligence" of unrecognized entities. They also claim the effort is funded the favorites of Russian propaganda – U.S. businessman George Soros and ex-president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko.

In fact, Russia's classic and absurd boogeyman story about Soros and Poroshenko sending nationalist assault teams to Europe and the United States to destabilize these countries has been served! Of course, we could have all just burst out in a standing ovation to this outrageous and ridiculous fake piece, but...

Honestly, it's for good reason that I just wrote that this story is something well known to Ukrainians, since it's not the first time Russian propaganda is playing a game by the same plot.

The thing is that last year the Cyrillic segment, followed by the vast English one, span photos of Ukrainians who allegedly took an active part in the protests in Hong Kong. First of all, those pics went viral across Russian media, some of which even investigated into how those Ukrainians appeared in the distant Asia to become what Russians claimed was "supervisors" of the local "Maidan".

Some of the most compassionate readers may say: "We don't care what Russian media say!" Perhaps the compassionate readers don't because they aren't aware of the tactics and strategy of an information war being waged against their country, which no less than harmful than some 122 mm artillery shelling.

Having seized from the fallen Soviet Union the baton of global choaos architect, Russia exploits any destabilizing events happening on foreign soil. Also, Russia shifts on others the blame for fueling unrest, just like Russian media did when they accused Ukraine of "exporting the Maidan" to the rest of the world.

Four Ukrainians who were spotted in Hong Kong in 2019, including Serhiy Filimonov, one of the leaders of the 'National Corps' movement and ex-leader of the civil wing of the Azov Regiment, who was just a droplet in the sea of protests, by doing this PR stunt (or possibly not quite so), rendered Ukraine a colossal disservice and helped Russia a lot in the information war domain.

Four Ukrainians, covered with unequivocal tattoos and sporting peculiar T-shirts with the inscription in Ukrainian "Who is behind the murder of Katia Handziuk" (the activist whose brutal murder for anti-corruption efforts sparked outrage among activists and drove some to the streets to protest government inaction] starred in Russian media reports. While these compassionate guys didn't care much about that, Chinese authorities apparently did. Beijing put plenty of unpleasant questions to Kyiv, and it's not some compassionate readers who had to answer them but Ukrainian diplomats.

For example, the Chinese ambassador to Russia, Zhang Hanhui, stated the “reliable” facts of the “Ukrainian trace” in the protests in Hong Kong, and accused the Ukrainians of transferring their “experience” to the Hong Kongers. And the Foreign Ministry had to puff out for the trick of four Ukrainians.

Then, over-zealous wannabe patriots, if I may call them so, rendered Ukraine a disservice by providing media trump cards to the adversary – the Russian Federation – and brought certain misunderstanding in relations between Ukraine and China. But what about now?

As we know, NATO has just included Ukraine in the Enhanced Opportunity Partnership, which was a rather unpleasant gift to Ukraine's hybrid neighbors on their national "Russia Day". And taking into account how painfully the Kremlin reacts to any rapprochement between Ukraine and NATO, I won't be surprised if a certain campaign to compromise Kyiv will be carried in this regard as well. Moreover, the stage with all the props is waiting for actors.

Cameras are just waiting to capture at the protest rallies in the US and the EU some young people with peculiar tattoos or distinctive T-shirts with Ukrainian inscriptions looting stores or just being part of the violent crowds. So if anyone wants to tar Ukraine, this is the perfect opportunity amid global public focus on the ongoing rallies across Western democracies.

That’s all it needs. I can already imagine titles like "Ukrainian militants destabilizing Europe!" or perhaps it would be "… the U.S.", depending on where it's cheaper and more important to deploy a group of these "actors". And again, these people could be both aware and oblivious of being exploited by Russia. Most of the times though those who are being manipulated tend to remain blind to what's really happening...

Also, it can also be that there'll be no need to send anyone anywhere as Russian assets from among all sorts of ultra-radicals and neo-Nazi scum could simply use in their act some distinctive objects attributed to Ukraine or simply put pseudo-Ukrainian graffiti on some walls – like Russian Wagner PMC troops clumsily did as they were retreating from a Libyan town.

https://medium.com/@zloyodessit2.0/russian-propaganda-set-to-stage-ukrainian-trail-in-us-eu-protests-3371671a67ef

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pierrehardy · 4 years

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COVID-19 x China: A Geopolitical Analysis

This week, I focused my research on the pandemic and how it changes the world stage with regards to China. I have seen one too many Facebook posts going along the lines of “ChInA hAs WoN tHe ThIrD wOrLD WaR wItHOuT fIrInG a SInGle BuLlET.” So, let’s see, is China about to replace America as the leading global superpower?

TL;DR

Nope. But that’s not to say China is not ambitious and trying to be more influential, but they have a long way to go.

Currently, Chinese propaganda is in full swing. Donations and aid to other countries are highly publicized while diplomats are furiously deflecting blame for the pandemic. Chinese state news blasts four main messages on the regular: (1) China’s leaders are great. (2) China’s system is superior to the Western system. (3) The West’s handling of the pandemic sucks. (4) The virus was an American bioweapon (and other conspiracy theories). All in all, the publicity stunts are quite inelegant.

Why isn’t China going to replace America anytime soon?

World trade still runs on the dollar.

Economically and militarily, America is still on the top and has a sizable lead.

China is still relatively not trusted. From their data (economic figures, COVID-19 figures) to their crass propaganda (motives are seen too clearly), it is turning people off more than winning their hearts (Have you seen the song they made for the Philippines regarding our disputed islands?) Trust, accountability, and likeability are needed to be a global leader.

The predicted global supply chain shift away from China would erode its importance in world trade.

China does not seem to actually want to replace America. Instead, it wishes to lower America’s dominance to make itself more influential. More on just balancing the playing field than outright replacing. What China wants is for critics to leave them alone and not try to change them (with its view on civil liberties, internet censorship, and authoritarian socialism).

China attempts to expand its power by:

Racing to be the winner of the COVID-19 vaccine race.

Increase its soft power by winning over Westerns with Western methods (like making news broadcasts of sanitized Chinese news in a Western “style” and making their diplomats use Twitter, which is banned in their own country).

Improve relations with poorer nations by showing a willingness to be forgiving of debt during this pandemic.

By placing diplomats in various international organizations.

Finally, to answer one more question, did China find an opportunity to grow during this pandemic? Yes. It was able to flex the advantages of its system in a time of crisis. Compared to the West, their economy fared better. This flex showed three benefits of the Chinese regime.

While America had to whip out trillions to prop up the economy, this mechanism is already “built-in” in the Chinese system. State-owned banks regularly finance private and state-owned firms.

In general, China is more cautious than the West. Currently, they are not impatient to craft policies to hasten the rebound of the economy. I find this to be a merit. China is also careful in spending too much so as not to unravel their progress for lessening their debt. A bit of prudence would indeed go a long way.

Finally, China was able to show the attractiveness of their bonds (higher yields than American bonds while still being quite high quality) and of their technology (China is the leader in e-commerce and digital payments, which is predicted to have a boost thanks to the virus). They’re also exhibiting signs of being a reasonable creditor.

This write-up was a bit of a struggle to organize as it can get all over the place, but I tried my best to structure it like this:

Retelling the story

Past: How did it all start, and how did China handle it?

Present: What are they doing now?

Future: What are the risks they could face?

Geopolitical analysis

What is China doing to revive the economy?

What are the perks that China is enjoying right now?

Why is China not about to replace America?

A segue explaining the criticisms against WHO

What is China actually aiming for?

Retelling the Story

Past: How did it all start, and how did China handle it?

As someone who reads the news every morning (or afternoon), the first time I remember this virus being reported was around late November or early December 2019. It was reported to be a disease among pigs that was not transmissible to humans.

Well, that was a lie.

China then proceeded to gyrate wildly from extremes. First, local officials of Wuhan gagged the doctors and journalists wanting to sound the alarm, then next, Beijing imposed the swiftest and most massive lockdown in history. [1] This move seemed to work, limiting its casualties (especially compared to other countries), and lifting it after 77 days.

Present: What are they doing now?

Currently, businesses are open and Chinese propaganda is in full swing. The propaganda has been, to put it gently, quite inelegant and rather crude. This is what they’re doing:

State news. The messages revolves around:

Praising their country’s leaders. [2]

Bragging by pointing out how badly other countries (read: America) are handling the crisis compared to how great China did it. [2]

Spreading conspiracy theories (usually that the virus was an American bioweapon). [3] One conspiracy theory that backfired is that Africans are, for some reason worse carriers, leading to mass evictions and maltreatment of Africans in China. [4]

Sending the message that the system of Chinese socialism is better than the free and democratic system of the West.

Magnanimous posturing when giving aid. Every donation to other countries and every discussion of Xi Jinping to a foreign world leader is heavily publicized. Here are examples of some high-profile donations:

Donations for Spain [5]

Sponsor: China

Contents: 800 protective suits, 110,000 masks (totalling (just) $50,000)

Criticisms

The donations arrived 2 weeks after. By that time, Spain has already bought 10,000x more than what they have donated. [6] In fact, China has earned about$1.45 billion from sales of medical equipment. [2]

China’s donations are dwarfed by what Germany and France donated to Italy (2 million masks, tens of thousands of protective suits) without any publicity. [7]

Also, for all the airs and graces, China seems to have forgotten that America and the EU gave them a total of 30 tons of medical donations back when the outbreak was just beginning in China. [8][9]

Donations for Africa

Sponsor: Jack Ma, China’s most prosperous businessman.

Contents: So far, 120 million masks, 4.1 million testing kits, and 3.7k ventilators [10]

Donations for other countries like Canada and the Netherlands (read: countries hesitant on investing in Huawei made 5G infrastructure)

Sponsor: surprise, Huawei

Contents: For Canada, 1 million masks, 30k face shields, 50k gloves. [11]

Diplomatic sharp power. Every Chinese diplomat would shake their fists and bluster at anyone trying to implicate or assign blame to China for this pandemic. [12]

All these state-sponsored bla-blas isn’t mainly for winning the hearts and minds of other countries. They also do this to deflect any blame from their leaders for how they mismanaged the initial response to the outbreak. The death of the first doctor from Wuhan who rang the alarm sparked some outrage back home, prompting the higher ups to pacify their citizens as much as they can. [13]

Future: What risks they could face?

For all this triumphant marching, the riskiest thing to happen is for there to be rain on their parade. A possible second wave of infections can ruin their narrative. In fact, there have been footages of hushed up additional deaths caused by the virus post-lockdown. [14]

Another one is if the economy fails to pick up, wherein unemployment can rise, increasing social tensions in China.

Geopolitical Analysis

What is China doing to revive the economy?

If you look at it from the outside, they seem to be doing nothing, which is strange. In the past, when there’s a slump, China goes on an infrastructure spending spree to jump-start the economy. So are they really doing nothing? Well, no, they’re not not doing anything, but they are indeed doing less than what they usually would.

Firstly, they are being cautious. I believe this is merit. This prudence is likely caused by the fact that the government manages every facet of the lives of more than a billion citizens. Not only that, but they’re also cautious of derailing their progress on shaving off debt. They seem to have accepted the fact that there are too many unknowns to make the right policy move.

The second thing to note is that the trillions that the American government is whipping out to prop up the economy are already “built-in” to the Chinese system. State-banks are regularly lending money to state and private firms. Thanks to this, economic damage has been limited from the start. One can conclude that the Chinese regime does have some advantages in a time of crisis. It is indeed true that a centralized government can mobilize huge amounts of resources more quickly when needed.

What are the perks that China is enjoying right now?

Because of the aforementioned advantages, China can enjoy some perks thanks to the pandemic.

First, China was able to flex the resilience of its system during a crisis (Figure 1). For more explanation on interpreting this graph, check out appendix A. I will explain very quickly what bonds and yield spreads are.

Figure 1 [32]

This flex can also highlight the attractiveness of their bonds (Figure 2).

Figure 2 [33]

As mentioned in my previous blog, the pandemic can accelerate the adoption of e-commerce and digital payments. China is one of the technological leaders in this field. [15]

If China’s propaganda of its medical donations to the West fails to win them over, a more potent option is to extend their generosity as creditors to poorer nations. If they show a willingness to be more forgiving to its poor debtors, that’s a sure way to win their hearts.

Why is China not about to replace America?

Before I list the reasons why China is not about to replace America, let’s first touch upon the factors that conjured this idea in the first place. Basically, it’s because of Trump.

Trump showed an unwillingness to lead the world in overcoming this pandemic (unlike America’s leadership to dealing with AIDS/HIV in the past [16]). This provided a gap in which China is more than happy to fill.

Trump puts America first to such an extent that other countries found it selfish, irking some of its allies. There were complaints that America diverted much needed medical supplies en route to Europe for its own use.

Trump attacked the World Health Organization (WHO) for mismanaging the initial response to the pandemic (nevermind that WHO labeled the outbreak as a pandemic quite early as Trump downplayed it). For this one, however, Trump is not totally without reason.

So another segue, what’s up with the criticism against the WHO?

The criticism: the WHO is too friendly with China.

WHO praised China’s leadership. [17]

WHO failed to challenge China’s early claims that the coronavirus is not transmissible to humans. [18]

WHO is cited as corrupt since it fumbled on Taiwan’s request to be a member of the organization. [19]

Result: America threatened to withhold its monetary contributions to the organization. This is no small thing since America is the biggest donor of the WHO (Figure 3).

Figure 3 [20]

My personal take: cut the WHO some slack. This is where I argue for some empathy for the organization. First, we need to realize that WHO cannot stand on its own. WHO cannot function without funding. And who funds them? That’s right, multiple countries. This makes the diplomatic balancing act very difficult. WHO effectively relies on keeping everyone happy, so they continue to fund and to cooperate with the organization. This is very difficult to do. As we know, the Taiwan-China issue is very thorny, and I cannot blame them for squirming after being put in a difficult situation. Personally, I don’t know what was the right thing to do. All I can say is I understand them and cannot blame them.

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s go to the bread and butter of this write-up. What are the reasons why China is not about to replace America’s dominance? What does it even mean to be the world’s leading superpower? Here’s some ways to measure it:

Hard Power - these are the most evident manifestations of a country’s muscle to influence others. It consists of two main things:

Military. Who has the strongest military? Let’s use the 2020 Military Strength Ranking [21] as a guide since it takes into account not just military numbers but also technological superiority. It ranks America as the strongest military in the world (with a score of 0.0606; smaller value means more muscle). China ranks third (with a score of 0.0691), just behind Russia. So militarily, it’s America.

Economy. We will measure this using the nominal GDP, or the country’s income without adjusting for its inflation. Typically when seeing the progress of a country, real GDP is better. However, if we’re comparing brute economic might, nominal GDP paints a better picture (Figure 4). Currently, the biggest economy goes to America with $21 trillion. China comes second at $14 trillion. [22] Despite being the second-biggest economy, the gap between their incomes is wide.

Figure 4 [34]

Soft Power - these are the less obvious strengths of a country. If hard power is used to arm wrestle others to get what you want, soft power is more for convincing them to cooperate with you. This is done by being diplomatic, likeable (which are usually achieved by cultural exports. Do you like KDrama or KPop? Those are deliberate moves by the South Korean government to expand their soft power), and trustworthy.

Let’s see how China is doing on that front. First is trustworthiness. As it stands, people do not trust China, especially when it comes to disclosing data about their country [23][24]

Second, their propaganda, as mentioned, is crass. The West can see right through this and are turned off by it. Hell, even its neighbors. Admittedly, the music video they made for the Philippines was lame and of poor taste. [25] (1.9k likes vs 139k dislikes. Surprised they didn’t turn off the likes and dislikes). To most Filipinos, it felt like a robber breaking into your house then, while they’re looting your own home, they’re also singing a song for you. Then acting as if the song makes what they’re doing alright.

There are also economic factors considered as soft power.

Currently, the world still runs on the dollar. During the pandemic, everyone rushed to obtain dollars [26] and the dollar is still the biggest foreign currency in reserves (Figure 5). This can actually exhibit an unhealthy dependence on the dollar, but that’s for another time.

China’s dominance as the world’s supplier can be eroded as the pandemic spooked businesses into plans of shifting their supply chains away from China. I talked about this in more detail in my previous blog.

Figure 5 [35]

With all this discussion of China not being able to replace America, did we even consider if China even aims to do that?

What is China actually (probably) aiming for?

Back in the 2017 National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping mentioned that their goal is for China to be a global leader for international influence by the midcentury. Pair this with their efforts to gain soft power, it’s natural to assume that they aspire to be the world leader in the future [27]. However, there’s a line that Xi Jinping always says, echoing the same sentiment of Mao Zedong, which is the aim for “peaceful coexistence.” [28]

Currently, despite trying to step up to America’s shortcomings, China has been a rather timid leader. Their actions are mainly motivated by deflecting criticisms and toppling the American world order, not replacing them. What I believe makes more sense is to think that China doesn’t want to lead, but instead, it wants not to be meddled with and to be allowed to grow the way it wants to without constraints. This is similar to the cause of North Korea’s belligerence: they are afraid by the West’s tendency to assert their worldview unto others. China wants critics to leave alone how it handles its citizens’ liberties, internet censorship, and authoritarian socialism.

So basically, China doesn’t want to replace America, but simply to chip away at its dominance so it can pull its weight to the world without being constrained and bothered. Here are some examples of its efforts to do so:

China is working on developing its soft power.

Confucius Institutes are established all around the world for promoting Chinese culture and language. [29]

They present sanitized news for a Western audience, delivered in a Western way. [30]

By making their diplomats use Twitter, an app banned in their own country. [12]

China is showing a willingness to spend money to gain influence. This is exhibited in their readiness to provide debt relief to the poor. [31] But it’s worth noting how China deals with its debts. It prefers bilateral and discreet arrangements. For example, last year, China forgave Cameroon’s debt. Cool. But then afterwards, Cameroon withdrew its candidate for a position in a UN body, making it easier for the Chinese candidate to get the job. [2] This clearly shows that they had some hidden arrangements behind that debt forgiveness. Which leads us to its third effort:

China tries to station diplomats in various international organizations.

Finally, China is leading the race for developing the vaccine for COVID-19. Whoever creates the vaccine first gets the prom queen. Speaking of vaccines, check out my next blog to know more about the current status of the vaccine race.

So all that being said, why can’t we just let China grow the way it wants to then? Well, that’s because they have a tendency to step over the weak by abusing their strength. Filipinos such as myself don’t need to be reminded of this. China has slowly claimed our seas and for some reason flooding our country (causing distorted housing prices and being treated like second class citizens in our own country). What we need is a world order where it’s not a threat to be weak. A world order that is more cooperative and not “leave me alone to do my own thing.”

Appendix A: Bonds and Yield Spreads

To explain concisely, figure 1 shows the ratio between high-quality corporate bonds over government bonds.

Here are some basic finance concepts explained quickly: bonds are basically IOUs. In other words, when you buy a bond, you’re lending money to the government or companies where they promise to pay you back. Government bonds are considered to be the closest you can get to a risk-free investment (no such thing as risk-free but yeah). So what this graph shows is that when it is higher, it means that corporate bond yields (yields are how much you earn from bonds. It’s like the interest rate of the loan) is much higher than government bonds. Bonds, being a safe investment (relative to stocks), are typically expected not to yield high values. But if they do, it means that investors are demanding more “interest” to their “loans” to compensate for the risk that they don’t get paid back. An alternative way of viewing this, which is perfectly complementary, is that demand for bonds is lower, pushing the price down. See, in reality, bonds are like discounted money. A bond can have 100 dollars written on it, and it is only sold for 80 dollars. Depending on how soon the company/government is going to exchange the bond into real 100 dollars (called the maturity date) and depending on the demand, that 80 dollar price tag can move up/down. This can affect how much yield that bond really earns you. So if people are not buying corporate bonds because they find it risky, demand goes down which then makes the price of the bond go down which then makes the yield higher! Either way, pick whichever interpretation that is more intuitive for you. Both perspectives are correct.

So in figure 1, the spike in the yield spread means investors suddenly felt like the economy is not doing very well. Suddenly, yields from corporate bonds are higher relative to government bonds. The investors demanded more yield for the heightened perceived risk on the economy. You can also observe that the spike quickly went down. Investors are fickle creatures like that. So to summarize, higher in that graph = economic climate isn’t very nice.

References

[1]https://www.vox.com/2020/2/4/21122072/china-coronavirus-healthcare

[2]https://www.economist.com/china/2020/04/16/chinas-post-covid-propaganda-push

[3]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/chinas-covid-19-conspiracy-theories/609772/

[4]https://qz.com/africa/1842768/racism-to-africans-in-guangzhou-hurts-china-coronavirus-diplomacy/

[5]https://www.railfreight.com/beltandroad/2020/03/27/china-sends-thousands-of-masks-to-spain-by-train/?gdpr=accept

[6]https://www.news18.com/news/world/spain-buys-467-million-in-medical-equipment-from-china-to-fight-covid-19-epidemic-2551105.html

[7]https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/health/coronavirus-response/coronavirus-european-solidarity-action_en

[8]https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_20_178

[9]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/us-tons-ppe-china/

[10]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52325269

[11]https://news.abs-cbn.com/overseas/04/08/20/canada-says-huawei-medical-donations-wont-sway-policies

[12]https://www.wcjb.com/content/news/Chinas-diplomats-show-teeth-in-defending-virus-response-569915181.html

[13]https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/feb/07/coronavirus-chinese-rage-death-whistleblower-doctor-li-wenliang

[14]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says

[15]http://www.china.org.cn/top10/2019-02/08/content_74433001.htm

[16]https://eu.sctimes.com/story/opinion/2019/03/08/u-s-leadership-hiv-aids-fight-matters/3085743002/

[17]https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3050351/coronavirus-who-head-stands-his-praise-china-and-xi-jinping

[18]https://www.newstatesman.com/world/asia/2020/04/how-world-health-organisation-s-failure-challenge-china-over-coronavirus-cost-us

[19]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/30/senior-who-adviser-appears-to-dodge-question-on-taiwans-covid-19-response

[20]https://howmuch.net/articles/united-nations-budget-contributions-by-country-2019

[21]https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp

[22]https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/

[23]https://www.fxstreet.com/analysis/economic-commentary-challenging-chinas-state-reported-economic-data-201908181614

[24]https://time.com/5813628/china-coronavirus-statistics-wuhan/

[25]https://cnnphilippines.com/news/2020/4/26/Iisang-Dagat-tribute-video-sparks-outrage-online-West-Philippine-Sea.html

[26]https://bfsi.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/dollar-gains-as-investors-continue-to-rush-to-convert-their-assets-into-cash/74778328

[27]https://www.ft.com/content/24eeae8a-b5a1-11e7-8007-554f9eaa90ba

[28]https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/04/12/covid-19-a-warning-for-rational-proactive-protectionism/

[29]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute

[30]https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/07/china-plan-for-global-media-dominance-propaganda-xi-jinping

[31]https://www.newsweek.com/china-debt-relief-african-countries-struggling-coronavirus-1497733

[32]https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/04/16/why-has-chinas-stimulus-been-so-stingy

[33]https://www.ft.com/content/41044876-6ab4-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75

[34]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

[35]https://matasii.com/us-dollar-status-as-the-global-reserve-currency/

#blog #covid-19 #covid19 #covid #corona #coronavirus #virus #china #geopolitics #analysis #business #international business #international

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diarrheaworldstarhiphop · 6 years

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(UNITED NATIONS) — Experts from the U.N. and the chemical weapons watchdog are blaming Syria’s government for a sarin nerve gas attack that killed over 90 people last April.

Their report, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, says leaders of the expert body are “confident that the Syrian Arab Republic is responsible for the release of sarin at Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, 2017.”

The report supports the initial findings by the United States, France and Britain that a Syrian military plane dropped a bomb with sarin on the town.

Syria and Russia, its close ally, have denied any attack and have strongly criticized the Joint Investigative Mechanism, known as the JIM, which was established by the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to determine responsibility for chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

The attack in Khan Sheikhoun sparked outrage around the world as photos and video of the aftermath, including quivering children dying on camera, were widely broadcast.

The United States blamed the Syrian military and launched a punitive strike days later on the Shayrat air base, where it said the attack was launched.

Responding to the report, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said: “Today’s report confirms what we have long known to be true. Time and again, we see independent confirmation of chemical weapons use by the Assad regime.”

Clearly referring to Russia, she said: “In spite of these independent reports, we still see some countries trying to protect the regime. That must end now.”

The Security Council should make it clear that “the use of chemical weapons by anyone will not be tolerated,” Haley said.

A fact-finding mission by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons reported June 30 that sarin was used in the Khan Sheikhoun attack and “sulfur mustard” in Um Hosh. But the JIM experts had the task of determining who conducted the attacks.

The JIM experts said Thursday they are “confident” the Islamic State extremist group was responsible for an attack in Um Hosh in Aleppo on Sept. 15-16, 2016, that used “sulfur mustard,” the chemical weapon commonly known as mustard gas.

In addition to blaming the Syrian government and the IS group, the JIM report says, “The continuing use of chemical weapons, including by non-state actors, is deeply disturbing.”

“If such use, in spite of the prohibition by the international community, is not stopped now, a lack of consequences will surely encourage others to follow — not only in the Syrian Arab Republic but also elsewhere,” it warns. “This is the time to bring these acts to an end.”

The report was issued two days after Russia vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution to extend the mandate of the JIM investigators for another year after it expires Nov. 17.

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow wanted to wait for the JIM report. “We can meaningfully negotiate the renewal of JIM after we have seen the report,” he told reporters Thursday before it came out.

Russia’s U.N. mission had no immediate comment on the report.

Haley said countries that don’t support the JIM experts “are no better than the dictators or terrorists who use these terrible weapons.”

The investigators determined last year that the Syrian government was behind at least three attacks involving chlorine gas and that the Islamic State extremist group was responsible for at least one involving mustard gas.

Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director for Human Rights Watch, said: “The question now is whether Security Council and OPCW members, including Russia, will move to protect a key international rule and hold Syrian authorities accountable as they said they would.”

The report said the JIM experts talked with 17 witnesses in addition to those interviewed by the OPCW fact-finding mission and collected and reviewed material the OPCW did not have. It said the experts also obtained “substantial information” on activities by the Syrian air force on April 4.

The experts determined sarin was released from a crater in the northern part of Khan Sheikhoun between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. April 4.

Based on photos, videos and satellite images as well as studies of munition remnants by forensic institutes and individual experts hired by the JIM, the experts “assessed that the crater was most probably caused by a heavy object traveling at a high velocity, such as an aerial bomb with a small explosive charge,” the report said.

The possibility that an improvised explosive device caused the crater “could not be completely ruled out,” but the experts determined that was “less likely” because an IED “would have caused more damage to the surroundings than had been observed at the scene.”

The report said the investigators received information that Syrian air force planes “may have been in a position to launch aerial bombs in the vicinity” of the town. But it said air force flight records and other records provided by Syria’s government made no mention of Khan Sheikhoun. The experts said they received “conflicting information” about aircraft deployments in the town that morning.

The experts also obtained “original video footage from two separate witnesses that showed four plumes caused by explosives across Khan Sheikhoun,” the report said. It said forensic analysis confirmed the footage was made during the time of the sarin attack.

According to the report, the JIM leadership panel concluded the Syrian military was behind the sarin attack based on the following “sufficient, credible and reliable evidence”:

—Aircraft dropped munitions over Khan Sheikhoun between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. on April 4

—Syrian aircraft were “in the immediate vicinity” at that time.

—The crater was created that morning.

—The crater “was caused by the impact of an aerial bomb traveling at high velocity.”

—The number of people affected and the presence of sarin at the crater 10 days later “indicate that a large amount of sarin was likely released, which is consistent with it being dispersed via a chemical aerial bomb.”

—The symptoms of victims, their treatment and the scale of the incident “are consistent with a large-scale intoxication of sarin.”

—Sarin samples from Khan Sheikhoun were “most likely” made with a precursor chemical that was from “the original stockpile of the Syrian Arab Republic.”

#khan sheikhoun #THE INCREASING DOUBT AS RUSSIA #WHICH PREVIOUSLY INVITED INVETIGATORS TO SUCH ATTACK SITES #NOW BLOCKING THEM #syria #syrian civil war #Syrian air force

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leftpress · 7 years

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Justin Trudeau's tweets won’t make Canada a refugee haven—but popular pressure can

The Prime Minister’s refugee-friendly branding has veiled Canada’s fortress policies that are in urgent need of overhaul

Demonstrators gather to protest against US President Trump’s travel ban executive orders, outside of the international arrivals terminal at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, 29 January 2017. EPA/TRACIE VAN AUKEN Photograph: Tracie van Auken/EPA

Martin Lukacs | Monday 30 January 2017

It was a tweet heard around the world: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s rejoinder to Donald Trump’s repugnant Muslim travel ban that has sparked outrage around the world. “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” Trudeau tweeted on Saturday. “Diversity is our strength. #WelcometoCanada.”

While Trump has immediately stoked reactionary chaos, Trudeau has always struck the progressive posture. With fuzzy memes and messaging and photo-ops of him hugging refugees – and his predictably popular latest tweet – Canada’s Liberal party has painted themselves as a welcoming government in a sea of rising intolerance. Praise from the international political and media class has flowed.

Trump’s attack on refugees, and yesterday’s murderous assault on a Quebec city mosque by a racist white nationalist, should indeed focus Trudeau’s mind. But before we continue the bout of self-congratulation, let’s get a few things straight. Start with the fact that, despite the horror unfolding south of the border, his government refused yesterday to commit to raising the country’s refugee intake: asked to clarify Trudeau’s twitter-diplomacy, the Immigration Minister stated that they were already “doing our part.”

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What exactly is our part? Just last month, the government quietly capped applications for private sponsorship of refugees from war-torn Syria and Iraq—after families and community groups brought in nearly 14,000 last year. The number now accepted? A mere one thousand. In other words, many desperate and endangered people will not be able to come to Canada, despite there being groups ready to welcome and host them. Sparkling in his symbolism, Trudeau has been desultory in his deeds.

Despite the optics, Canada has hardly been a leader in openness among countries. The number of refugees it accepted last year totalled 38,000—ranking us a laggardly 20th, judged per capita, among industrialized countries. And of those refugees, nearly half were privately sponsored by citizens, not the government itself. Trudeau has outsourced his responsibility to ordinary people, but has not been shy to claim the benefits to his image.

As Trump’s administration now unleashes a racist anti-immigrant agenda that will involve not just travel bans by massive surveillance and deportations, there is another crucial way that Canada could open the doors to endangered people—but is currently, under Trudeau, barring many of them. If an asylum seeker now in the United States showed up at the Canadian border tomorrow, they would not be welcomed: they might be turned away. Hard to square with Trudeau’s tweet, isn’t it?

That’s because Canada—under a so-called Safe Third Country agreement established by a previous Liberal government in 2004—doesn’t accept asylum seekers who come to Canada via the US. If someone fleeing war or persecution lands first in the United States – deemed a “safe country,” a notion now dramatically unapt – they are barred from seeking refuge in Canada.

There were already instances of people risking their lives to cross the border to Canada. And now life for poor, racialized and Muslim people in the United States has gotten a whole lot more dangerous. But Trudeau has not shown any inclination to repeal this agreement and allow people to find safety in Canada: a petition with growing numbers demands he now urgently do so.

Donald Trump's first 100 days as president – daily updates

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► TRUMP’S MUSLIM BAN IS CULMINATION OF WAR ON TERROR MENTALITY BUT STILL UNIQUELY SHAMEFUL

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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Iran just outplayed the United States — again

By Max Boot | Published December 31 at 5:19 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted December 31, 2019 |

To call the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad merely a diplomatic mission is to severely understate its scope and size. At 104 acres, the compound is nearly the size of Vatican City and comes complete with its own dormitories, dining halls, electrical plant, fire department and everything else needed to support the thousands of diplomats and contractors housed inside its thick walls. I have been there many times, and every time I felt like I was being magically whisked from the Middle East to small-town America.

So it was all the more shocking to read that hundreds of supporters of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia, broke into the compound on Tuesday and ransacked the reception areas familiar to all visitors. To anyone of my generation (I was born in 1969), it instantly conjured up terrible memories of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 to 1981. The protesters even shouted the same slogan — “Death to America” — as the Iranian hostage-takers. Mercifully, Tuesday’s embassy invasion ended without any Americans being harmed after Iraqi security forces belatedly arrived to restore order, but the demonstrators remain just outside the embassy walls.

This is another reminder that in the long-running conflict between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran, we have repeatedly been humbled and hurt by a smaller but more determined and ruthless adversary. Indeed, for the past 41 years, Iran has put on a master class in irregular warfare, leaving the United States flummoxed about how to respond.

In the 1980s, Iranian-backed forces took dozens of Americans hostage in Lebanon and demolished both the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut with truck bombs that killed hundreds. President Ronald Reagan was so desperate to free the hostages that he was willing to sell missiles to Iran — a backroom maneuver that blew up into the biggest scandal of the Reagan administration after the proceeds were secretly diverted to the Nicaraguan Contras.

In 1987, Reagan sent U.S. naval forces to prevent Iran from closing the Persian Gulf as part of its war against Iraq. One U.S. Navy frigate was nearly sunk by an Iraqi missile and another by an Iranian mine, but U.S. forces inflicted heavy damages on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Navy and accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger airliner.

This was the first and last time that U.S. and Iranian forces engaged in direct battle. Iran prefers to do most of its damage via proxies. Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iranian-sponsored Shiite militias killed hundreds of U.S. service members. President George W. Bush condemned Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil,” but wisely decided against escalating hostilities. The United States was mired in enough wars without starting another one against a nation of 81 million people.

The Iranians took advantage of Bush’s ill-advised decision to overthrow their nemesis Saddam Hussein to extend Iranian influence across Iraq under the very noses of American occupiers. Iran was already the dominant player in Lebanon. In the past two decades, it has become the dominant player in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, too. The new Persian Empire stretches from Tehran to Beirut.

The only effective U.S. response to the Iranian threat since Reagan’s tanker war was President Barack Obama’s decision to conclude a deal with Iran in 2015 that would freeze its nuclear program. The deal did nothing to curb Iran’s regional power play and may have even fueled it by lifting economic sanctions — which is why I and others opposed it at the time. But it did at least stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. President Trump blundered by exiting the nuclear deal in 2018 and imposing economic sanctions on Iran in 2019, even though it was complying with the agreement.

Pushed into a corner, Iran and its proxies have lashed out by allegedly attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, shooting down a U.S. drone, hitting a major Saudi oil facility with cruise missiles — and now rocketing a U.S. compound near Kirkuk, Iraq. The latter attack, which killed an American contractor and injured four U.S. troops on Friday, led Trump to retaliate with airstrikes across Iraq and Syria that killed 25 members of Kataib Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia blamed for the rocket attack, and sparked anti-American outrage. The embassy invasion on Tuesday was Iran’s riposte to make clear that it will not bow to American pressure. Your move, Mr. Trump.

The United States has only two ways out of this escalating crisis: fight or negotiate. A war with Iran, as I have previously argued, could be the mother of all quagmires; it could easily spin out of control with tit-for-tat responses of the kind we have seen in recent days. Better to negotiate. That would mean trying to rebuild a tougher nuclear deal in return for the lifting of U.S. sanctions.

But Trump shows little interest in either seriously negotiating or fighting. He has waged economic warfare on Iran while doing nothing to curb its regional aggression; indeed, by withdrawing U.S. troops from part of northern Syria, he has allowed an extension of Iranian influence. So we are left with the worst of all possible worlds: Iran is once again waging a low-intensity conflict, and America once again has no effective response.

*********

The Pentagon has banned congressional travel to Iraq and Syria over the holidays

By Josh Rogin | Published December 31 at 1:30 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted December 31, 2019 |

U.S. diplomats and troops have been hunkering down on Tuesday in the Baghdad embassy under siege after Iraqi protesters stormed the compound to protest U.S. attacks on Iranian-backed militias. But there are no U.S. lawmakers or congressional staffers in the country — even though such visits are common during the holidays — because the Pentagon banned them from visiting this month amid concerns about regional instability.

I obtained an unclassified Dec. 16 Pentagon memo, designated “For Official Use Only,” that states, “all U.S. government, U.S. Congressional and allied senior level visits to [Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Iraqi Resolve] in Syria and Iraq are prohibited,” until Jan. 15, 2020. The memo is signed by Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and approved a request made by Central Command chief Gen. Kenneth McKenzie. Exceptions are provided for the president, vice president, defense secretary, the service secretaries and the joint chiefs.

“Centcom raised concerns about straining resources to accommodate VIP delegations, volatility in Iraq, and the need to keep the focus on support operations in Syria,” a senior defense official told me on Dec. 18. “This is merely a pause on travel through the holidays.”

That caution proved to be prescient. The explanation came before a series of events over the past few days brought tensions surrounding the U.S. presence in Iraq to a boil. A U.S. contractor was killed, and several U.S. troops were injured in an attack on an Iraqi base hosting U.S. troops on Friday. The United States struck back at five locations Sunday in Iraq and Syria, targeting the Iranian-backed militia Kitaeb Hezbollah.

On Tuesday, supporters of that militia breached the embassy compound walls and set fire to a guard station and threw gasoline bombs over the wall, chanting “Death to America” while guards held them at bay with tear gas. President Trump quickly blamed Iran for orchestrating the attack and called on Iraqi security forces to protect the embassy, which they eventually did.

The Pentagon has put temporary pauses on congressional and senior leader visits to Iraq at various times before. But this year’s ban illustrates just how much the security situation in Iraq has deteriorated in recent weeks and months. Trump made a surprise visit to Iraq around this time last year. That wouldn’t be possible today, due to the dangerous situation on the ground.

The most recent congressional delegation to Iraq was in early November, led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.). There are other congressional delegations in the Middle East region right now (specifics withheld for security reasons), but none in Iraq or Syria, where the U.S. troop presence has been reduced and now stands at about 600 soldiers sitting on oil fields in Deir al-Zour province.

The Pentagon’s decision to keep lawmakers out of Iraq and Syria over the holidays makes sense from a strictly security vantage point. But the fact that there is not enough staff in Iraq to safely host lawmakers and staffers calls into question the Trump administration’s plans to further drastically reduce the number of U.S. embassy personnel there.

Foreign Policy reported this month that the State Department plans to reduce diplomatic staffing in Iraq by 28 percent by the end of May 2020, removing 114 positions in the Baghdad embassy alone. As the security situation in Iraq worsens, the Trump administration should be doubling down on diplomacy, and Congress should be doubling down on oversight. Right now, both of those crucial missions are falling victim to the escalating violence.

*********

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hub-pub-bub · 5 years

Link

Maybe you just want to write a book and get it into people’s hands, but there are more dangers out there than you might realize.

To set the stage, I’ll go back to a recent event: the Amélie Wen Zhao controversy. You could be forgiven for not having heard about it, given that it’s only a big deal if you closely follow the world of young adult novels, and in particular the young adult communities on Twitter and Tumblr. I’ll do my best to summarize what happened.

Zhao is a young woman, born in Beijing, raised in Paris, educated in New York City and currently living there. She scored a 6-figure book deal with Delacorte Press, the first book of which was to be Blood Heir. Some reviewers got advance review copies. Then, a couple of things happened: Twitter user @LegallyPaige posted a tweet (since deleted) accusing Zhao of taking screenshots of tweets made by people who disliked her or her book, and of stalking and possibly harassing critics; marketing descriptions of the book, as well as tweets by advance reviewers like Ellen Oh, suggested that the book was racially insensitive as it focuses on an indentured servitude system with parallels to American slavery. There were also accusations of anti-blackness based on the treatment of a character who was racially ambiguous, at best, as well as talk of plagiarism that, as far as anyone who has read the book can tell, are not really credible.

Again, if you don’t run in these circles this might all sound like a pretty minor controversy–a mild storm that Zhao could easily weather. But YA Twitter doesn’t work that way. It is a microcosm of Twitter as a whole, dominated by clout-chasing “influencers” and full of cliques who follow what their preferred influencers say. If a book is presumed to be problematic, or the author presumed to be bad, it is a small matter to organize mass review-bombing on Goodreads, Amazon, or anywhere else one can have a say. If you speak out on behalf of someone accused in this way, you are inviting legions of opposing followers to come after you. The old adage is true: the only way to win is not to play the game.

Zhao herself chose not to play the game, as well. She wrote a thoughtful apology letter in which she announced the cancellation (or at least postponement) of Blood Heir. I’m not here to take issue with that decision, as it is a highly personal one. My purpose is to critique these cycles more generally.

All cards on the table: I’m a white man. I consider myself anti-racist as well as a feminist. I recognize the vast structural oppression that exist essentially everywhere, as well as the specific history of anti-black racism in the US. I am always on the side of social justice, which is why I think it’s necessary to call out the excesses of such movements.

For perspective, of course, in this case nobody died, nobody lost their livelihood. Zhao’s publisher stands by her and she will likely publish other books, and possibly Blood Heir itself after some revisions. What happened to her isn’t censorship, nor even what I would consider abusive. It’s more unfortunate than anything else.

What is concerning to me is the tendency to manifest an online mob on an extremely thin basis, and that the people who have large enough followings to spark these controversies know the power they wield, and don’t seem to have much sense of responsibility about it. Consider that this particular incident was sparked by an essentially anonymous accusation of screenshotting–an activity which is petty, at worst–and spiraled into allegations of racism.

As a writer, I do think it is very important to be sensitive to the issues of the world around me. It is entirely possible, even likely, to fall into unintentional racism or sexism. The best of intentions do not necessarily lead to a piece of writing that is free from the biases and inequities of our world. It is important to write mindfully, and to be careful not to reproduce oppressive cultural messages. This can take many forms, though. Some people object to depictions of racism, violence against women, and other horrors in the first place. Even if the purpose of portraying them is to critique them and make clear how awful those things are, there are readers who would rather not encounter such material in the first place. It is an understandable position to not want to read something like that, as it can mean having to face bigotry in fiction that you get enough of in your daily life. People who don’t want to read books like that are absolutely welcome not to!

Where I take issue is the idea that because someone doesn’t like a particular book, no one should be allowed to read it–that it should be withdrawn altogether. The comparisons to historically ineffective book bans apply pretty well here. In addition, it just seems like a big waste of energy. In a country where Donald Trump is President and is actively enabling literal Nazis to march in the streets and kill people, spending a lot of energy attacking a book that may not have anything all that wrong with it seems totally absurd. Yes, people can care about more than one thing at a time–but time and energy are finite resources.

I used the phrase “manufactured outrage” in the title, and that was with good reason. I have been around long enough to know that most of the time, these controversies are not drummed up out of a genuine concern for people who have been harmed, but to raise one’s own profile, and to demonstrate power as an influencer. (Note that all you really need to be an “influencer” is a lot of social media followers!) The emergence of the “#MeToo” movement, which has achieved some real accomplishments in terms of dislodging sexual predators from positions of power, has also put wind in the sails of online controversy-seekers. Everyone wants to be first in line to “cancel” the next “problematic” public figure. A writer faced with such a backlash might be inclined to simply ride it out, and hope the furor dies down after a few days. It usually does, but there is another problem: media coverage.

Only 15% of Americans actually use Twitter, and an even smaller share of those use it regularly. It would not have much influence over public debate except for one thing: it is massively popular among journalists and freelance writers, almost all of whom have column space to fill. Going out and investigating is difficult and expensive; mining Twitter for the latest clickbait topic, by comparison, is easy and free. Thus, these relatively tiny kerfuffles (consisting of a few hundred or a few thousand people, at most) get elevated to the level of national or even international discourse. Dozens of articles get written about online scuffles involving handfuls of people, and you’d think there was a real crisis brewing. The reality is just that journalists and freelancers tend to be Extremely Online (to use the Twitter jargon) and know that drama pulls clicks. This is a big part of the “manufacturing” of the outrage. We’re generally not talking about mass movements, here. “#MeToo” is a mass movement. “#Cancel[WriterOfTheWeek]” isn’t.

Another part of the “manufacturing” is that these outrages often emerge from circles that are not just insincere, but actively malevolent. Imageboard site 4chan and *chan sites of similar formats have forums where the entire point is identifying targets and organizing social media outrage against them. They tap into social justice circles and plant whisper campaigns that a particular person is problematic in some severe way–maybe the target is a sexual predator, or plagiarized parts of their book. If this can get picked up by a prominent influencer, the mob does the rest. Likewise, infighting is fomented by inventing wedge issues, a couple recent examples being “Santa shouldn’t be a man” and “pedophiles belong in the LGBT+ umbrella.” Yes, those are real things stirred up by bad actors and I did not make them up.

The point of all this is that it can be easy and exciting to focus on drama, to be an active participant in fomenting it. It might even feel good to play a role in getting someone to pay penance for their perceived wrongdoing. But it’s hard to say that any of it makes the world a better place, or actually serves any of the causes social justice is meant to. In Zhao’s case, one would think that her identity as an immigrant, a woman, and a person of color would bless her with the benefit of the doubt–but those things are instead liabilities, as she is held to a much higher standard than, say, the middle-aged white men who churn out sexist drivel every year.

A common piece of writing advice is to simply ignore critics. Critics will always find something to hate–it is essentially their job. That’s still true, to a great extent. It is sometimes necessary to publicly respond to criticism, but the best way to handle that is to take the high road. Let people know that they are heard and you are taking their advice into consideration–and then, decide for yourself what that means, and how it should change your work, if at all.

If you write a book condemning injustice, and people attack you and say you aren’t condemning it correctly, odds are there’s not actually anything wrong with your book–just the people doing the attacking.

Post written by J. D. Huffman so direct all fanmail to him <3

#writing #authors #sensitivity #reading

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ofubox · 5 years

Quote

Brunei is introducing strict new Islamic laws that make anal sex and adultery offenses punishable by stoning to death. The new measures, that come into force on Wednesday, also cover a range of other crimes including punishment for theft by amputation. The move has sparked international condemnation. Brunei's gay community has expressed shock and fear at the "medieval punishments". "You wake up and realize that your neighbors, your family or even that nice old lady that sells prawn fritters by the side of the road don't think you're human, or is okay with stoning," one Bruneian gay man, who did not want to be identified, told the BBC. The Sultan of the small South-East Asian nation on Wednesday called for "stronger" Islamic teachings. "I want to see Islamic teachings in this country grow stronger," Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah said in a public address, according to AFP news agency, without mentioning the strict new interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law. Brunei: What you need to know Where is gay sex still against the law? What is Sharia? Homosexuality was already illegal in Brunei and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Muslims make up about two-thirds of the country's population of 420,000. Brunei has retained the death penalty but has not carried out an execution since 1957. What is punishable under the changes to the penal code? The law mostly applies to Muslims, including children who have reached puberty, though some aspects will apply to non-Muslims. Under the new laws, individuals accused of certain acts will be convicted if they confess or if there were witnesses present. Offences such as rape, adultery, sodomy, robbery and insult or defamation of the Prophet Muhammad will carry the maximum penalty of death. Lesbian sex carries a different penalty of 40 strokes of the cane and/or a maximum of 10 years in jail The punishment for theft is amputation Those who "persuade, tell or encourage" Muslim children under the age of 18 "to accept the teachings of religions other than Islam" are liable to a fine or jail Individuals who have not reached puberty but are convicted of certain offences may be instead subjected to whipping. What has global reaction been? Sultan Hassanal heads the Brunei Investment Agency which owns the Dorchester Collection, an operator of some of the world's top hotels including the Dorchester in London and the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles. Brunei's ruling royals possess a huge private fortune and its largely ethnic Malay residents enjoy generous state handouts and pay no taxes. But Hollywood actor George Clooney and other celebrities have now called for a boycott of the luxury hotels. TV host Ellen DeGeneres also called for people to "rise up", saying "we need to do something now". Image Copyright @TheEllenShow@THEELLENSHOW Report The hotel operator said it did "not tolerate any form of discrimination". "Dorchester Collection's code emphasises equality, respect and integrity in all areas of our operation, and strongly values people and cultural diversity amongst our guests and employees," it said. "Inclusion and diversity remain core beliefs." In another development, a honorary degree awarded by the UK's University of Aberdeen to Sultan Hassanal is under review. Is this the first time Islamic law is being introduced in Brunei? The country first introduced Sharia law in 2014 despite widespread condemnation, giving it a dual legal system with both Sharia and Common Law. The sultan had said then that the new penal code would come into full force over several years. The first phase, which covered crimes punishable by prison sentences and fines, was implemented in 2014. Brunei had delayed introducing the final two phases, which cover crimes punishable by amputation and stoning. Image copyrightIMAGESImage captionSultan Hassanal Bolkiah, who is also the prime minister of Brunei, is among the wealthiest people in the world But on Saturday, the government released a statement on its website saying the Sharia penal code would be fully implemented on Wednesday. In the days since, there has been international outrage and calls for the country to reverse course. "These abusive provisions received widespread condemnation when plans were first discussed five years ago," said Rachel Chhoa-Howard, a Brunei researcher at Amnesty International. "Brunei's penal code is a deeply flawed piece of legislation containing a range of provisions that violate human rights." The United Nations echoed the statement, calling the legislation "cruel, inhuman and degrading", and saying it marked a "serious setback" for human rights protection. Why is this being implemented now? There are several theories, but Matthew Woolfe, the founder of human rights group The Brunei Project, said it could be linked to Brunei's weakening economy. "One theory is that it is a way for the government to strengthen its hold on power in the face of a declining economy that could potentially lead to some unrest in future," Mr Woolfe told the BBC. "Connected to this is [Brunei's] interest in attracting more investment from the Muslim world, along with more Islamic tourists… this could be seen as one way of appealing to this market." Image copyrightOne rights group says the tightening Sharia laws might be a way for the government to strengthen its hold on power Mr Woolfe also added that the government might have hoped to get away with the latest roll-out without anyone realising. "I think that the government did want to ensure that the international uproar that followed the implementation of the first phase in 2014 had well and truly died down before further [implementation], in the hope, it would just quietly [do so] without anyone realizing," he said. "It wasn't until increasing international attention that it finally came out and confirmed [this]." The penal code changes were posted on the attorney general's website in December but only came to public attention in late March. There was no public announcement. How are people in Brunei reacting? One 40-year-old gay Bruneian currently seeking asylum in Canada said the impact of the new penal code was already being felt in Brunei. The ex-government employee, who left Brunei last year after being charged with sedition for a Facebook post that was critical of the government, said people were "afraid". "The gay community in Brunei has never been open but when Grindr [a gay dating app] came that helped people meet in secret. But now, what I've heard is that hardly anyone is using Grindr anymore," Shahiran S Shahrani Md told the BBC. "They're afraid that they might talk to a police officer pretending to be gay. It hasn't happened yet but because of the new laws, people are afraid," he said. Another male Bruneian, who is not gay but has renounced Islam, said he felt "fearful and numb" in the face of the laws being implemented. "We ordinary citizens are powerless to stop Sharia law from being implemented," said the 23-year-old, who did not want to be identified. "Under Sharia, I would face the death penalty for apostasy." One gay man was hopeful that the laws might not be enforced widely. "Honestly, I'm not too scared as the government here often bluffs with the harsh punishments. But it can and will still happen even with it being rare." Will the new laws be applied? It is very unlikely to happen at all, people inside Brunei have told Bill Hayton, associate fellow with the Asia Pacific programme at Chatham House. "What I'm hearing from people in Brunei is that this is very, very unlikely to ever happen," he told BBC Radio Four. For instance, the laws stipulate that there must be four Muslim witnesses to the act of anal sex or adultery for it to be prosecuted, he said. "The way it is being explained to me is that this is a way for the sultan to look religious but make sure that none of these punishments will actually be carried out," Mr Hayton said.

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Business After Kavanaugh, what have we learned?

Business After Kavanaugh, what have we learned? Business After Kavanaugh, what have we learned? http://www.nature-business.com/business-after-kavanaugh-what-have-we-learned/

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(CNN)After a painfully divisive confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh, America must find a way forward. CNN Opinion asked a diverse group of commentators to weigh in with what the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process has taught us. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors.

There comes a time when life forces us to reveal the content of our character, our souls. And America’s time is now. Brett Kavanaugh is the face and the voice of America, whether we like it, or not.

Don’t deny it.

Kavanaugh’s angry and defiant attitude of entitlement is no different from the marauding men who invaded America centuries ago with a goal to create a world in their image. History tells us that anyone who stood in the way of their desires was destroyed. Makes no difference if it’s women like Christine Blasey Ford or Anita Hill, who both echo the painful experiences of millions of unseen women who have been sexually assaulted and harassed. Because to these men, women have been deemed weak creatures, to be pampered, possessed — or denigrated and destroyed — at will.

For me, Kavanaugh’s confirmation was a forgone conclusion — despite Ford’s testimony — under this current “take-no-prisoners” culture. When President Donald Trump was elected, we should have known it was game-over for compassionate politics. We gave him the power to build a Supreme Court of his liking, knowing that there would be multiple vacancies to fill during his term. And it’s unrealistic to think that any amount of division or screaming in the streets would force Trump to willingly give up his power.

This is his chance to create a world in his image.

This what untamed power looks like. Each of us is at fault when communities allow systemic hate to fester or when democracy begins to feel like dictatorship. And surely, we have failed when our sons grow up to treat women as chattel.

Let’s stop blaming politicians for our problems. For too long, we’ve held them unaccountable and been afraid or unwilling to participate in our own democracy. Only 56% of the eligible U.S. voting population bothered to cast a vote in 2016 presidential election, one of the lowest voter turnouts in the world for any highly developed democracy, according the Pew Research Center. That voting percentage drops drastically for midterm and local state elections.

We are a nation that professes to love democracy but we are

unwilling

to do the work it requires of us.

It’s no shock that Kavanaugh is now a Supreme Court Justice. The shock, and the shame, is that we’ve allowed this to happen.

Roxanne Jones, a founding editor of ESPN Magazine and former vice president at ESPN, has worked as a producer, reporter and editor at the New York Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Jones is co-author of “Say it Loud: An Illustrated History of the Black Athlete.”

She talks politics, sports and culture weekly on Philadelphia’s Praise 107.9 FM.

Eleanor McManus: We haven’t learned a thing

year has passed

since the publication of

allegations

of sexual assault and misconduct sparked a global reckoning. It is therefore incredibly ironic that one year after the fall of powerful men, the US Senate will vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States.

One year later, what have we learned? Nothing.

Many women have found their voices and bravely come forward with their stories. We are recognizing the systematic pattern of harassment and bringing into the light the behavior of predatory men previously relegated to whisper networks within the workplace, college campuses, and elsewhere. #MeToo has exposed patriarchal power structures that protected abusers and mired survivors in shame and embarrassment.

But one year later, despite all this, many are still doubting the victims. We are about to confirm a Supreme Court Justice who allegedly assaulted an underage woman in high school (an allegation he vigorously denies). One year later, the President of the United States has publicly mocked and bullied that woman.

One year later the clear message to our daughters and our sons is that speaking out

has consequences

. The powerful and entitled often continue in their positions of power, or, in one case, become a Supreme Court Justice.

To all the women who are, or will speak out, please know we are listening, we believe you. But judging by the latest example which played out over the last two weeks, clearly, lasting cultural change doesn’t happen overnight.

Eleanor McManus is co-founder of the strategic communications and crisis management firm Trident DMG. She is co-founder of Press Forward

, an independent initiative whose mission is to change culture in newsrooms. She was formerly a senior producer for CNN. Follow her

@eleanorsmcmanus.

Doug Heye: Republicans shouldn’t spike the football

The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court brings a sigh of relief for conservatives and, for many initially skeptical of a Donald Trump presidency, is all they need to justify their support of his candidacy. And while many of Justice Kavanaugh’s decisions — and those of scores of lower court judges — will likely be ones I wholeheartedly support, I would caution my Republican brethren against spiking the football.

Our confirmation process, as Senator Susan Collins pointed out in her Friday remarks, has hit rock bottom. This process has not merely affected Judge Kavanaugh and Professor Ford. It affects all of us, leaving the country more divided than ever and dangerously close to unraveling. Indeed, as Sen. Collins noted, our Founders’ “vision of a more perfect union does not exist today, and if anything, we appear to me moving farther away from it.” In other words, in much of the country, we don’t like each other, we don’t talk to each other and we don’t trust each other. Indeed, often we no longer agree on what is truth.

In Collins’ remarks, she discussed many of the problems, but few of the solutions. Those are harder to identify, but it is clear that just as neither party shares the entire burden for how we got here, both parties will need to share responsibility for how we face this challenge.

Douglas Heye is a CNN political commentator and works in public relations. He is the former deputy chief of staff to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Jen Psaki: The #MeToo movement still has a long way to go

In the aftermath of accused sexual assaulter Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, we can safely say the #MeToo movement has not ended sexism in the United States. It would have been naive to expect it would. The movement woke people up to what far too many women have experienced, created a platform for women to share their stories and energized a younger population of activists. But the Kavanaugh confirmation is a reminder that there is a long way to go.

Electing more women to Congress next month is an important start, but Susan Collins showed, once again, that there are those who don’t understand the importance of change and the justice it would bring to countless women like Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh’s accuser.

The biases against victims remain, the fact that most victims of sexual assault don’t come forward remains. Changing that will take more than electoral victories in November.

Jen Psaki, a CNN political commentator, was the White House communications director and State Department spokeswoman during the Obama administration. She is vice president of communications and strategy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Follow her at @jrpsaki.

Scott Jennings: Nevertheless, Collins persisted

Don’t bet against Mitch McConnell.

When all is said and done, Brett Kavanaugh goes to the Supreme Court with a vote that spanned party lines and the extreme overreach during his confirmation process may have sunk two Democratic incumbents — Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Claire McCaskill of Missouri. Both are now in

perilous positions

as they fight for their political lives in red states overwhelmingly won by Donald Trump in 2016. McConnell couldn’t ask for a better outcome, and his own 2020 reelection looks sturdier by the day.

Notable in Sen. Susan Collins’ floor speech on Friday was her disdain for the left’s tactics in opposing Kavanaugh. She hammered the outside groups who wasted millions of dollars lying about Kavanaugh’s record. She was furious at Michael Avenatti’s

outrageous entrance into the fray

, with a client who claimed Kavanaugh was present for party where she was gang raped. And, though she defended her colleague Dianne Feinstein,

Collins

correctly excoriated her Democratic colleagues for opposing Kavanaugh within minutes of his announcement instead of doing their homework (the way she had clearly done).

The perfect ending to this saga was watching these liberal dudes in my Twitter feed mocking Collins for speaking too long. A female Republican senator dared to say a few words, and, because she didn’t acquiesce to the left’s demands, they wanted her to shut up.

Nevertheless, she persisted. Susan Collins is a hero for standing up to mob rule in America.

Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor, is a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and former campaign adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell. He is a partner at RunSwitch Public Relations in Louisville, Kentucky. Follow him on Twitter @ScottJenningsKY

Errol Louis: Belligerence is no barrier to a Supreme Court appointment

The hard lesson of Judge Kavanaugh’s elevation to Supreme Court is that being a belligerent, openly partisan nominee is no barrier to becoming a justice. Kavanaugh’s public tantrum the week before his confirmation included attacks on Democratic senators, a baseless conspiracy theory, and

a warning

that could be interpreted as a threat to retaliate against his Democratic opponents.

Kavanaugh

called the hearings

and accusations “a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups…And as we all know in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around.”

That unchecked rage, along with Kavanaugh’s snide questions about Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s drinking habits — a wisecrack for which he later apologized — mark a new low for the Supreme Court nomination process. It is strikingly reminiscent of the way President Trump has handled accusations of sexual misconduct: deny, attack, insult and threaten.

We might someday return to an atmosphere in which judicial nominees, no matter how angry they might feel about the political process, present themselves with calm, restraint and dignity. The Senate, unfortunately, has demonstrated that wild rage and personal insults are no bar to serving on the nation’s highest court.

Errol Louis is the host of “Inside City Hall,” a nightly political show on NY1, a New York all-news channel.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom: The GOP is America’s most elite fraternity

After Christine Blasey Ford’s wrenching testimony and before Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, Donald Trump’s message

was clear

: “It’s a very scary time for young men in America.”

Teaching men that they are the true victims here would be laughable — if it wasn’t so dangerous. Because Kavanaugh’s testimony and the dismissal of Professor Ford’s, is proof that a “

pernicious patriarchy

“– as Cory Booker calls it — persists.

And at a time when women are speaking out, running for office, and winning in record numbers, the patriarchs are digging in their heels — only heightening the contrast between the two sides voters will consider when they go to the polls for the midterm elections in November.

The Republican Party has become perhaps the most elite fraternity in America. Join their ranks— if you are privileged and white — and the boys (and even some of the girls) will always have your back. They’ll defend to the end the cultural biases and institutions that keep the boys like them in power, and everyone else shut up and shut out.

The Republican message to our children is disturbingly clear: To our sons: This country will protect you regardless of your actions, at no cost to you. To our daughters: The pernicious patriarchy persists, at all cost to you.

This Kavanaugh episode screams out to the rest of us we must embrace a more inclusive alternative in November. We must change how we socialize our boys into men: that we should reward empathy, care and collaboration, instead of dominance, control, and aggression. To do anything else doesn’t just dehumanize our girls, it dehumanizes everyone.

Those of us who value inclusion and women’s voices have a clear message for the GOP: You will not return us to a time where women aren’t seen, valued, or heard. The Kavanaughs and Trumps of the world should be no one’s hero.

We will not forget Christine Blasey Ford. She has ignited a fire within us and we will thank her by continuing to speak truth to power. Doing so is our civic duty.

They may have confirmed their Justice, but they will not stop the flood of people rushing true justice forward.

We will vote in November and every election thereafter, until the stewards of patriarchy lose their grip on power once and for all.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom is the Founder and CEO of The Representation Project, and the filmmaker behind Miss Representation and The Mask You Live In, a documentary exploring America’s narrow definition of masculinity. She is the mother to four young children, including two boys, with her husband, California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom.

Carrie Sheffield: People need to put their votes where their anger is

Some predict that Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation will inevitably tear the country further apart. Vicious-minded people are reverberating across social media and treading the streets in protest.

But this isn’t our destiny. Women (and men) who disagree should put their votes where their anger is, not further tear at our social fabric by perpetuating dehumanizing and vitriolic rhetoric.

In her Senate floor speech Friday announcing her support for Judge Kavanaugh, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said “We have forgotten the common values that bind us together as Americans,” citing our Founders’ desires for what America should be.

“Their vision of a more perfect union does not exist today, and if anything, we appear to be moving farther away from it,” Collins said.

A post-Kavanaugh lesson that should unify left and right is this: women who have been assaulted (which hasn’t been proven here)

should immediately report it

. We need more robust mechanisms for gathering evidence and witnesses. When women do report they’ve been a victim, we must

ensure their evidence is promptly processed

and justice is swiftly served.

To my anti-Kavanaugh friends: last week was

National Voter Registration Day

— before you cast your digital (or literal) stone, did you register to vote?

Carrie Sheffield, a conservative commentator, is the founder of Bold, a digital news network committed to bipartisan dialogue. She is also National Editor for Accuracy in Media, a citizens’ media watchdog whose mission is to promote accuracy, fairness and balance in news reporting.

Alice Stewart: Democrats’ obstruction efforts will come back to haunt them

If you take a moment to consider the real takeaway from the Kavanaugh confirmation process (a low road to the high court), it was this: elections have consequences. The reality of losing the swing vote in the United States Supreme Court to a second President Trump nominee hit Democrats hard and late. For that reason, nothing was off limits in their unsuccessful efforts to derail the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Fortunately, the silent majority of the conservative-leaning justice supporters won out.

Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual assault were heartbreaking and her pain was real. Unfortunately, Democrats used her trauma to launch an all-out assault on Judge Kavanaugh’s character. For the left, the ends justified the means in their effort to hold open the Supreme Court seat for their political gain.

Sen. Susan Collins

was right to say

the process was more like “a gutter level political campaign than a solemn occasion.”

During the 2016 presidential campaign,

Hillary Clinton vowed

to nominate Supreme Court justices that would protect Roe v. Wade, LGBT rights, and oppose Citizens United.

Donald Trump promised to nominate Scalia-like justices who would defend the Constitution. That’s exactly what he’s doing. The Democrats took their obstruction efforts too far and Republicans responded will full-fledged support for Judge Kavanaugh.

Just like elections have consequences, it’s likely this vitriolic confirmation process will have negative consequences for Democrats in November.

Alice Stewart is a CNN Political Commentator and former Communications Director for Ted Cruz for President