adrian zenz is what interests you? they muzzled one of their senior-most legal academics, a distinguished (native) professor at one of their top universities. that's much more significant than 'omg they're being mean to an european academic'.
confucius institutes have been bullying academic opinion on western campuses/journals for well over a decade. pretty sure they've already renamed them to something else now to continue the same old shit.
Zenz's case warrants some attention because it's indicative of China's increasingly aggressive disinformation tactics abroad to protect their interests. That intellectuals have been persecuted domestically is sadly no news, but it's a good example of the increasing authoritarianism in the country.
The confucius institutes are indeed horrendous places.
yep, in particular with the legal academic i highlighted above, his long essay on the nature of xi jinping's rule (which i read and tried to absorb, half-successfully) was presented seriously like luther's 95 theses. very meticulous and analytical laying out of all the problems with the current CCP. could have been a serious watershed moment ... instead he was effectively disappeared. that, to me, was a sign that the CCP was no longer entertaining any sort of dialogue or brooking any argument even within the chinese elite/intelligentsia.
it's the putin model all the way from here to god know's what terminus.
It really makes me wonder what the future holds. On one hand I don't particularly expect China to become much more outwardly aggressive, on the other hand their grips on the world economy and manufacturing industries plus all the social control software that is being developed by them is of serious concern. There is a real chance of this being exported to the west, and Chinese manufactured tech devices are already an example in their use of hidden tracking & censorship tools, large unwarranted data transfers through networks unknown to users and consciously built-in vulnerabilities which are obvious ways for the Chinese government to keep open backdoors for spying and sabotage purposes.
It's all of this coupled with a tendency to revert into narcissistic authoritarian isolationism while the world is increasingly globalised that sparks a lot of worry. It's also incredibly difficult to get a picture of what decision-making at the top looks like there. The CCP & bureaucratic leadership are withdrawn and private to a point that it's not possible for outsiders to get a good glimpse of what's going on or what topics are discussed.
I also recently read an article that kept track of diplomatic visits to China v the US in the last 30 years:
i think you can half-forgive western institutions for welcoming confucius institutes, at least at first, in a spirit of liberal humanism and openness to new ideas. the notion that china, whilst joining the world market, might also synthesize with the western tradition in her universities, was obviously seductive. maybe academics and vice-chancellors are gullible fools, but c'mon, hardly discredits the 'rigour' of the ivy league, oxbridge or leading european research institutions.
evidently that all went south and the CIs were just a plant for CCP soft power. well, it wasn't always thus, let at least that be said.
aren't you perhaps just a little bit touchy about this because one of australia's biggest exports is literally chinese-student tuition fees, and your entire university sector has become fatally dependent on this cash-injection? don't project to the rest of the world. australian academia is just kitsch oxbridge anyway.
In an attempt to curb a surge in overdose deaths caused by increasingly potent street drugs, New York City will authorize two supervised injection sites in Manhattan to begin operating as soon as Tuesday.
Trained staff at two sites — in the neighborhoods of East Harlem and Washington Heights — will provide clean needles, administer naloxone to reverse overdoses and provide users with options for addiction treatment, city health officials said. Users will bring their own drugs.
New York, the country’s most populous city, will become the first U.S. city to open officially authorized injection sites — facilities that opponents view as magnets for drug abuse but proponents praise as providing a less punitive and more effective approach to addressing addiction.
More blue state insanity. The government will help you inject drugs but won't let you get a gun to defend yourself. /s
But seriously this makes me proud of NYC. Glad to live here than anywhere else.
They'd be angry at vaccine injection sites too, let's be honest. Maybe we should false advertise the covid vax as an inoculation against homosexuality.
the war on drugs has failed, and failed massively.
in the years where the war on drugs was being waged at its fiercest, cocaine harvesting/production increased in latin america, and sales increased in the USA and europe. making it a most-illegal drug did literally nothing to curb the market.
weed is now becoming legal. meanwhile half of america are hooked on perfectly legal prescription drugs, peddled by some of the richest families in the nation, who seemingly have the ear of every politiciian and adverts on every cable channel. but DRUGS ARE BAD MM'KAY.
hypocritical and nonsensical conservative attitudes towards drugs have made the entire situation measurably worse. literally the opposite of science-guided thinking or reasonable discourse. fire-n-brimstone sin talk has polluted the conversation and is needlessly extending human suffering and making a bad situation worse. conservatives, and in particular evangelicals, have pushed a fixable problem into the territory of a mad and self-destructive neurosis.
measurable lives ruined, wasted and lost. and yet people like dilbert still think it's working fine, ackshually. mostly because it excessively punishes those no-good blacks who need to be taught a harsh lesson to learn, anyway. or something.
lol it's literally a sickness. these people need help.
good job! you did real good!
the epic failure is literally even involved in other epic failures like 'the war on terror'. want to know who really won the war in afghanistan? heroin dealers.
but conservatives actually consider it 'winning' when they look at charts like this.
until their own sweet, unblemished, khaki-wearing children overdose on xanax or get addicted to heroin, of course.
fire-n-brimstone sin talk has polluted the conversation and is needlessly extending human suffering and making a bad situation worse. conservatives, and in particular evangelicals, have pushed a fixable problem into the territory of a mad and self-destructive neurosis.
measurable lives ruined, wasted and lost.
This is basically half of our problems in life. A good subset of our society wants everyone to collectively suffer. Especially the needy, the vulnerable, and children. Right wingers love school shootings.
cocaine is not responsible for the continual and vast rise in drug overdoses since 1980.
if you'll look at the chart, you'll see, for instance, cocaine overdoses were pretty much level for 20 years. during that time, the overdose rate skyrocketed.
amazing how you can't read a chart.
cocaine is bad for you but the growing cocaine market, and the gradual lowering of its price, is not responsible for the skyrocketing death rate. that's 100% opiate-family drugs. which, erm, can mostly be acquired from a pharmacist rather than a drug cartel.
go figure. you're the one with the nonsensical views on the 'war on drugs', not me. work it out.
But you said "it's relatively hard to overdose and die on cocaine" seems its easier than heroin.
What you need is a different chart.
Wars on lots of things don't succeed, doesn't mean they aren't worth fighting. Just because an angry and addled minority wants something doesn't mean its right either.
They'd be angry at vaccine injection sites too, let's be honest. Maybe we should false advertise the covid vax as an inoculation against homosexuality.
They will just start saving the vaccine actually makes you gay.
I read someone's file that said they have intermittent explosive disorder. The file also said the person wants to be a cop someday. After I read it I thought "some poor girl is going to get throttled by that dude someday". I saw a video online of the same person in a fist fight in the bathroom. They won. Good for them.
But you said "it's relatively hard to overdose and die on cocaine" seems its easier than heroin..
have you ever had any contact with drugs in your life?
heroin is much more addictive, much more dangerous, and has a much lower tolerance/lethal ratio for overdose.
you can take one injection of heroin, or one sniff of fentanyl, and you will die. unless you receive emergency care, immediately, you will die.
to overdose on cocaine your average body-weight person has to take about 3.5-4 grams. that’s an enormous amount of cocaine. you’d have to snort away for about 3 hours. you have to essentially give yourself a heart attack. yes, it takes a bit more application than ONE injection.
why do you persist in these conversations when you are so clueless? of course it takes more effort to overdose and die on cocaine.
there are way more casual cocaine users than heroin users. the death rate from heroin is not comparable. use your head for fuck’s sake.
mental help – maybe you'll need it now you're unemployed and have literally nothing in your life except to argue with approx. 4 people on the internet.
Wars on lots of things don't succeed, doesn't mean they aren't worth fighting.
lmFAO wtf. this isn't a marvel movie with a schmaltzy line delivered by chris hemsworth. this is a system that is grinding millions of people down, you fucking clown.
spoken like someone who has never been in a war in his life. the only truly wise and sagacious thing to say, in the face of overwhelming historical evidence, is that wars should be avoided and represent a massive failure of dialogue, policy, effort, cooperation, and basic fucking humanity.
what is your obsession with wars on china, wars on drugs, etc, when you're a little wuss?
