Massachusetts College Decides Criticizing The Chinese Government Is Hate Speech, Suspends Conservative Student Group
from the highly-educated-but-apparently-low-on-common-sense dept
A college has done something dumb and unconstitutional. Not all that surprising. Neither is the response, coming from Adam Steinbaugh and FIRE (Foundation for Rights in Education).
Emerson College may be a private university, but that doesn’t mean it can just ignore the First Amendment. In fact, it says it won’t ignore these rights, which obligates it to uphold them. This is Emerson College in its own words (archived link in case the college decides to disappear it):
As an institution dedicated to Communication and the Arts, the first amendment of the US Constitution is of high importance. The right to freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of political belief and affiliation, freedom from discrimination, freedom of peaceful assembly, and petition of redress or grievances is not only a right but a community responsibility.
[…]
The College encourages students to present ideas, express their individuality and culture, and be open to thoughts or life styles that differ from their own.
Truly inspiring. And Emerson College truly respects this right. Except when it doesn’t.
Emerson College suspended a campus chapter of conservative student group Turning Point USA on Oct. 1 after members passed out stickers critical of China’s government.
The “conservative group” was Turning Point USA, one created and led by unfortunate human being Charlie Kirk and supported by people who think Charlie Kirk actually has anything useful to offer anyone.
No matter what anyone thinks about TPUSA (including me!), this response is not only overblown, but completely ignores the content of the stickers Emerson (and some of its students) got all investigatory about.
Under pressure from other student groups who accused TPUSA of anti-Asian bias and xenophobia, including the Emerson Chinese Student Association, the college launched an investigation into the group. In an Instagram video, the TPUSA chapter said the stickers are critical of the Chinese government, not the Chinese people.
On Oct. 1, the TPUSA chapter’s leaders received a letter from Julie Rothhaar-Sanders, Emerson’s director of community standards, stating that the college had launched a formal investigation of TPUSA under Emerson’s Bias-Related Behavior and Invasion of Privacy policies. While the investigation is active, TPUSA faces “interim action,” meaning the group is barred from normal activities, such as hosting events or reserving campus space for meetings.
Is this really “anti-Asian bias” and/or “xenophobia?” This is the sticker in question, which references a famous meme that originated in a multiplayer game:
If you can’t see the picture, it features a little “Among Us” spaceman guy dressed in red with a hammer-and-sickle insignia. Underneath it is the phrase “China Kinda Sus.” “Sus” being short for “suspicious.”
Notably it does not say “Chinese people are sus” or “Orientals are sus” or anything else that suggests this sticker refers to anything but the country and, by extension, its government.
Is China kinda sus? You be the judge. It refuses to recognize Taiwan as a country, has turned Hong Kong’s government into an extension of its own following months of pro-democracy protests, subjects its citizens to intrusive, omnipresent surveillance, censors its citizens and companies providing internet services, and is engaged in the ongoing persecution of certain minorities. That’s all pretty “sus.”
Yet, the college chose to believe this was actually an offensive thing to say and bypassed its own stated support for protecting First Amendment rights to limit TPUSA’s activities on campus.
That has led to FIRE and Adam Steinbaugh not-too-gently reminding the college about First Amendment protections and the college’s promise to respect these rights. This is from FIRE’s letter [PDF]:
The stickers distributed at Emerson and elsewhere are critical of China’s government. They follow a long tradition of student protests on American college campuses criticizing foreign nations, whether those opposing South Africa’s apartheid or, more recently, the government of Israel.
Freedom of expression entails the right to criticize not only our own government, but those of foreign nations, even when that criticism is offensive to the “dignity” of those states or threatens to upend “vital national interest[s.]”
Even if the college is concerned about its obligations under Title VII, which requires it to investigate and respond to allegations of hostile student environments, this sticker ain’t it.
First, the speech is not based on race, ethnicity, or national origin. The stickers do not invoke or traffic in stereotypes associated with people of Chinese descent or origin. Instead, the stickers are speech critical of China’s government. The stickers utilize the familiar emblem of the sole governing party of the country, superimposed over a video game character bearing the same red color of China’s flag. The sticker’s text (“China kinda sus”) refers to the name of the country, not its people. Criticism of a foreign government is not inherently criticism of the people it purports to represent, even if people who hail from, descend from, or support that particular nation find that criticism personally offensive.
Second, even assuming the stickers’ message was capable of being construed as speech based on race, ethnicity, or national origin, it does not rise to the level of peer-on-peer harassment as properly defined under the law.
If Emerson wants to stay out of the lawsuit defendant business, it will drop this investigation and reinstate TPUSA’s rights and privileges. If it would rather continue to pretend that criticism of a foreign government is somehow harassment of the student body, it should probably give its legal counsel department heads up that it will be expected to defend the indefensible in the near future.
Oh, and even if you could make the argument that the combination of TPUSA and its stickers were problematic, Emerson took all this up a notch when its Twitter account started “hiding” any tweet that referenced China, including images of Winnie the Pooh. In case you don’t recall, China has a longstanding policy of censoring images of Winnie the Pooh because its President, Xi Jinping, vaguely resembles the fictional bear.
Wow. Emerson College?which is investigating a student group for stickers critical of China?s government?is hiding tweet replies that mention China. *Including ones that only show Winnie the Pooh, which is censored in China because people mockingly compare him to Xi Jinping.* https://t.co/PhwjFwnOHo pic.twitter.com/q0A6dgUF2s
— Sarah McLaughlin (@sarahemclaugh) October 7, 2021
So, yeah, an American college was literally hiding tweets in the identical manner as the Chinese government, to avoid upsetting the Chinese President. Of course, that only resulted in a lot more posts about Winnie the Pooh, nearly all of which Emerson College has hidden. It also blocked users who were tweeting Winnie the Pooh images. Kinda sus, actually. And really, doesn’t live up to the promise of a college that “encourages students to present ideas, express their individuality and culture, and be open to thoughts or life styles that differ from their own.”
Filed Under: 1st amendment, charlie kirk, china, free speech, hate speech, kinda sus, massachusetts, winnie the pooh, xi jinping
Companies: emerson college
Comments on “Massachusetts College Decides Criticizing The Chinese Government Is Hate Speech, Suspends Conservative Student Group”
Friday deep thoughts
Would you rather:
-pay low costs (read: cheap labor) for goods manufactured in a foreign country (particularly a foreign country that’s competing with your country militarily)?
OR
-pay high costs for those same goods manufactured in your own country?
I’d rather pay higher costs to have goods made (as much as possible) here in my own country; especially medical goods.
I’m sure it’s not that simple. If we bring most manufacturing back to the US, from communist China, we’ll still be competing with both China and possibly Europe (who’ll still be having their goods made in China) because: cheap labor. Also, if we bring manufacturing back to the US, we’ll be looking at American job lost due to automation, because: cheap labor. In the end though, at least we’ll regain the security in knowing that we don’t have to RELY on a hostile competitor for vital medical goods (equipment and medicines). We’ll also, given our local natural resources/raw materials, be able to provide for our own X, Y, & Z goods should we fall out of favor completely with China. Imagine electric car batteries made from raw materials found in US soil.
No one on this earth is better than anyone else, so why do we continue to sleep with the enemy? Why do we continue to allow China to manufacture most of our goods when we know that they obviously don’t have our best interest at heart?
We do it because we ‘luv dat Money’!!! Greed will corrupt any political system.
Re: Friday deep thoughts
You’re offering a false choice. Goods made in China are not cheap: you will be paying the full price in due time, in the form of higher costs for defense, suppression of free speech (see this article), environmental damage, more conflicts and refugees, and so on. Support for a tyrannical system never ends well. WW2 ought to have taught us that.
Also, in a sense, cheap and underpaid labor (in China, or where ever) is a disincentive for automation. Automation is a good thing, because it will free up people to do more rewarding things. The only problem is how to allocate the benefits of automation. If they only go to the owners of the machines, and not return to the people at large, little will be gained, and the system becomes unsustainable, as nobody will be able to buy the output of those automated factories.
Re: Re: Friday deep thoughts
Chinese goods soon won’t be cheap anyway. There is a huge number of firms who cant get workers because they abused workers so badly over the last 20 years. Kids just do not want to work in factories and 1 child means everything is invested in that child. They seriously have a population graph that shrinks at the current generation AND the next generation as many more men than women were born.
Re: Re: Re: Friday deep thoughts
True…Chinese people want their Lamborghini’s too. I guess after the Chinese minimum wage becomes too expensive, western companies will exploit/democratize Africa for cheap labor, and then…?Mexico? or ?South America?
International trade is a good thing, but why invest so heavily in a country that hates you? Oh yeah, greed. F[un]k the future, right? It’s all about that quarterly.
Re: Re: Re:2 Friday deep thoughts
Unlike other parts of the world, China used its centralized gov to corner the market on manufactured goods in a way that can’t be replicated by other parts of the world.
And your mixing hate and capitalism, people with money are fairly uncaring about things like hate, Apple wants to make phones, Chinese firms underbid the world (with gov help) to get that business and used its monopoly power to put most other manufacturing out of business. They also had the ability to actully ship at scale.
Could we continue to go after cheap labor? Sure, but your never going to see the scale China was able to do and most other places would also need huge ports. This is a capital shift that takes years and during that shift you will see areas that reopen for US production of goods that get to costly to make elsewhere. Finally, even if you pulled it off, wages get pushed up as the population of any area that gets factories will at some point not be enough for demand.
The end of Chinese manufacturing domination is going to change the world quite a bit.
Re: Friday deep thoughts
Perhaps I’m being dense here, but WTH does this have to do with an American college suppressing speech critical of China?
Re: Re: Friday deep thoughts
The suppression of speech critical of the Chinese government is probably at the behest of the Chinese government, using Chinese students who have been fed with nationalism and who use the currently popular "your hurting our feelings and are not respecting us: this is hateful and discrimination" trend.
Re: Re: Re: Friday deep thoughts
Chinese Nationalism has also done a very good job of making every Chinese person a censor. You want to teach Chinese students, don’t insult the CCP (and we consider any insult an insult to the entire Chinese population that harms us, and all previous generations).
This gets more crazy when you see internet sites get filled with spam of people "harmed" by a picture of Pooh, taken out of context, because a publisher printed a children’s book in China. Due to Censorship, and firewalls, no real Chinese population ever sees those Twitter posts, instead its all astroturfing taken to 11.
Re: Re: Re:2 Friday deep thoughts
"Chinese Nationalism has also done a very good job of making every Chinese person a censor. You want to teach Chinese students, don’t insult the CCP (and we consider any insult an insult to the entire Chinese population that harms us, and all previous generations). "
Face is a particular part of chinese culture to a point we in the west have trouble understanding. The individual chinese has perceived, for millennia, that the individual is only where they are because of their parents, ancestors, good government, clan or sect. In some respect they’re right about that.
It doesn’t help that for the most part the current generation would be right about that – China went from being a developing country with rampant poverty and crumbling 18th century industry and infrastructure, to being a modern metropolitan nation where roughly half of 1,4 billion people were shunted from paupers into middle class over barely two generations.
Meanwhile a bunch of westerners whose countries are literally collapsing around their ears keep telling Johnny Chinaman that "they’re doing it wrong".
"This gets more crazy when you see internet sites get filled with spam of people "harmed" by a picture of Pooh, taken out of context, because a publisher printed a children’s book in China."
Yeah, the overreaction gets real. Part of this may be that the west is generally portrayed, in China, as a festering hotbed of anti-sino sentiment and general racism. Can’t honestly say that’s that wrong either. As a result, aside from the assumed pro-china astroturfers there’s always going to be a big bunch of people with the same fortress mentality hair-trigger outrage reaction as certain Israeli or colored people who’ve become – for good reason – hypersensitized to criticism.
This is amplified by the fact that whatever you do in Huaxia, nixing the Son of Heaven has always been a blow to national pride. And Xi may not formally be appointed emperor – he’s just ruler for life – but there’s very little difference.
Re: Friday deep thoughts
"Would you rather:"
False equivalence.
I’d advise googling Tim Cook’s statements on why Apple keeps building their iDevices in China before moving on with this. Manufacturing in China isn’t cheap. Not any longer. It’s just that over the last fifty years or so the US has lost all the necessary skillsets needed to own a manufacturing complex at scale and long abandoned any vocational training leading to it.
In China if you need something built you snap your fingers and you find a dozen factories staffed by skilled engineers with twenty years of experience in designing and building electronics or clothes on the fly. Cook lamented that you could fill football stadiums with skilled chinese tool-and-die engineers but in the US you’d be hard pressed to fill a small conference room.
As a result, he said, a US-made iPhone would cost upwards of 30k USD per unit for years – because you’d have to buy all the infrastructure from scratch and teach the staff from the ground up.
So it isn’t a question of electronics costing 25-100% more in being built at home – it’s a question that they can no longer be built in the US at all. Not until you train a whole new generation of people to man factories which may or may never be opened.
"If we bring most manufacturing back to the US, from communist China…"
And that’s the second flawed assumption; China may call themselves that as much as they like but they are not and never have been communist. If anything their current state of government most closely resembles their last 2500 years of governance – a bureaucratic oligarchy backing a figurehead.
If China had been communist you’d notice it – because they would be like the USSR instead of as is, a nation containing more millionaires and billionaires than you can shake a stick at.
"Why do we continue to allow China to manufacture most of our goods when we know that they obviously don’t have our best interest at heart?"
This is a long story but essentially…China decided, back in the 50’s, that they would become the manufacturing center of the world. So they pushed for that, encouraged the establishment of industries and factories, heavily subsidized entrepreneurs willing to set up export businesses…and then started flooding the market worldwide. First with cheap plastic crap, but then gradually with ever increasing quality product. Today their products are the world standard.
US industry reacted and moved it’s manufacturing offshore, finding that they could save a lot of money doing so. This escalated during the 80’s and 90’s after Reagan removed any semblance of government regulation from corporations.
Today that saving no longer exists but it would cost all of them a bankruptcy to bring those jobs home, and so they continue using China as their supply chain.
Bluntly put this happened because China made a plan for where they wanted to be fifty years in the future and stuck to the course while the US couldn’t be arsed to plan beyond the next four years. And it remains this way because no sitting president in the US is willing to tank the economy at home for thirty years just to rebuild US industry.
"We do it because we ‘luv dat Money’!!! Greed will corrupt any political system."
You think the chinese aren’t greedy tho? I don’t think there’s much of a difference between a US CEO or a Chinese one. Hell, they invented capitalism a thousand years before Adam Smith was even born. The only difference between the US and China in that regard is that in China the government, in enlightened dynasties, views their economy as part of national security whereas the US is constitutionally unable to regulate or govern the bulk of their industry. A US businessman can move his company offshore at whim. The Chinese one knows that if he does he’s never coming back to China again.
China is a massive threat to western economies in the regard that it will just sit there and keep being more successful than anyone else because what they do works, and has worked for 2500 years. They plan strategy over generations, not quarters. They’ll take losses for thirty years if it means it ends with them being in an unbeatable position afterwards.
And we can’t match that. Our leaders can’t see beyond the next election. In the US any time the ruling party shifts they spend four years undoing everything accomplished by the previous administration.
THAT is why the US is in the position it’s in.
Re: Re: Friday deep thoughts
Free labor during slavery…
Cheap labor with Chinese manufacturing…
Greed is still our problem, and it will be the death of the US.
Re: Re: Re: Friday deep thoughts
"Cheap labor with Chinese manufacturing…"
As I said, Chinese manufacturing isn’t cheap it’s about on par with what you could expect to be charged for a US equivalent – if the US had that option.
The west rid itself of their factories, their pool of skilled factory engineers, and anything even resembling vocational schooling during the last decades.
For us to even get to where we could compete with China in that regard today we’d have to do what they started doing fifty years ago; Rebuild an entire industry from scratch, eating a loss for thirty or forty years running. Only then will we have a large pool of skilled labor dedicated to factory on-the-fly manufacturing.
And no western president will ever do that. So China’s advantage is carved in stone until the point where they start consistently doing stupid shit and drop the ball badly enough the market drops to a point where there’ll be a gap for western industries to insert themselves.
It started with greed but today it’s about convenience – not owning the labor, not owning the factories, not owning the supply chain – the most desirable company structure in the west of today is a company which has no fixed assets and consists primarily of management, marketing, legal and finance ONLY.
Re: Re: Re:2 Friday deep thoughts
That has largely migrated o YouTube and Instagram etc. It is quite possible to learn machining and business building using online resources. See for example NYC CNC and follow John Saunders journey from learner to teacher while building a machining business.
Re: Re: Re:3 Friday deep thoughts
"That has largely migrated o YouTube and Instagram etc."
Sadly so. It’s a positive sort of Johnny-come-lately against the US dropping that sort of education several decades back. It would be ironic to see US industry saved by youtube educational videos gone viral. Sadly it’s all going to be local business unless the government becomes involved and starts offering tax breaks for functioning factories. Instead what you get is Foxconn cons.
In China, meanwhile, vocational schooling was rolled out in massive, subsidized industrial-scale fashion, churning out skilled factory engineers and CNC operators by the tens of thousands.
Until or unless western leaders start being able to build and maintain policies for half a century against contemporary losses…China will always win, because you can’t win a game of chess by playing speed-run checkers.
Re: Re: Friday deep thoughts
One of the reasons Tim more recently complained about U.S. manufacturing was a blatantly stupid reason. Apple wanted to use hyper-proprietary screws in devices being manufactured in the U.S., but couldn’t find them. Instead of just using regular screws that you could get any factory in the U.S. to make, which would also make opening up said devices for people to repair them easier (which Apple of cpurse hates), they threw up their hands and went “Oh well, we tried”.
Re: Re: Re: Friday deep thoughts
"One of the reasons Tim more recently complained about U.S. manufacturing was a blatantly stupid reason."
Yeah, Apple being finicky about using only proprietary is a special brand of stupid. But it’s not the reason as to why Apple relies on chinese manufacturing.
Like it or not the US doesn’t have the labor pool or industrial infrastructure to accommodate manufacturing at scale – that’s more or less all China now.
"Instead of just using regular screws that you could get any factory in the U.S. to make…"
That’s the point though. Cook is not alone in these requirements. If you’ve got a product requiring a high degree of mechanical or electronics skill you go to China, because the US doesn’t have the labor pool to manufacture it at scale.
Re: Friday deep thoughts
None sequitar, creating jobs by bringing manufacturing to the US will not replace existing jobs, or change the path of automation, so that would not create job losses, but rather create jobs.
"Notably it does not say "Chinese people are sus""
I’d be interested in finding out what the target group thinks it says rather than what it actually says. Sure, that won’t affect opinion on the reaction to it above, but given the general rhetoric from groups like TP and various problem with attacks on people of Asian origin (not always Chinese) related to the pandemic, I’m not sure if they’d agree.
Indeed, that may be the reasoning behind the decision, that they’re so used to anti-Chinese sentiment being the people and not necessarily just the government, that they played it a bit too safe this time. Not an excuse, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s a factor.
I think one reason that the sticker was interpreted the way it was is because of the conspiracy theory that China created the COVID-19 virus.
It really doesn’t help that the people who designed the sticker are part of Turning Point USA, an organization that supports Donald Trump, who has repeatedly made sinophobic remarks.
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Re: Re:
Genuine question: where do you think Corona came from?
-bats
-lab slip up
-bio warfare
If I were an evil genius dictator, I’d create a bioweapon that killed all of my foreign enemies so that I could just walk into their territories and take over – kinda like a neutron bomb leaving all infrastructure intact. I’d also kill enough people in my own country (cough…rebels/activists) to make it look on the international scene like "hey, we didn’t do this — we’re sick/dying too".
But I’m no evil genius dictator
Re: Re: Re:
"If I were an evil moron dictator, I’d create a bioweapon that killed all of my foreign enemies so that I could just walk into their territories and take over…"
Fixed That For You.
Long-term China loses massively on Covid. To whit it’s suppressed their biggest markets and depressed their economy.
Secondly, the british empire stands out as the last time anyone was dumb enough to stretch a hegemony across the world. Even the US neocons weren’t that daft. The only thing such an action caters to is to someone like Trump who doesn’t realize that taking something and holding it are two different things.
As for the question on where Corona came from? Well, it’s Sars-CoV-2, a variant of the Sars-CoV-1 virus which was already warned about and extensively studied a few years back. We more or less know where they come from and how recombination between species spurs the generation of new viruses. Occam’s Razor suggests the origin is a Chinese wet market which would do for a facultative zoonose the same which Chinese ecological smallholdings do for the annual Flu variants.
Covid and shit like Covid is exactly why the CDC and its equivalents in every nation has entire departments dedicated to setting up ironclad rules on animal husbandry and agriculture. Because a farm run the wrong way is a virus incubator.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
US funded gain of function research had a hand in our current situation, as well as an, either, accidental or purposeful laboratory release. In the end, if the truth is ever told, some will accept it and others will reject it. ‘same as it ever was’
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Anyone bringing up gain-of-function research as something that proves that COVID was made in lab have no clue about how research into viruses and vaccines is done.
It’s like looking at a grain of sand then declaring that you are standing on a sandy beach.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Need anyone to tell you that if you don’t understand this "science" thing – or biology – you probably shouldn’t comment on it?
Or are you telling us that research performed in every medical laboratory worldwide was what caused Covid? Gosh. I guess we need to find who released the 1918 flu and the black plague next…
I guess fluorite-mediated mind control courtesy of the USSR is no longer valid so the next conspiracy theory is China Gaves Us Plague. Where do the gay frogs fit into all of this?
Re: Re: Re:
"Genuine question: where do you think Corona came from?"
We don’t actually know with 100% certainty, but what we do know is that Korean and 3rd generation Chinese Americans who have been violently attacked by ignorant racists didn’t have anything to do with any of the scenarios.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Racism is wrong regardless of who it’s directed towards and who it’s coming from, but it’s been here since early biblical times and it ain’t goin’ nowhere until Jesus returns.
That being said, not all attacks against Asians are racially motivated; not even all recent attacks. Some people are just mean and stupid and will attack you just because you’re wearing shoes…on a Friday…at 3pm…
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
I think it’s safe to say that if a Korean or 3rd generation Chinese-American is being attacked expressly because of a pandemic that’s believed to have been caused by the Chinese government, it’s racially motivated.
Attacks happen for other reasons and not every attack on a minority is due to racism, but in those circumstances what other explanation is there? Italians weren’t getting attacked in the same period, even though that’s one of the most likely vectors for the pandemic coming into America at the time.
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Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Watch out y’all. Paul’s a telepathic criminal whisperer.
Some were/are definitely racial, but prove that they all are. Haters hate, we all have free will, and we live in a fallen world. It sucks like that.
Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
OK, so what’s your non-racially motivated reason for people who have never been near China to be attacked for something that happened in China apart from their race?
"Some were/are definitely racial, but prove that they all are"
Ah, maybe you just need to learn some reading comprehension, because you’re the first person who claimed such a thing.
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Re: Re: Re:5 Re:
Talk about reading comprehension, Paul. My reasoning is clearly stated above:
“Haters hate, we all have free will, and we live in a fallen world“
What’s your precog reasoning (other than ‘Assuming based on what you saw on the news”) that Asians murdered since COVID struck, are all racially motivated. “If it bleeds, it leads”. Of course the media paints it as Black on Asian, but do you know the number of Blacks killed by Blacks since COVID struck? (Hint: it’s a helluva lot more than Black on Asian)
News Flash: American’s slash indiscriminately. Hate don’t discriminate because it’s Everywhere.
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
Again reading comprehension is a skill you have not yet acquired…
"Asians murdered"
I said nothing about murder.
"Of course the media paints it as Black on Asian"
I said nothing about black people. Whites and hispanics have also committed such attacks.
"do you know the number of Blacks killed by Blacks since COVID struck?"
What does that have to do with attacks on people of Asian descent increasing disproportionately in the wake of COVID?
"Hate don’t discriminate because it’s Everywhere."
Except when it does. Again – when an Asian person is attacked explicitly because China was blamed for the pandemic, despite them never having been anywhere near China – what explanation is there other than racism?
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Re: Re: Re:7 Re:
You have no proof that there was an increase in anti-Asian crime since COVID-19 other than the bleeding headlines fed to you by the media.
How many Asians were molested, attacked, murdered pre COVID? Stats please…
The same number of Asians could have been attacked pre COVID, but not reported to the cops, or not picked up by the media.
Hate is wrong wherever and whenever. Welcome to humanity.
Re: Re: Re:8 Re:
Yeah, I think we’re done here, you’re obviously not interested in an honest conversation.
"The same number of Asians could have been attacked pre COVID, but not reported to the cops, or not picked up by the media."
Well, yeah, you can assume anything happened if you assume that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Like all those zombies that murdered people last year, the fact they weren’t in the news is evidence of the rise of the undead. FFS…
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Re: Re: Re:9 Re:
Hyperbole is your jam, and when you’re asked to present any evidence to support your hyper-pothesis you accuse me of dishonesty. I can dig it.
Peace
Re: Re: Re:10 Re:
After seeing so many Re: Re: Re:’s in a line, I’m beginning to think that Aretha Franklin has been reincarnated, and is living here on TD.
Re: Re: Re:11 Re:
Ha!
Re: Re: Re:11
And some of y’all probably wonder why I clear the subject line in most of my comments. Well, wonder no more!
Re: Re: Re:11 Re:
Yes, there certainly has been a lot of "reeeee"-ing from little Bart.
Re: Re: Re:12 Re:
Didn’t y’all hear? Bart is the new Koby.
Re: Re: Re:13 Re:
Nah, according to Dr. Cuddy, he’s just Koby Lite.
Re: Re: Re:10 Re:
There’s a widely documented rise in attacks against Asian communities. I simply asked why you think these are not racially motivated. Your refusal to answer that question is noted.
Re: Re: Re:11 Re:
"I simply asked why you think these are not racially motivated."
Oooh, I know the answer to this one!
Because to acknowledge the statistics which point out an increased victimization of asians means to acknowledge that racism exists and that’s really not in the best interests of racists.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"We don’t actually know with 100% certainty…"
No, but that’s like saying we didn’t know where the latest flu variant came from either.
We certainly know a whole lot about Sars-CoV-1. That Sars-CoV-2 emerged from that zoonosis leaping species is by far the most plausible explanation.
The traditional closed-ecology of chinese smallholdings incorporating ducks, pigs and a carp pond is what has bred new flu varietals for generations. The chinese wet markets now stand as the places we get new strains of Sars coronavirus from.
Re: Re: Re:
Amusingly enough, there was an epidemic response team in the US that could have handled this better.
Problem is that was setup by the Obama administration and Trump was so busy erasing anything with the name "Obama" on it that he was left with nothing when the crisis hit the US. Plus he got himself too worked up trying to deny it even hit the US that he did nothing. His first reflex of banning travels from China would have been a good first step if 1. it was a complete blocus (instead, he only banned chinese people from traveling, which left plenty of other carriers), and 2. he did something else to restrain the spread inside the US.
Actually, he did less than nothing. Doing nothing would at least have left professionals able to deal with it. Instead, he politicized the issue so much that masks became a threat, and vaccines suddenly became the subject of multiple conspiracy theories each crazier than the previous one (from the "magnet" to the "tentacle monster"). Even worse, the less crazy republicans pretend that "it’s a choice", but then ostracize vaccinated people or leave it to more local entities to ban them.
Not to mention the stocks of medical supplies that he sold off as soon as he got in office in the name of the almighty short-term dollar. (Which he then complained about, pretending that "Obama left the shelves empty.")
Wherever it originated, the US had such a bad response to it that it couldn’t have been a factor in the plans of your hypothetical evil dictator. Unless Trump was your evil genius’s plant to undermine the pandemic response. 😀
If that’s the case, bravo to the evil genius here.
If not, it would have been an evil retard who just got an incredible stroke of luck.
Finally, the virus is dangerous, but mostly in its contagion rates while it’s actual death rate is not high enough to qualify as a "weapon". At best, as an evil scheme, I could see it as a corporate plan to sell vaccines and/or cures. In which case, your "evil genius" got kinda foiled by Trump’s idiotic anti-vaccine rants getting in the way of their sales. Which would be funny enough given how easy it is to bribe Trump, all republicans and a good 80% of democrats. This really takes the "genius" out of "evil genius". 😀
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Wherever it originated, the US had such a bad response to it that it couldn’t have been a factor in the plans of your hypothetical evil dictator. Unless Trump was your evil genius’s plant to undermine the pandemic response. :D"
You say that with a smile but if there’s any conspiracy theory I’m inclined to believe these days it’d be the one where Trump had been Putin’s stooge since their first meeting.
…handing twenty years worth of ME leverage and foothold to Russia.
…Alienating the Kurds for good, handing them as well to Russia.
…fucking US industry right up the ass with the chinese "trade war" and subsequent trade deal with worse terms for the US.
…Consistently undermining faith in the US government and political system.
…actively kept the US out of any foreign affair involving Russia.
…systematically dismantling key US agencies.
…breeding and feeding the disillusioned and disaffected morons in his base a fever dream resulting in 66% of the GOP being prepared to secede from the US.
…actively screwing up the pandemic response to the point of creating half a million more dead americans than statistics would produce if he just sat on his god damn hands.
If there’s an evil genius involved it’ll be the one sitting in the Kremlin.
*"Finally, the virus is dangerous, but mostly in its contagion rates while it’s actual death rate is not high enough to qualify as a "weapon".
Well, yeah. Sure, the end result may be a million dead americans, mainly among the morons too dumb to vaccinate…but weapons-grade it’s not. A hemorrhagic fever with three weeks incubation time is what you’d be aiming for in that regard, which would lay half of the population in caskets and completely paralyze the affected countries within half a year.
Even so, a bioweapon won’t be used on it’s own – and this is the utter moron bit of the alt-right conspiracy crowd. If you want to take someone out you don’t just kick him once in the nuts and then back off until he gets up in rage.
Honestly, there was a time when conspiracy theories, wild as they were, at least had some logic to them. These days the Qanon bullshit is just one steady stream of disjointed dystopian fairy tales where liberals and China are at Snidely Whiplash levels of "Evil, just because, without gain or motive".
Re: Re:
Yeah, that. Origin does matter. If I state some criticism visavi Israel it will likely come off completely different than if the one saying it is some guy waving a swastika or Odal banner.
Re: Re:
Agreed. I strongly distrust TPUSA given the people they support and their attitudes toward certain issues. There are so, so many other people and organizations who are capable of voicing criticism of China in ways that don’t intentionally run headlong into xenophobia and conspiracy theories.
TPUSA very sus
Re: Re:
All I’m saying is, I’d vote to put Charlie Kirk out the airlock first every time.
Re: Re: Re:
Depends who else is in there with him…
If one cannot criticize the Chinese government for claiming down on free speech, human rights violations , no right to protest, there’s no unions in China, uighers are rounded up and sent to prison.
Who can you criticize? There’s no freedom to practise religion in China China is sus is not a racist statement,
It’s like in films the only villains are gangsters, East European criminals or Middle East terrorists
Ameriva is the home of free speech
But some people who are extremely woke seem to not value it that much
Re: Re:
THIS!
"those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it"
I wonder who in this comment section would be willing to give up their ‘keyboard freedoms’ and go live in China for the rest of their life.
Re: Re: Re:
"I wonder who in this comment section would be willing to give up their ‘keyboard freedoms’ and go live in China for the rest of their life."
Ironically the answer would be "most of the people screaming ‘China Bad!’ the loudest". After all, the average chinese person doesn’t need to worry about pensions, healthcare, education, public transportation, water quality, jobs, or mass shootings. Something high in the wish list of the Trump cult.
Like it or not China today stands out as the model of general prosperity the US was the example of in 1950. That bit of history the US alt-right keeps yearning for is today lived by around 90% of China. And hey, it even comes with an autocratic bureaucracy running everything and a serious bias towards foreigners and those who spit on the national flag.
If we take the christmas list of the alt-right and check off all the bullet points what we get is, in fact, China…save for the minor hitch of skin color…
Re: Re:
"If one cannot criticize the Chinese government for claiming down on free speech, human rights violations , no right to protest, there’s no unions in China, uighers are rounded up and sent to prison.
Who can you criticize?"
It’s fine if you are actually criticising them for those things, but sadly groups such as the one in the article don’t tend to be as honest and often delve into racism. Usually while deifying the very corporations who outsource everything that makes those activities possible.
"There’s no freedom to practise religion in China"
Don’t worry, there’s plenty of people in the US fighting valiantly to try and make it so that you can’t do that in the US either unless you’re the "right" kind of Christian. That they have no current power to do so due to the first amendment is fortunate, but don’t fool yourself into thinking your current cultural climate couldn’t do such a thing if those blocks were not in place.
"But some people who are extremely woke seem to not value it that much"
I tend to ignore anyone who uses "woke" seriously, since the only real definition I’ve understood about it is "people understand racial/sexual diversity and act to include it". People complaining that they’re seeing too much of it don’t tend to have much of a valuable input in many aspects of life, from what I’ve seen.
What’s funny is that the guy who supports one of a comic book’s many multiverse timelines exploring the idea that Superman’s son could be bisexual and the guy pretending that it’s an affront to American values (to give a recent example) are both exercising their free speech, but only one of them is fighting to remove free speech for the other person – and it’s not the "woke" guy…
Re: Re: Re:
That definition is archaic. Wikipedia has a good breakdown of all the modern meanings if it.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Such as?
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Well, the wiki suggests conservatives like to use woke as a slur and in mockery, same way they’ve tried to marginalize any and every catchy slogan which points out societal disparity in times past.
So he’s not wrong; Woke has several meanings – depending on whether the person you’re asking is someone who believes in tolerance or someone who mocks it.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
Well, that is true. The value and meaning of a word is always coloured by who uses it. "Woke" has simply joined a litany of words like socialist, communist, Marxist and progressive that certain types use as an attempted slur without any consideration to what the word actually means.
Ica n’t think of any recent example where someone has used it in the meaning for which it was originally coined, it’s usually someone whining that there’s wider representation of minorities and women in entertainment, so I find it safe to ignore those people.
Re: Re:
"If one cannot criticize the Chinese government for claiming down on free speech, human rights violations , no right to protest, there’s no unions in China, uighers are rounded up and sent to prison."
True enough.
But to be fair, proportionately the US today is worse off in all of those performance indicators.
Meanwhile what China does appears to have worked, as it’s raised some 1,4 billion people from poverty into affluent middle class and if you’re today a Han Chinese (90% or so of the population) then you are going to be well off.
China is employing a recipe for success which has retained that nation as a cultural whole over timespans which has seen every other empire collapse completely. Sadly that recipe includes centralized power and loss of individual liberties.
We can certainly tell the Chinese that democracy would be vastly preferable – but it’s hard to counter the normal chinese response of "It does sound interesting. Can you kindly point to any nation which has embraced these values for a thousand years or so and still exists?"
And the US today doesn’t exactly have the credibility to point at any successful and stable nation and tell them they need to do shit differently. Not if the result so far has been 30% of the citizenry denying basic science and pitching in behind a Dear Leader whose deranged advise carried them into a pandemic death toll higher than that their armed forces suffered in both world wars and Vietnam combined.
Re: Re: Re:
That’s pretty silly. The People’s Republic of China is certainly not the same as the Qing Dynasty, which is certainly not the same thing as the Ming Dynasty. (The Ming famously built a wall to keep out their troubles … some who saw it being built were still alive when a traitor let in the barbarians it was supposed to keep out and they became the government)
San Marino is the world’s oldest democracy. They were founded by one of the early Christians who decided getting eaten by lions was less his calling than starting a country in the hills a little outside Rome. And it’s still there.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"That’s pretty silly. The People’s Republic of China is certainly not the same as the Qing Dynasty, which is certainly not the same thing as the Ming Dynasty. "
Go ask the chinese. If you ask them about the dynasties every last one of them will say something to the effect of "Yeah, but it remained Hua Xia. Always".
And they’d be right. When Genghis Khan invaded and took China China didn’t become mongol. The mongols became chinese instead and the Yuan dynasty eventually continued as just another line of chinese emperors. For 2500 years the culture and national identity of China has been one and the same. In the same time of which every western nation has been merged, divided, shattered, rebuilt into different nations…
"San Marino is the world’s oldest democracy."
So they are, and some 1700 years is a sterling record, dodging almost every upheaval to shake europe and standing out as probably the last inheritor of the roman style republic.
But with a total population of some 33,000 people (less than 1/20 of luxembourg) it serves more as an odd example of the implausible as something the rest of the world has managed to mimic.
China, meanwhile, started out with some 60 million people in the early Han dynasty (1/4th the estimated global population) and ended up with a contemporary 1,4 billion (1/6th of the global population).
My point stands. For 90% of its history China has been the center of education, science, population density and culture.
And the PRC today? I’m pretty sure that future shock aside a Han dynasty citizen or a Qing dynasty citizen would still be quite able to identify themselves and the country. They’d wonder a bit about the mandarins no longer being recognizable by a silly hat and the absence of a Son of Heaven. But for all intents and purposes the current PRC party serves the exact same function as the civil officials in ancient days and his high exaltedness the Pooh Bear serves well as a stand-in Emperor – complete with lese majeste regulation and lifetime appointment.
The government’s adherence to censorship and social engineering? Ancient practice.
Civil Official/Party Members governing all of the executive? Ancient practice.
Capitalist market red in tooth and claw meshed with the political system? Ancient practice.
Catering to 90% of the populace while keeping the rest as public enemies for stability? Ancient practice.
China is the same bureaucratic oligarchy its always been. Possibly also the world’s oldest known example of corporatocracy given that the biggest businesses are and have always been part of the body politic and the ruling clans.
So I don’t think it’s a silly statement to maintain that for all intents and purposes China has managed the problem of keeping a cultural identity intact for two and a half millennia. This is also why western powers find it hard going to sell them the idea of democracy of which history can only produce the successful example of…well, a micronation smaller than a suburb in any rural chinese township.
I do know this; Unless the west gets its shit together, China will be the new top dog of the world and stay that way until, a few centuries down the line, the pendulum swings and they end up back at the same low which allowed the East India company and western colonialist powers to run roughshod all over them.
Too many are looking at China and thinking it’ll collapse any day soon, just like the USSR and the DDR. That, to me, is a hopelessly naive thought bereft of context and historical example.
It’s unfortunate that TPUSA came up with this sticker, because honestly it’s pretty funny.
Re: Re:
Meh, it’s a weak co-opting of a meme that’s already pretty much run its course. It also screams "how do you do fellow kids!", and it would be nice if the level of political discourse gets away from that.
MaEC rather nicely self-owns.
The Among Us picture effectively encourages what all of us ought to do in all aspects of our life: TEST & VERIFY Everything!
Being "suspicious" details that something is seemingly "not right" and should be looked into the determine if the one who is suspicious is wrong in what they perceive, or in fact, something is indeed not right.
However, and A-typically, GQP’s actively resist ANY amount of accountability (by vilifying any verification/attribution process).
Also suggests the u.s. policy(ies) of "No Child Left Behind" and "Ebonics" are equally attempting to accomplish the same vilification.
Re: MaEC rather nicely self-owns.
"the u.s. policy(ies) of … "Ebonics" "
Wut?
Re: MaEC rather nicely self-owns.
"Also suggests the u.s. policy(ies) of "No Child Left Behind" and "Ebonics" are equally attempting to accomplish the same vilification."
That sentence doesn’t really parse. What does a slogan pushed by a neocon stooge in lieu of anything actually helping children have to do with…an american dialect of english?
If you can't do hate speech...
Can you do love speech…as in I love China?
If you can’t have an opinion to the negative, why would it be okay to the positive, assuming hate = negative and love = positive.
Who do we piss off this week?
Why do we favor countries that dont like their own people?
Israel? China? Japan? Russia? Afghanistan? Iraq?
The old idea that IF we went to war with china, we would loose? is abit off. There is a very good chance the country would turn against its own leaders.
Forget it, lets piss off South America and mexico.
Re: Who do we piss off this week?
"The old idea that IF we went to war with china, we would loose? is abit off. There is a very good chance the country would turn against its own leaders."
No. The idea that a country under authoritarian rule must automatically want to rid itself of its shackles is not based in reality.
The thing is, see, that to 90% of chinese today the current government is benevolent.
Within the last two generations they’ve built 500 cities from scratch, expanded all infrastructure, catapulted the majority of the nation’s citizenry from poverty into a prosperous middle class. Unemployment is at 4,2 after covid (with EU unemployment at roughly 7% and US unemployment between 4,8% and 22% depending on who you ask).
You want to go to war with a nation hoping that its citizenry will rise up in disaffection…better make sure that said citizenry actually is disaffected. And that won’t happen when their grandparents can still tell them how lucky they are to be alive today…or when they can look at foreign news and see how the "leader of the free world" is crumbling at a visible rate with half of the US body politic voting against the other half even when doing so causes the nation actual and immediate harm.
The fact that unlike as in the old soviet bloc countries chinese citizens can travel freely and very few consider the idea of jumping ship, should speak volumes about that idea.
It’s the other way around. Any western nation sets armed foot on chinese soil there will just be a short burst of propaganda highlighting the "century of humiliation" evoking visions of the 18th century when the opium gang of the East India company and russian, german, american and french colonizers took turns carving out bits and pieces of China. Take it on faith that any defensive war will enjoy the complete support of the population.
China doesn’t scare me the way the USSR did. They’re unlikely to power grab and provoke in the same way. Their system kept people badly educated and impoverished.
What scares me about China is far more fundamental – that their way of life and governance keeps proving superior to what we have in the west where the body politic of people’s representatives in the nominal leader of the western world can’t, apparently, muster the sense to pour water out of a boot or cater to the most basic needs of the citizenry.
China says "Yes, we can!" to every challenge, crisscrossing their country with high-speed rail, dams, and high-speed broadband. The US keeps saying "No we can’t!" – and drags its feet refitting old lead plumbing and creaky powergrids while companies had to redefine bandwidth to call their offers 4G and 5G.
These are the examples which will shape what the rest of the world desires to emulate come the next generation.
The next generation aren’t likely to look at the west and see prosperity and opportunity. They’re more likely to look towards the middle kingdom.
Re: Re: Who do we piss off this week?
If the Chinese government was so loved, why does it censor the Internet and otherwise act as if the freedoms of speech and association present a deadly threat to its existence?
Re: Re: Re: Who do we piss off this week?
"If the Chinese government was so loved, why does it censor the Internet and otherwise act as if the freedoms of speech and association present a deadly threat to its existence?"
Because for 2500 years the chinese government has always had the policy of viewing speech against the government an actionable offense?
Censorship? The earliest records of the united Qin detail how imperial censors had to review all written materials. Social engineering is part of their culture by now and has been for millennia. It’s as natural a concept to them as the idea of "one man, one vote" is for us. Arguably more so.
The reason both at that time and today is that if you own the public narrative you own the people. Hence, goes the logic, government, by its very existence, needs to preserve its authority.
And it’s no good even to ask the question of "why" or imply that this doesn’t work when, in fact, the chinese can point to the successful example.
China found out, more than 2000 years ago, how to make autocracy work. And they’ve stayed to that recipe ever since. And if you tell a chinese citizen what you just asked here they’ll just invite you to point at any single nation in the west which hasn’t been completely overturned every few hundred years or so.
I don’t think the chinese love their government. I think they pick up history books, look at the examples seen elsewhere, and decide that their government works. It’s their version of Churchill’s old saying about the "least bad system of government".
For them to change their minds about that is pretty easy. Demonstrate that a nation like the US can remain largely unchanged in fundamental culture and philosophy for a thousand years, and remain stable enough during that time to ensure that the next fifty generations keep thinking of themselves as "americans".
Until such a time comes, you won’t persuade the chinese to revolt – at least not based on western ideals. When the pendulum swings, the current administration runs out of steam and good ideas, and turns decadent, they’ll have themselves a more or less self-contained coup and a new dynasty to climb back to the top with. That particular cycle of Golden Era –> Decadent Recession cycle has turned in the middle kingdom about a few dozen times through history with the last great low period being in the 18th century. Give it two centuries or so and there may be a brief chance for us westerners to climb back to the top – briefly.
Re: Re: Re:2 Who do we piss off this week?
You appear to be ignoring a lot of Chines History, of which recent events Include the Boxer rebellion, and that unholy mix of the Chines revolution and the Japanese invasion, along with the cultural revolution.
Re: Re: Re:3 Who do we piss off this week?
"You appear to be ignoring a lot of Chines History, of which recent events Include the Boxer rebellion, and that unholy mix of the Chines revolution and the Japanese invasion, along with the cultural revolution."
No I’m not. I’m positing that a grand total of one century’s worth of civil upheaval in a span of 2500 years, counting every rebellion since the early Han dynasty is a pretty good record.
You’re the one without context and a sense of scale here. 2500 years. With coups, invasions, low points, revolutions…all just being speed bumps before that bloody country just keeps on doing the same thing they’ve always done.
For most of chinese history they’ve been the center of the world. The high point of culture and science. Then decadence sets in, they drop the ball, and revolution mor invasion happens. Then they get right back to the top of their game again, possibly under new management but with almost everything else unchanged.
Re: Re: Re:2 Who do we piss off this week?
Qin emperor was a monster … sort of guy who would cut through a peasant’s legs to the marrow to see how he withstood wading in cold water. The Communists would not stoop to trying to write that guy’s apologies. If you want to praise aspects of China’s governance, try considering their Confucian principles of selecting qualified officials, or even their ideas of scientific socialist planning (as opposed to praying to the Invisible Hand for mercy), but don’t get off on a cult of raw authoritarianism that recalls all that is the most backward in their country.
Re: Re: Re:3 Who do we piss off this week?
"Qin emperor was a monster … sort of guy who would cut through a peasant’s legs to the marrow to see how he withstood wading in cold water."
So he was. Also almost buried his new country trying to build himself that massive tomb of his.
"The Communists would not stoop to trying to write that guy’s apologies."
If by that you mean the oligarchs running the country while telling the proles they live in worker’s paradise, fine. But I hold that calling China "communist" is just falling for the PR. China is not and never has been communist. Not with Maoism lauding the "righteous capitalists".
"…but don’t get off on a cult of raw authoritarianism that recalls all that is the most backward in their country."
Making a historical statement isn’t "getting off" on anything. What China does, works. I don’t like it, I hate and fear the possibility that authoritarianism may be an indispensible part of China’s success story, and I really, really don’t like what that would tell us about ourselves as a species.
It’s my hope that confucian principles and their focus on science-based social planning is what kept them stable for so long. But when no other nation has managed to sustain a similar long shelflife we can’t know that. Nor will we be able to persuade the chinese as a people to divorce themselves from authoritarianism in a hurry.
But not looking at this for what it is rather than shrugging and saying "Eh, they’ll collapse soon, like any other dictatorship"…that’s just being willfully blind.
Re: Re: Who do we piss off this week?
Interesting.
So there seems to be problems with buildings and construction in China.
Have you seen the video’s?
Construction is Pushed to hard and they take the Cheapest Contractors, and most of its Corrupt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-2DtL-Wjkc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopSDJq6w8E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQp0cnFF5cY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iINI81nvbAs
Now I understand that most of this is East Coast China. But you should also know that Most of the population is On the Coast line of China, where all the jobs are(not many farms), Where all the big Towns and Cities. We are talking about the Hong Kong and area around, and all the problems They have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZvdveiI3zs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_dhXMEwzQk
Then we come to the Abandoned cities China built for people. Why arent people using them??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiTDU8MZRYw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5SE47Xjx2Q
All this work. For what?
If we had this Much construction in the USA there WOULD BE NO HOMELESS
Re: Re: Re: Who do we piss off this week?
"All this work. For what? If we had this Much construction in the USA there WOULD BE NO HOMELESS"
It’s classic imperial China. If the labor is there and a demand is perceived, the government reacts. This all has to do with values.
The west values the market. Everything which happens is reactive. Demand generates supply – eventually. This is the optimized approach. Maximum bang for the buck. But leaves no resilience and the careful evaluation of "necessary" leaves massive amounts of people falling through the gaps – and exposes entire supply chains to catastrophic failure if any of the complex links breaks.
China instead looks at this question – can we feed, house, and provide jobs for all our people? Massive wastage of material and resources are accepted as long as it results in society becoming that more stable. Some corruption is accepted – there’s even a saying that "if the water is too clean even the fish won’t live" – but if the graft exceeds a certain treshold government comes cracking down.
As a result, however, there is massive redundancy. China is geared towards never suffering food, labor or housing shortages. Because when those shortages happen, there’s an uprising and a change of regime.
Re: Re: Re: Who do we piss off this week?
"If we had this Much construction in the USA there WOULD BE NO HOMELESS"
To be fair, you don’t even need new construction, all you need is for empty and derelict property to be provided to the homeless, even if only for temporary accommodation while they get themselves back on their feet and able to rejoin society. But, as with providing treatment for drug addiction and mental problems, it seems that any solution that doesn’t consist of demonising and dehumanising homeless populations is a step too far for the country.
Welp. Everybody all sus up in this one. Stupid move, Emerson.
Bill of Rights Limits Only Government
Nice try, but the Bill of Rights limits only what government can do. It does not apply to private individuals, organizations, businesses, etc.
Re: Legally limits yes, but when you hold it up as an ideal...
You might want to shoot the college a quick message on that because they claim to be proud supporters of the first amendment and freedom of speech except when they aren’t.
‘As an institution dedicated to Communication and the Arts, the first amendment of the US Constitution is of high importance. The right to freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of political belief and affiliation, freedom from discrimination, freedom of peaceful assembly, and petition of redress or grievances is not only a right but a community responsibility.’
Wait, what?
Why can’t it? Granted, their policy might reference honoring the First Amendment, but seems to me they still can ignore it, as long as they’re comfortable being hypocritical. Am I missing something?
Re: Wait, what?
Yes, I think that is an error. From the FIRE letter:
"While Emerson is a private institution not bound by the First Amendment, it must honor its Statement on Freedom of Expression…"
Not clear what is meant by "must". Morally? Legally? Practically? I have not heard of such documents being legally binding but maybe they are. I don’t think there’s a lawsuit involved, just letters, so my guess is they haven’t done anything illegal and are just being accused of hypocrisy.
can you deactivate hotmail account
Wow, hotmail scams in 2021? Not heard of anyone having an account there since 2001!
Re: can you deactivate hotmail account
you can select it when you register windows.
can you deactivate hotmail account
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Sounds like that college needs to have its computer network screwed up.
The suspended inviduals should break into that college’s computer and trash it to the point where they end up with a big repair to get their network fixed.
That would make that college think about every doing that again
Causing financial harm is far more preferable to violence. Bankruptcy is a fate worse than death.
There is no fair way to ban "hate speech"!
We don’t have to go to outer space (or China) to find the fly in this ointment. When a campus starts trying to ban "every hateful thing", they have to deal with the reality that one man’s hate is another man’s identity! Do you tell the gays that they can’t lambast the Quran, or do you tell the Muslims that they can’t lambast the gays? Or do you ban both things and then everyone counts how many times you really went after one side or the other?
It’s all bogus. In saner times the ACLU went to court to secure the right of the KKK to march. Not because the KKK was an organization of geniuses, but because people in a free society, if their opinions actually matter, have a NEED to see that they are an organization of idiots. The more people are "protected" from hate speech, the more vulnerable they are to believe what it would have said.
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can you deactivate hotmail account
Nice try, scambot. How gullible do you think Techdirt users are?