Criticism of China about Uyghurs will lead to Bhutan-style deportation?

by philg

A bleak thought for the first day of winter…

Whenever I posted a photo of some amazing new piece of Chinese infrastructure, e.g., the Suzhou metro or part of the 24,000-mile high-speed rail system (California will catch up soon!), American friends would predictably respond with a complaint about the Chinese government’s treatment of the Uyghurs in response to an ongoing conflict.

(My American Facebook friends who’ve never been to China throw rocks at the sheep-like Chinese for following the party line, but they respond to virtually any mention of China in nearly identical and predictable ways: (a) point out that the government there is “authoritarian”; (b) “what about the Uyghurs?”; (c) “what about Hong Kong?”)

The same friends who criticize China regularly celebrate Bhutan, virtuously carbon negative (CNN) and using the correct yardstick (“meterstick”) of Gross National Happiness. That Bhutan deported one sixth of its population in the 1990s is apparently forgotten or not relevant.

Muslims are only 1.8 percent of China’s population (CIA). The Chinese government could reasonably infer that if the Bhutanese can be warmly appreciated by the global righteous after expelling a minority religious group that was 16-30 percent of its population (estimates vary), instead of continuing this draining fight it would make more sense to pay nearby Muslim-majority countries to take them and/or have an India-Pakistan-style split in which part of western China was given away.

In other words, could Western say-gooders concentrating on this theme actually end up harming the Uyghurs whom they purport to be helping?

(Separately, we are informed by our media that 1-1.5 million people are being detained in camps (example below). Ghoulish tech question: wouldn’t camps big enough to house this many people be easy to spot via satellite imagery? The U.S. prison gulag is easily spotted from space. It is easy to find articles (example; example 2) showing one or two camps, but not a comprehensive census. In the age of satellite imagery, why are the purported Chinese concentration camps the subject of speculation?)

Related:

  • “1.5 million Muslims could be detained in China’s Xinjiang: academic” (Reuters): A leading researcher on China’s ethnic policies said on Wednesday that an estimated 1.5 million Uighurs and other Muslims could be held in so-called re-education centers in Xinjiang region, up from his earlier figure of 1 million. … “Although it is speculative it seems appropriate to estimate that up to 1.5 million ethnic minorities – equivalent to just under 1 in 6 adult members of a predominantly Muslim minority group in Xinjiang – are or have been interned in any of these detention, internment and re-education facilities, excluding formal prisons,” Zenz said at an event organized by the U.S. mission in Geneva, home of United Nations human rights bodies.
  • U.S. incarceration rate (we are, sadly, #1)
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After killing local newspapers, the NYT mourns their death

by philg

From “How the Collapse of Local News Is Causing a ‘National Crisis’” (nytimes):

The loss of local news coverage in much of the United States has frayed communities and left many Americans woefully uninformed, according to a new report.

The report, “Losing the News: The Decimation of Local Journalism and the Search for Solutions,” paints a grim picture of the state of local news in every region of the country. The prelude is familiar to journalists: As print advertising revenue has plummeted, thousands of newspapers have been forced to cut costs, reduce their staffs or otherwise close.

And while the disruption has hampered the ability of newsrooms to fully cover communities, it also has damaged political and civic life in the United States, the report says, leaving many people without access to crucial information about where they live.

Who is responsible for what the New York Times calls a “national crisis”? (does this replace the “national emergency” of Trump being President or is it layered on top?) New Republic suggests that it is the New York Times itself that has killed local newspapers by wooing away their audience that had value to advertisers:

In fact, two economists studied this in 2006—at basically the peak of national newspaper ad revenue, just before the collapse—and found that “as Times circulation grows in a market, local newspaper circulation declines among college-educated readers.” In other words: The Times peeled off the elite readers from the local papers, leading them to read less about local news and more about national politics.”

Is it just that the NYT is doing a better job? What about the hysterical tone of the NYT in reporting national politics. The average American reader’s life will be turned upside down depending on who wins an election for President or Congress. Yet this is fundamentally a lie. The laws that affect the typical individual are state laws.

Consider the American who has sex with an already-married dermatologist. Will obtaining custody of the resulting child yield the spending power of a primary care physician’s salary (Massachusetts) or require going to work to supplement the roughly $200,000 in tax-free child support over 18 years (Nevada). The “lifetime of leisure” versus “lifetime of work” outcome following the sex act is entirely a function of state law, decided by state legislatures and officials. Consider what happens when the child of this brief, um, union reaches school age. What will be taught to this child, by whom, and in what kind of building? All questions of local or state law and/or local and state votes. Suppose the child becomes a teenager and is in possession of marijuana? Whether or not that is a crime and results in a prison sentence will be a question of state law (though with laws such as “Trump signs animal cruelty act into law” it is unclear why the entire criminal system isn’t federalized (animal cruelty is not related to interstate commerce or any other Constitutional provision as far as I can see)). What if, despite the dope smoking, the child is ready to go to a reasonably priced university? The funding and direction for that state-run university will be a function of state-level political decisions. The child graduates and, despite holding a degree in Cultural and Gender Studies, vies for a job at the local Starbucks. To the extent that minimum wage is above the local market-clearing wage, that will be a question of state law. After 22 years of life, it is difficult to see how the issues on which the NYT reports hysterically have had a major effect on this person.

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Trump is an ongoing threat to our national security, so we’re going to take a couple of weeks off

by philg

Shocking: Trump has now been impeached by an impartial group of politicians who said, back before he took office, that they would impeach him.

Disturbing: Trump is “an ongoing threat to national security” (Nancy Pelosi, opening the “debate”; is the threat so bad that Pelosi will start converting some of the family’s real estate assets into gold?)

Confusing: The people who impeached Trump because of the “threat to national security” are now packing up for a well-deserved Christmas vacation. Trump, Kim Jong-un, and other nuclear-armed maniacs, should be fine for a couple of weeks without any supervision or advice.

Separately, who has read the 658-page report from the House Judiciary Committee that explains what Trump actually did? Are the crimes so complex that 658 pages of explanation are required? That’s only a little shorter than Anna Karenina. A typical indictment of a Nazi war criminal for the Nuremberg Trials seems to have been roughly 15 pages (examples).

[I forgot to plug in my phone for a quick drive home from a restaurant this evening and therefore wasn’t listening to these geology lectures. Flipping stations, I found out about this from the local NPR station. Massachusetts has nine Representatives in Congress. Which one’s speech did the station choose to broadcast? That of Ayanna Pressley, the only Massachusetts-based member of “The Squad”.]

Given that the votes seem to be entirely along party lines and the Senate does not contain enough Democrats to remove El Presidente, is there any reason to read about this?

Who else thinks it strange that politicians can use the language of crisis and then take a couple of weeks off?

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Better choice for TIME Person of the Year than Greta Thunberg?

by philg

The year is almost over so nearly all of the accomplishments of 2019 have already happened.

Some people are complaining that Greta Thunberg shouldn’t have been chosen as TIME Person of the Year on the grounds that she didn’t accomplish anything (China and India are still growing and burning coal;, American say-gooders are still driving their pavement-melting SUVs, etc.).

If not Greta T, then who? On a planet of 7.6 billion souls, who among us is worthy of this singular honor? (a tougher challenge than what the Nobel Prize committees face since they are able to spread out the honors among 20+ people)

Some possibilities:

  • Donald Trump, since he has generated more media stories than anyone (and CNN viewers consider him a god; he already won in 2016, but that was when he was merely a human and Obama was selected twice)
  • Harvey Weinstein, since he kicked off the lucrative #MeToo industry (Person of the Year need not be a saint; Adolf Hitler was selected in 1938; note that the people getting paid were selected in 2017 as “The Silence Breakers”)
  • Robert Mueller, who spent two years and tens of $millions in tax dollars to figure out that some young Americans wanted to be paid to have sex with older Americans and that some Americans wanted to evade paying income tax
  • Volodymyr Zelensky, who has managed to keep roughly 50 percent of Americans spellbound with tales of a country that almost none of them would be able to locate on a map
  • Bill Dally, chief scientist at NVIDIA, the hardware behind the end of the AI Winter
  • someone in China who accomplished something awesome that we can all use? (the folks behind the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge are disqualified, though, since it opened in 2018)
  • Xi Jinping, since he directs the world’s most important economy without hogging the headlines all the time
  • Martin Herrenknecht, whose tunneling machines are transforming the world and enabling the Chinese to get everywhere quickly on their new metro systems
  • Bernard Ziegler, who has kept tens of millions of people safe with the fly-by-wire systems that he pioneered at Airbus

Readers: Better ideas? (I hope!)

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Air pollution has an insignificant effect on life expectancy?

by philg

It seems obvious that people who breathe filthy air would die young. Yet people in Shanghai live 13 years longer than those in poor provinces (source), which are presumably less densely populated and therefore might have cleaner air (but maybe they are breathing indoor smoke from coal used to heat?).

Another possibility is that people in Shanghai are being slowly killed by air pollution, but they’re so smart that their high IQ gives them a longer life expectancy to begin with. (Scientific American) Without the massive welfare state that the U.S. operates, it is tough for a person without a high IQ to move to Shanghai and thrive there (apartments are comparable in price to the most expensive U.S. cities; see Forbes).

There is supposedly a five-year difference in life expectancy in north versus south China due to worse air pollution from heating with coal in the north (source). But, again, how to square that with the 13-year boost in life expectancy in Shanghai, a city that is spectacularly polluted.

Mist or filth?

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Obama tells Joe Biden and Bernie to identify as young women

by philg

A BBC interview with the Nobel Peace Laureate, “Barack Obama: Women are better leaders than men”:

If women ran every country in the world there would be a general improvement in living standards and outcomes, former US President Barack Obama has said.

Speaking in Singapore, he said women aren’t perfect, but are “indisputably better” than men.

He said most of the problems in the world came from old people, mostly men, holding onto positions of power.

In other words, Here’s looking at you, Joe and Bernie!

[Also note that Obama gives a Presidential imprimatur to discredited gender binarism.]

“Now women, I just want you to know; you are not perfect, but what I can say pretty indisputably is that you’re better than us [men].

“I’m absolutely confident that for two years if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything… living standards and outcomes.”

When asked if he would ever consider going back into political leadership, he said he believed in leaders stepping aside when the time came.

“If you look at the world and look at the problems it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way,” he said.

But what stops Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders from identifying as young women? Problem solved!

Related:

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Elderly Democrat says impeachments were better in the good old days

by philg

“The Impeachment Process Is Barely Functioning” (nytimes) is by Elizabeth Drew, “a journalist based in Washington who covered Watergate” (i.e., she is not in what the French would call “her first youth”).

When the process of impeachment drove President Richard Nixon from office in 1974, there was widespread celebration that “the system worked.” But the 1974 impeachment process may turn out to have been unique, a model for how it should work that has yet to be replicated — and perhaps never will be.

Today, there’s a president who feels free to completely stonewall an impeachment inquiry. Even Nixon did not deem the entire process illegitimate. Yes, he tried to hold back damning recordings of Oval Office conversations, but when he was overruled by the Supreme Court he turned the tapes over to Congress. He also held back some documents from the House Judiciary Committee — an act that formed the basis of an article of impeachment against him. But he allowed his aides to appear before the Senate Watergate Committee, helping to seal his own doom.

In other words, even impeachments were better in the good old days!

(Alternative formulation of the article: A member of the coastal elite does not understand why a non-member would vote differently than she votes.)

Separately, what about the members of the Senate who are themselves running for President in 2020? Do they vote to remove Trump from office because they think the Republicans, in a country of 330 million, can’t find anyone more appealing to the non-elites whose voting rights they forgot to take away? Or do they vote to keep the hated authoritarian in office, for fear that Nikki Haley shows up to ruin their fun from 2021 through 2029?

(Democrats says that Republicans are misogynist, which is why they wouldn’t vote for the obviously superior Hillary Clinton, but have they ever found a Republican who says “I think I prefer Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders to Nikki Haley”?)

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