The 15-year-old Beijing LGBT Center, one of the pioneers of the “different sexual orientation movement” in China, announced this week that it had terminated its operations without explanation.
Analysts said the closure of the well-known rights center was seen as inevitable and a reflection of the increasingly repressive political environment in China under Xi Jinping.
[…] In 2019, Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed the Special Act on Same-Sex Marriage, becoming the first country in Asia to allow same-sex marriage, but the regulations stipulated that married same-sex couples could adopt only children biologically related to one of the partners […] Taiwan is now leading Asia in same-sex marriage legislation.
The evidence suggests LGBTQ+ activists in China have had a particularly tough time since President Xi Jinping took office in 2013. The effects of targeting have spiralled in the past few years, reflected in the abrupt closure of the Shanghai Pride in 2020, and the 2021 shutdown of LGBT Rights Advocacy China – an organisation that held law-based campaigns.
Ironically this may serve to further them from their goals regarding Taiwan. The further they become politically and socially, the more difficult assimilation becomes. I think in 25 years it won’t be possible anymore. By then we are likely to see not an event like Hong Kong, but outright war before such a thing occurs. Geographically, any such imposition would appear as an invasion. That’s why we see China doing their best to meddle with their elections. Assuming TSMC maintains its relevance, and they gain recognition from some western powers. Not that far off if you can believe it.
So with Intel expanding processor manufacturing operations in the US (Outside Columbus Ohio, for example) to avoid the TSMC supply chain issues faced over the last few years, couldn’t that actually hurt Taiwan, as the USA will just refuse to be involved if their national interests aren’t in jeopardy?
I know that TSMC supplies globally, but what if USA just suddenly decided that the defensive “juice” just wasn’t worth the proverbial squeeze?
TLDR: US decides “Fuck it, we can produce our own processors now, you’re on your own”. Is that a realistic possibility?
Absolutely, however playing catchup in the semiconductor space is far easier said than done. Even intel gave up and started using TSMC to lay their newer nodes. So long as TSMC maintains its R&D lead they have that trump card.
I think you’re onto something there though. There has been a push in the US to onshore chip manufacturing and the situation with Taiwan is a huge motivator.
Caususes are a way some state political parties choose to pick out their favorite party candidate for the November election.
In most states they have a primary which is just a normal election by US standards. In a few, including Iowa, they gather in a physical room and move from location to location to physically show who they support.
That means if I’m “caucusing for Bernie” I’d go stand next to the Bernie crowd. This ends when a certain candidate has a majority (I don’t remember the exact amount). So people move from candidate to candidate as they see theirs isn’t winning or as they are persuaded by others there.
Every state has their primary or caucus on a specific day, so yesterday was Iowa’s day, and it’s often very cold this time of year in Iowa. This year it’s pretty brutal, high of 3°F and low of -3°F today (-16C and -19.5C), and it was colder a few days ago.
The more I discover about US election system the more confused I am, lol. This is like some form of centuries old comedy and not like current event real president may come from.
You gotta make a living. Why not make a living off of those stupid idiots who value your magic ice over regular ice. It’s like selling overpriced paper cards with pretty pictures to kids who love Pokemon. Except kids are kids and these arabs are supposed to be fully capable adults. It’s a low risk, high reward game. I can’t blame them.
Harvesting this ice is not carbon neutral.
A ship filled with ice will burn more fuel compared to an empty ship. A refrigerated ship even more so. An ice cube paid with petrodollars to travel a few thousand miles just for some asshole bragging rights, I mean, I can’t even… Why is there a demand for this in the first place?
The gall of claiming this a low carbon business is perplexing. Low compared to what, exactly? If I make solar powered freezers in UAE and freeze distilled water, I’m pretty sure I would get the same results at a mere fraction of the total cost. But hey, no bragging rights.
From the point of view of a peaceful outcome, Israel made a “strategic error” when they built a wall around Gaza, way before any of these children were born.
From the point of view of genocide… no they didn’t; now they can clearly point to how “radicalized” are people in Gaza as a excuse.
I look at the most recent activity and suspect that either a new fissure has opened in the town proper or the southern fissure has lengthened. There exists a mini cluster of larger earthquakes in this area. The best case scenario is that this is a new structure on fire. All three scenarios are rotten-a-f. It is getting hard to tell due to gasses, smoke and darkness.
That is most likely a RUV news helicopter in the foreground. It’s footage may be available shorty. You can also read their english blog here. Drones are once again banned 4km from town.
There’s a lava flow on the other side of the barrier that was built. It’s inching into the new construction at the edge of the town and has already consumed one house. Probably it will keep going, possibly to the harbor.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this nonsense from the Namibian government will achieve absolutely nothing, except for driving the two countries apart again and setting back reconciliation by a considerable amount. Namibia doesn’t have anything to bargain with, which means they need the goodwill of Germany if they want more money - which they won’t get by being mock outraged over core German foreign policy principles.
Seems to be about governments fighting over who did more genocide. It’d be nice if we could all just agree “genocide is bad”, stop doing it, pay reparations, and move on :/
Flying missions to there from Cyprus feels like we are doing it just to show we can, surely that could have been handled much easier by the US carrier…
It’s to show our support and prove we will get involved if asked/required. The US carrier could have flattened the place on it’s own certainly. The Netherlands, Australia, Canada and Bahrain provided support as part of the mission as well.
what happens if snatch a drone carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Run.
If the owner finds you… like if they have a camera recording and the GPS location… you might get some free bullets on top of it.
Spain has some relatively strict gun control. That doesn’t mean someone controlling the smuggling of millions of € in drugs, can’t pay a few grand for some of his “acquaintances” to fly all the way over, get his property back “by whatever means”, and fly back the next day.
And for the cunts who think there is an end to this kind of bullshit - a hijab is not enough, it has to be good. After that the shade of black is wrong, or the way these women breathe, or they don’t cower in a way these fucking micropenis pig-shit eating cunts like.
The claim here from the summary is that the water is more pure than the mineral water. You could also just do distilled water and customize the mineral content with additions like brewers and sparkling water makers do. I just don’t see how it would be cost effective to ship thousands of pounds of glacier ice vs freezing as needed. You could even make a pressurized freezer and probably achieve the same effect.
This business is built on people with more money than sense.
It’s not cost effective nor is it pure. Both mineral water and glacier water are far from pure water. People want them because they’re not pure, in a chemical sense.
That’s just some hocus pocus bullshit marketing. No one would be able to pass a blind taste test on these because the alcohol would overwhelm their taste buds.
Yes but without the alcohol I’m sure you’d taste a difference between ground water and glacial water.Glacier melt has a lot of impurities that gives it a distinctive taste.
I encourage anyone who cares about this to travel to Afghanistan themselves and see it with their own eyes before relying on what publications like the Guardian have to say about it. One thing about the article that is probably not true is the claim that the girls were labeled “infidels” by the state. Why this claim is suspicious is that there is no word for “infidel” in the languages spoken in Afghanistan. The closest equivalent would be کافر (kafir), which can refer to someone who isn’t Muslim, but not wearing hijab is not considered to be any kind of proof that someone is not a Muslim. It’s highly doubtful that they were excommunicated for this.
The guardian claims that the government in Afghanistan mandates that women must be covered “from head to toe, revealing only their eyes”, which is clearly not true. When I was in Kabul I saw many women without their faces covered. This is one clear case where the Guardian gets facts on the ground wrong. A lot of women there are wearing surgical masks as a form of face covering that also doubles as protection from pollution and disease. As the girl quoted in the article said, they are doing this as a “precaution”, in other words, the government doesn’t in fact require face covering, but they are doing it anyway because they think they have to.
The article implies that girls were specifically targeted for going to English class, as if they have an issue with learning English. Government officials themselves also go to English classes, so that in and of itself was not a relevant matter to the story.
As for them getting beaten for “confronting the men”, of course you are going to get beaten if you resist arrest or argue. That’s true in most countries, but particularly in Afghanistan the authorities tend to hit people if they are not compliant.
The other issue is that the rule in Afghanistan is not well developed or consolidated, which means that these men who committed these acts like the beatings and arrests were acting outside the law, and the central government doesn’t necessarily support this action. Because of the rudimentary form of government different local elements of the Taliban can act differently or independently, so what the spokesperson quoted in the article said about this being unusual was probably telling the truth. This was only one incident, and hopefully it won’t be repeated elsewhere.
As for them getting beaten for “confronting the men”, of course you are going to get beaten if you resist arrest or argue. That’s true in most countries, but particularly in Afghanistan the authorities tend to hit people if they are not compliant.
Your whole post was already getting into a questionable defense of Afghanistan’s bullshit, but then you start defending police brutality and violence against women as something that is “true in most countries”? You’ve already lost me and probably most of the community here.
This was only one incident, and hopefully it won’t be repeated elsewhere.
Such incidents happen often in Afghanistan, and mostly against women. The central government bans girls from education, just to name another example.
There is another article by CBS quoting representatives of the central government:
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban regime’s chief spokesperson, confirmed the arrests to CBS News on Monday, saying “a group of women who were involved in modeling to promote clothes were detained, advised in front of their family members […]
The person said that after several hours of searching [for a woman detained by the Taliban], the family found the woman at a local police station late Tuesday evening, where Taliban officials demanded money, along with her passport and other documentation, as a penalty and “to guarantee that she will not violate the dress code in the future.”
The family member said the authorities told the family they would “take her biometrics and photos, and if she violates the dress code in the future, she will be imprisoned for a longer period.”
Recent arrests of women in Kabul Afghanistan for ‘bad hijab’, confirmed by the Taliban, regrettably signified further restrictions on women’s freedom of expression and undermines other rights,” [United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan] Bennett said in a social media post.
You start off strong then move straight to supporting the fucking Taliban, as if that’s a reasonable position to take.
I agree, the article is likely highly sensationalized, but let’s be clear the Taliban are a piece of shit government with extremely regressive and repressive views. Maybe this shit doesn’t happen in Kabul, but Kabul seems bad enough that women can only show their faces and most are even too afraid to do that. That shows you that it’s a TERRIBLE place to start with even in the best places. Unfortunately many people don’t live in Kabul and it seems that the government isn’t going to do anything to stop regional authorities from abusing their power and any young woman they can get their hands on.
Don’t travel to Afghanistan. Every dollar that goes to Afghanistan supports religious oppression.
I am not a fan of the Guardian, but according to the subject of the article (they call him Li), he is a dissident and was under active investigation. I don’t think they would have just let him leave
thats fair, but from an outside perspective (from either country) it looks exactly like how the US treats its dissidents. i doubt someone like julian assange would get better treatment.
also, i dont know how they defined “dissident” in this case but its vague enough that i wont judge too hastily.
Just because one state is also shitty to dissenters does not mean another state isn’t. They don’t cancel each other out.
Dissident is pretty vague, probably on purpose. As much as I dislike the US government, I can say the government here is shit and not get hauled to jail for the most part. The same is not necessarily true in China
how is the us treating communists, smaller trade unionists, palestine supporters, blm people and such over there? those people have sharp criticism and are the true dissenters to varying degrees.
ask one of those what could happen to them if they get singled out as a leader or something. i judge by actions not words.
I did imply the US is better, and I probably should not have. And even in that I did not mean the government doesn’t do horrific things. Probably should not have made the comparison TBH. That doesn’t mean China doesn’t also do horrific shit, even if the way they do it is different
While I personally don’t think Julian Assange did anything ethically or morally wrong, and the US government’s dogged pursuit of him was unjust, he did leak military intel which is much more serious and legally significant than what people often get jailed and harassed for in China. Like, I would not expect to leak info about the military in any country and just walk away as if nothing happened.
People have literally been jailed for making Tweets in China, people have been punished as retaliation against someone in their family being a dissident, we really shouldn’t be comparing the two countries as if they’re the same, regardless of the numerous major issues the US has. And even if they were the same, it doesn’t make anything China does even slightly more justifiable.
The US tortures its dissidents. Just look at how they treated War on Terror whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Even the UN special rapporteur on torture spoke up about her treatment. She was driven to attempt suicide in prison multiple times. Including when she refused to cooperate with the secret Grand Jury investigating WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
Julian Assange is about to be buried in a US prison and get a taste of that same medicine. Where are the Guardian outrage-articles on that? Oh, wait, that’s right. They threw him under the bus as soon as he’d given them access to the best scoops of the century (US diplomatic cables). The Guardian journos divulged the pass phrase to the unredacted cables in their book giving anyone who could locate the files online access. Cryptome published the unredacted cables before WL did while Assange called the State Department trying to warn them of the bad news. The Guardian then tried to make out like WL had acted irresponsibly in publishing the unredacted cables, when in reality the cat was already out of the bag and WL was doing harm-minimization. The Guardian’s blame-shifting makes my blood boil.
The ‘Guardian’ has no ethics and can’t be trusted on anything political imo.
China is pretty egregious about taking away passports/not letting its own nationals leave its borders. Sometimes because they are political dissidents, sometimes because they are being retaliated against in some way, etc.
There is ample evidence that China is suppressing its own people, including prohibiting emigration. One good source among many is the Safeguard Defenders, an NGO focusing on China.
You’ll find many good sources, including here on Lemmy. The situation has even been getting worse in recent years.
<a href="">@Bartsbigbugbag </a>What’s a good source on that issue in your opinion? I know a lot more, but would like to learn new ones if possible. Would be great if you posted a link.
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