14 March 2017
RSA: Utopia for Realists | Rutger Bregman
BuzzFeed: This Is What Happens To Women’s Rights When The Far-Right Takes Over
But
when it came to something as sensitive as changing the abortion law, a
democratic imprimatur was important. So conservative groups joined
forces, consulted with PiS, and brought the ban to legislators as a
“citizens’ initiative” — not the pet project of one parliamentarian but
an idea backed by nearly half a million signatures, most of them
collected after Sunday mass. [...]
Veteran protesters hoped they might draw a couple thousand people out
on the streets of Warsaw over the course of the day. Government
officials scoffed at the idea before it even began. “Let them play,”
Poland’s foreign minister said.
Play
they did. An estimated 30,000 women flooded the streets of the capital,
forcing buses and cars into U-turns. “The whole day, Warsaw was
blocked,” remembered Krystyna Kacpura, director of the Federation for
Women and Family Planning, a non-governmental organization in Warsaw. [...]
The new law takes a soft touch to the most heated part of Poland’s
abortion debate: whether women should be allowed to abort “imperfect”
pregnancies. Abortion opponents call this part of the law the “eugenic
exception,” which elicits memories of Poland’s painful past: Eugenics
was a pseudoscience, developed in the United States and Great Britain,
that supposed a racial hierarchy among the world’s populations. It
helped underpin the Nazi belief in “Aryan” superiority, a belief that
led to a mass sterilization campaign in the early days of Nazism and,
eventually, to the murder of “inferior peoples,” especially Jews, in the
Nazi death camps of eastern Poland. [...]
Ordo Iuris, the Catholic think tank that drafted the ban, pushes
“pro-life” logic a step further — by borrowing liberal human rights
rhetoric and repurposing it for a fight against abortion. For Ordo
Iuris, banning abortion isn’t just about protecting life; it’s about
“the principle of equality before the law.” If society doesn’t tolerate
discrimination against people because of age or disability, the group
argues, why should society let pregnant mothers “discriminate” against
their own fetuses? From this perspective, an abortion ban is actually
the logical conclusion of a liberal values system. As Ordo
Iuris’s website puts it, banning abortion is really just eliminating
“legal discrimination against people in their prenatal period of
development.”
The Atlantic: The Many Mysteries of Uranus
In fact, Uranus has been breaking the mold as long as we’ve known about
it. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are all easily visible to
the naked eye; humans have been gazing at those planets for millennia,
but Uranus was the first planet discovered by modern astronomy. It’s so
far away, and its movement so slow, that it was originally thought to be
a star until Sir William Herschel revealed its planetary nature in
1781. Less than a decade later, it received a namesake chemical element:
uranium, discovered in 1789. (Meanwhile, Neptune and Pluto didn’t make
it into the periodic table for another 150 years.)
The more astronomers studied this new planet, the clearer it became that
it was an odd one. Consider the seasons on a world turned sideways:
Summer on Uranus is two decades of non-stop sunlight, and winter is an
equal amount of time spent in total darkness, facing the cold void of
distant space. Day and night only exist during spring and fall, where
they cycle every 17 hours. Some have suggested that the planet was
knocked askew by a gravitational tug-of-war with a large moon that has
since been lost; others have proposed that it was the result of a
collision with a massive object (much larger than Earth), or even
multiple collisions.[...]
Perhaps Uranus wouldn’t be quite so mysterious if more spacecraft
stopped by—but while Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn seem to receive a
constant stream of high-tech fan-mail from Earth, Uranus has only been
visited once. In 1986, Voyager 2 swung by on its way into deep space. It
was the first and so far the only mission to get an up-close view of
Uranus, and what the probe saw was, at first glance, dull. Voyager 2
observed little atmospheric activity, and few cloud formations. For a
moment, it seemed the icy clouds held little of interest. But it’s been
30 years since the Voyager fly-by, and we’re wiser now.
Salon: We picked the wrong billionaire: The case for Mark Zuckerberg 2020
Many recent news reports suggest that
Zuck is in the running. There’s convincing evidence. He has said he
will visit all 50 states this year. He hired former Obama campaign wiz
David Plouffe to run policy and advocacy at the Chan Zuckerberg
Initiative. He’s been more politically active in recent years,
especially on the issue of immigration, through his lobbyist group
FWD.us. He’s backing away from atheism. Of course, the most compelling
evidence is the fact that he’s denied being interested in the job, writing a flat out “No” to BuzzFeed last month in an email
exchange. Denial is the ultimate baller politician move — with bonus
points if he changes his mind in a couple years after praying about it.
His vision for an interconnected earth isn’t necessarily a bad one. It’s really still in a nascent phase, from a historical perspective. So, there’s much to learn about how his business and philanthropy and political efforts will impact society. Whether Zuck launches a campaign or not, he’ll still be in a position of enormous power and he won’t be perfect. But as the de facto figurehead of the next generation, he and his work could mature into something profound and healing for the whole planet along the likes of something we’ve never seen before. If he ran for president and won, it could usher in the millennial era and legitimize it at the institutional level, clearing a path for peers to follow. It would draw a line in the sand between the new and old worlds. [...]
When I think about the politicians likely to get in on the 2020 race, I
don’t know that I see anyone other than Zuck who could reset the Obama
Era order — or actually innovate beyond it by bridging the gap between
the lightning pace of technological change and bureaucracy. It is
essential to do the work of ending oppression, but it might be easier to
dismantle oppressive institutions under a millennial who has already
successfully dismantled institutions. Sure, he’s a privileged Ivy League
white guy and many of us want that era of dominance to be over, but
it’s hard to argue that he’s actively looking to reinforce that legacy.
If anything, while at times flawed in his logic and in need of
education, he believes he is creating empathy at the local and global
level — and there is ample evidence that it’s working. President
Zuckerberg feels like more of an extension of what President Obama’s
coalition was building than what Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or
John Kasich ever offered. I love Deval Patrick, for example, but could
he halt this crazy train like Mark Zuckerberg might?
The News Lens: Why Anyone Who Cares About Taiwan Should Watch 'A City of Sadness'
The 228 Incident
— a 1947 uprising of native Taiwanese against Chinese Nationalist (KMT)
authorities that came to the island after WWII — is one of Taiwan’s
most important historical events. During 228, KMT troops killed between
18,000 and 28,000 Taiwanese, ushering in a period of repression known as
the White Terror that lasted until 1987 and defined Taiwan’s political landscape.
"A
City of Sadness" is the first movie to address the 228 Incident. When
the movie came out, the KMT was still in power, and nobody had been
allowed to talk publicly about 228 for 40 years — much less make a movie
about it. [...]
Though “A City of Sadness” was the first film to ever depict 228, it
does so in a rather indirect way. The film constantly implies that
violence is happening, but never shows it in the foreground. For
example, in one scene, a character languishes in prison and his
cellmates are taken out to be shot — but the actual execution takes
place offscreen. [...]
This shows that while “A City of Sadness” highlights the different
groups that make up contemporary Taiwanese society, it also teaches us
that these groups aren’t absolutes. Just because someone’s a mainlander
doesn’t mean they can’t be horrified about 228; and just because someone
is native Taiwanese doesn’t mean they automatically support Taiwan
independence. Whatever being “Taiwanese” is, it’s much more complex.
The Guardian: Scotland is heading for a second independence poll. Is a Yes vote any more likely?
But Brexit is the recurring theme. Scots voted 62% in favour of
remaining in the European Union. Rebecca, a 24-year-old administrator,
voted a “definite No” to independence last time, in part because of
fears about being excluded from the EU. She thinks she would vote Yes
this time “because I would not be living in the EU anyway” and an
independent Scotland offers the prospect of staying in the EU. [...]
Pringle echoed Salmond’s analysis, saying: “At the start of the last
referendum, independence support was in the low 30s. This time around –
before any campaigning in favour and having soaked up a lot of attacks
against – Yes starts at perhaps 50%, according to the latest poll. That
must be a very attractive prospect for Nicola Sturgeon, believing that a
campaign can push that support further.”
Sturgeon, who polls suggest is much more popular than Salmond – which
could be another plus in a referendum campaign – could begin a move
towards a referendum when she addresses the SNP spring conference in
Aberdeen next weekend on 17 March. The timing of any announcement is
partly dependent on events elsewhere, mainly at Westminster, such as
when May triggers article 50. [...]
Not wanting to fight another referendum when the same issues would rise
again, the SNP set up a commission, headed by one of its former Holyrood
MSPs, Andrew Wilson, to prepare an alternate economic case. Wilson, an
economist, has stripped North Sea oil out of his projections. The
argument now is that Scotland, like other small countries which have no
oil, can still prosper.
Business Insider: 22 incredible candid photos show life in Tokyo's 'golden 60s' and 70s
During this time of economic prosperity, Japan was investing heavily in infrastructure and undergoing deep social change.
Historian, Alexandra Munroe,
described the period as "undoubtedly the most creative outburst of
anarchistic, subversive and riotous tendencies in the history of modern
Japanese culture."
To sum up, this was an incredibly vibrant, tumultuous time
to be in Japan — and it was all captured beautifully on camera.
Deutsche Welle: Hate speech Myanmar monk banned from preaching by Buddhist council
A committee from Myanmar's Buddhist authority, which includes the
country's 47 most senior monks, confirmed the ban in a statement on
Saturday.
The local Irrawaddy news site said the decision, which
came into effect on Friday and lasts for 12 months, was intended to
prevent monk Ashin Wirathu from spreading hate speech. [...]
Wirathu is a member of the 969 Movement, an Islamophobic nationalist
group of Buddhists known for verbally attacking Muslims in a majority
Buddhist country where many worry about Islamic encroachment.
The digits 969 are said to symbolize the virtues of Buddha, Buddhist practices and the Buddhist community.
The monk is also linked to another nationalist group, Ma Ba Tha, which
is behind the so-called race and religion protection laws, which human
rights watchdogs see as a direct attack on religious minorities in
Myanmar, also known as Burma.
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