This is unbelievably gross. The right-wing government of Norway - richest country in Europe, recall - intends to criminalise giving money or any other kind of assistance to beggars. And this is pretty explicitly motivated by racial antipathy towards an 'influx' of Roma migrants. Local Newsweek
>>><<<
Thinking about the previous post... The 'Nordic model' is basically premised on maintaining a clear distinction between an ingroup - people who will get access to all kinds of nice welfare and social services - and an outgroup. You could argue that that's necessary for any welfare system, but there's definitely a dark side to it operating at the psychological level. It involves a certain willingness to draw a firm boundary and dismiss the needs of anyone thought of as being outside that line. Hence the poor treatment - often 'unbelievably poor', given our stereotype of 'nice' Nordic countries - of people in the outgroup: homeless people, sex workers, undocumented migrants, racial minorities, etc.
>>><<<
Interesting piece. It turns out much of the increase in prison population in the US since 1980 is due to prosecutors electing to level more serious charges at offenders than they used to.
"the real growth in the prison population comes from county-level district attorneys sending violent people to prison. And there’s a lot to be said for nonprison approaches to a lot of people who are in prison for violent crimes. But that’s a political issue that we haven’t even begun to address, in part because it’s politically scary." Slate
>>><<<
This piece doesn't relate that much to my own experience of Afrika Burn, since I've only ever been a casual attendee, not heavily involved with volunteering or management. Nevertheless, probably a worthwhile piece of criticism.
My own take on AB, incidentally, is that it's a pretty fun festival for the participants. Some people probably even have new experiences and learn something about themselves while they're there, which is obviously nice for them. But I don't think it's doing anything to change the world, and I think the most annoying thing about the whole scene is that many people imagine that they *are* changing the world for the better simply by showing up an doing a fun thing for themselves and their friends.
>>><<<
Sometimes I wonder why people agree to be profiled in rags like the Daily Mail, but with these two I reckon the sole motivation is to be like "Check out how cool we are and how awesome our life is"
>>><<<
This is pretty spot-on. A citizen's income paves the way to a different sort of economy and society, and needs to be sold as such. It's implications would be massive, and you can't just sell it as a fix to some specific problems in the function of the existing welfare state. Guardian
>>><<<
"The tourist attraction was also something of a non-starter because Manson believes he is immortal." Independent
>>><<<
This is dreadful. Also a reminder that anti-religious violence is definitely a thing, and it tends to be directed mainly at Muslims these days. Middle East Eye
>>><<<
[TW: sexual assault]
Very telling example of how the law and society conflates sex work with violence, to the detriment of everyone concerned. This woman, giving evidence, clearly describes being sexually assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He wanted to engage in "a specific act" and she responded by crying and “I showed my reticence with gestures … gestures that made myself understood". But "he smiled and went ahead anyway". And yet DSK is only being charged with "pimping". Consenting to one sort of sex act does not mean consent to *any* sex act! Whether money changes hands or not is utterly irrelevant! Guardian
>>><<<
The US government alone provides $70 million a year in funding to "anti-trafficking" organisations, including Julie Bindel's utterly shoddy "research" (mostly restatements of sex industry myths and misleading statistics that were already discredited some time ago). In contrast, ALL funding for sex worker rights organisation WORLDWIDE amounts to about €8 million a year. And yet Bindel describes these organisation as "well-funded" fronts for the "pimp lobby". Vice
>>><<<
"Eddie Redmayne is literally flawless in this film. Eddie Redmayne knows Jupiter Ascending is bad. Eddie Redmayne knows this perhaps better than anyone else in our solar system, and he does what needs to be done. He swooshes around without a shirt but with a black cape for two hours, speaking only in whispers except for the very occasional ridiculous outburst. He is so over-the-top I am not sure where the top even is anymore. He should win an Oscar." The Mary Sue
>>><<<
Yeah, this is totally reasonable and proportionate - sending in *riot police* to catch people suspected of benefit fraud. Funny how you never see these aggressive tactics directed at all those bankers and company CEOs who commit multi-million pound white collar crimes. Croydon Advertiser
>>><<<
So this is obviously shocking:
"The survey, also carried out in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Italy and Norway found that teenage girls in England reported the highest rates of sexual coercion, with about one in five (22%) saying they had suffered physical violence or intimidation from boyfriends, including slapping, punching, strangling and being beaten with an object."
But in this report, they feel the need to mention that "a high proportion of teenage boys regularly viewed pornography", as if these are obviously related. A high proportion of teenage boys also play football. If you're going to draw a causal connection between two things, you've got to do better than appealing to moralistic handwringing Guardian
>>><<<
"At around midnight, [Lee Chang-hyun] goes online with a couple of friends and performs his meal, spicy raw squid one day, crab the next. "Perform" is the right word. He is extravagant in his gestures, flaunting the food to his computer camera to tantalise the viewers. He eats noisily and that's part of the show. He's invested in a good microphone to capture the full crunch and slurp.
This is not a private affair. Some 10,000 people watch him eating per day, he says. They send a constant stream of messages to his computer and he responds verbally (by talking) and orally (by eating, very visibly and noisily)." BBC
>>><<<
[TW: sexual assault]
The Occidental case is very complicated and definitely interesting from a legal perspective. But I have my doubts by how much attention it's drawing. I think the vast majority of sexual assault cases are much more straightforward, and we risk undermining genuine progress by focusing on one particular case where the new regulations have *arguably* produced a paradoxical result. Any thoughts appreciated. Slate
>>><<<
In light of the mooted (but thankfully unsuccessful) ban on begging, it's noteworthy that the homeless population in Norway numbers only about 1000 (the police estimate 2000, a number that most authorities consider to be inflated. As Tyler Cowen remarks, this is a society that is "not very good at processing discord"
Incidentally, if you recall the debate before the French ban on burqas and niqabs, it emerged there that only about 2000 women living in France at the time actually wore these types of veil (out of a Muslim population of around 5-6 million)
In both cases, it's not so much the scale of the "problem", but so much as how the visible existence of a certain kind of person makes the majority *feel*
>>><<<
South African democracy in action.
>>><<<
"The global supply chain that brings us those tablets and phones, and pretty much everything else from our clothes and food to our toys and souvenirs, is nothing short of a moon shot itself – a vast, unprecedented engineering solution to a truly astronomical logistics problem. The fact that it's hidden from most people's sight, and that it has become so utterly reliable and efficient to the point of transparency, doesn't make it any less of an achievement of human technical endeavour." BBC
>>><<<
"With the Arbitration Committee opting only to ban the one woman in the dispute despite her behavior being no worse than that of the men, it’s hard not to see this as a setback to Wikipedia’s efforts to rectify its massive gender gap." Slate
>>><<<
Gah, why is South African immigration policy so bizarre and xenophobic!?!?!
"a “uni-visa” system for the 15 countries of the Southern African Development Community, a bloc dominated by South Africa, is nowhere near to being ready, despite having been mooted in 1998. One big sticking point has been South Africa’s fear of a deluge of illegal immigrants." Economist
>>><<<
Thinking about the previous post... The 'Nordic model' is basically premised on maintaining a clear distinction between an ingroup - people who will get access to all kinds of nice welfare and social services - and an outgroup. You could argue that that's necessary for any welfare system, but there's definitely a dark side to it operating at the psychological level. It involves a certain willingness to draw a firm boundary and dismiss the needs of anyone thought of as being outside that line. Hence the poor treatment - often 'unbelievably poor', given our stereotype of 'nice' Nordic countries - of people in the outgroup: homeless people, sex workers, undocumented migrants, racial minorities, etc.
>>><<<
Interesting piece. It turns out much of the increase in prison population in the US since 1980 is due to prosecutors electing to level more serious charges at offenders than they used to.
"the real growth in the prison population comes from county-level district attorneys sending violent people to prison. And there’s a lot to be said for nonprison approaches to a lot of people who are in prison for violent crimes. But that’s a political issue that we haven’t even begun to address, in part because it’s politically scary." Slate
>>><<<
This piece doesn't relate that much to my own experience of Afrika Burn, since I've only ever been a casual attendee, not heavily involved with volunteering or management. Nevertheless, probably a worthwhile piece of criticism.
My own take on AB, incidentally, is that it's a pretty fun festival for the participants. Some people probably even have new experiences and learn something about themselves while they're there, which is obviously nice for them. But I don't think it's doing anything to change the world, and I think the most annoying thing about the whole scene is that many people imagine that they *are* changing the world for the better simply by showing up an doing a fun thing for themselves and their friends.
>>><<<
Sometimes I wonder why people agree to be profiled in rags like the Daily Mail, but with these two I reckon the sole motivation is to be like "Check out how cool we are and how awesome our life is"
>>><<<
This is pretty spot-on. A citizen's income paves the way to a different sort of economy and society, and needs to be sold as such. It's implications would be massive, and you can't just sell it as a fix to some specific problems in the function of the existing welfare state. Guardian
>>><<<
"The tourist attraction was also something of a non-starter because Manson believes he is immortal." Independent
>>><<<
This is dreadful. Also a reminder that anti-religious violence is definitely a thing, and it tends to be directed mainly at Muslims these days. Middle East Eye
>>><<<
[TW: sexual assault]
Very telling example of how the law and society conflates sex work with violence, to the detriment of everyone concerned. This woman, giving evidence, clearly describes being sexually assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He wanted to engage in "a specific act" and she responded by crying and “I showed my reticence with gestures … gestures that made myself understood". But "he smiled and went ahead anyway". And yet DSK is only being charged with "pimping". Consenting to one sort of sex act does not mean consent to *any* sex act! Whether money changes hands or not is utterly irrelevant! Guardian
>>><<<
The US government alone provides $70 million a year in funding to "anti-trafficking" organisations, including Julie Bindel's utterly shoddy "research" (mostly restatements of sex industry myths and misleading statistics that were already discredited some time ago). In contrast, ALL funding for sex worker rights organisation WORLDWIDE amounts to about €8 million a year. And yet Bindel describes these organisation as "well-funded" fronts for the "pimp lobby". Vice
>>><<<
"Eddie Redmayne is literally flawless in this film. Eddie Redmayne knows Jupiter Ascending is bad. Eddie Redmayne knows this perhaps better than anyone else in our solar system, and he does what needs to be done. He swooshes around without a shirt but with a black cape for two hours, speaking only in whispers except for the very occasional ridiculous outburst. He is so over-the-top I am not sure where the top even is anymore. He should win an Oscar." The Mary Sue
>>><<<
Yeah, this is totally reasonable and proportionate - sending in *riot police* to catch people suspected of benefit fraud. Funny how you never see these aggressive tactics directed at all those bankers and company CEOs who commit multi-million pound white collar crimes. Croydon Advertiser
>>><<<
So this is obviously shocking:
"The survey, also carried out in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Italy and Norway found that teenage girls in England reported the highest rates of sexual coercion, with about one in five (22%) saying they had suffered physical violence or intimidation from boyfriends, including slapping, punching, strangling and being beaten with an object."
But in this report, they feel the need to mention that "a high proportion of teenage boys regularly viewed pornography", as if these are obviously related. A high proportion of teenage boys also play football. If you're going to draw a causal connection between two things, you've got to do better than appealing to moralistic handwringing Guardian
>>><<<
"At around midnight, [Lee Chang-hyun] goes online with a couple of friends and performs his meal, spicy raw squid one day, crab the next. "Perform" is the right word. He is extravagant in his gestures, flaunting the food to his computer camera to tantalise the viewers. He eats noisily and that's part of the show. He's invested in a good microphone to capture the full crunch and slurp.
This is not a private affair. Some 10,000 people watch him eating per day, he says. They send a constant stream of messages to his computer and he responds verbally (by talking) and orally (by eating, very visibly and noisily)." BBC
>>><<<
[TW: sexual assault]
The Occidental case is very complicated and definitely interesting from a legal perspective. But I have my doubts by how much attention it's drawing. I think the vast majority of sexual assault cases are much more straightforward, and we risk undermining genuine progress by focusing on one particular case where the new regulations have *arguably* produced a paradoxical result. Any thoughts appreciated. Slate
>>><<<
In light of the mooted (but thankfully unsuccessful) ban on begging, it's noteworthy that the homeless population in Norway numbers only about 1000 (the police estimate 2000, a number that most authorities consider to be inflated. As Tyler Cowen remarks, this is a society that is "not very good at processing discord"
Incidentally, if you recall the debate before the French ban on burqas and niqabs, it emerged there that only about 2000 women living in France at the time actually wore these types of veil (out of a Muslim population of around 5-6 million)
In both cases, it's not so much the scale of the "problem", but so much as how the visible existence of a certain kind of person makes the majority *feel*
>>><<<
South African democracy in action.
>>><<<
"The global supply chain that brings us those tablets and phones, and pretty much everything else from our clothes and food to our toys and souvenirs, is nothing short of a moon shot itself – a vast, unprecedented engineering solution to a truly astronomical logistics problem. The fact that it's hidden from most people's sight, and that it has become so utterly reliable and efficient to the point of transparency, doesn't make it any less of an achievement of human technical endeavour." BBC
>>><<<
"With the Arbitration Committee opting only to ban the one woman in the dispute despite her behavior being no worse than that of the men, it’s hard not to see this as a setback to Wikipedia’s efforts to rectify its massive gender gap." Slate
>>><<<
Gah, why is South African immigration policy so bizarre and xenophobic!?!?!
"a “uni-visa” system for the 15 countries of the Southern African Development Community, a bloc dominated by South Africa, is nowhere near to being ready, despite having been mooted in 1998. One big sticking point has been South Africa’s fear of a deluge of illegal immigrants." Economist
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