#Raffi Khatchadourian, "Ghost Walls," The New Yorker, April 12, 2021. - "As he, [Xi-Jinping], cleared away the obstacles to life long rule, he eventually subjected more than a million government officials to punishments that ranged from censure to execution. Communist theoreticians long debated the role that nationalities should pay in the march to utopia... ." "Xinjiang's insurgents had proved unable to gather many adherents; locals favored the Sufi tradition of Islam which emphasizes mysticism, not politics." "He [Chen Quanguo, a Party secretary] dispatched more than twenty thousand Communist party cadres into villages and rural monasteries, to propagandize, and to surveil."
"In 2005, the Chinese government began pacing surveillance cameras throughout the country, in a projcct called Project Skynet. After Xi Jinping came to power, China rolled out an enhanced version, Sharp Eyes, envisioned as a system of half a billion cameras that were 'omnipresent, fully networked, always on, and fully controllable.' "
"About twenty-five million live in Xinjiang -- less than two per cent of China's population -- but, according to an assessment based on government data, the end of 2017, the region was responsible for a fifth of all arrests in the country." "Chen Quanguo's crackdown was aimed at a single goal: moving a large percentage of Xinjiang's population into an archipelago of fortified camps for political reeducation." "Xinping had compared separation and radical Islam to a disease."
In a typical cell, the "doors were chained to their frames and could not be opened more than a foot; detainees had to shimmy through." In the cell of a detainee named Sabit, "five bunk beds were crammed into a twelve-by-fifteen-foot space, with three cameras and a microphone hanging from the ceiling."
"As a government document made clear, reeducation was intended to sever people from their native cultures" 'Break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins.' " "Every morning they had to stand and proclaim their fealty to the state: 'Ardently love the Chinese Communist Party! Ardently love the great motherland! Ardently love the Chinese people! Ardently love socialism with Chinese characteristics!"
"Adrian Zenc, an independent academic who has unearthed troves of government documents on Chen's crackdown, estimated that there were as many as a million people in the camps -- a statistic echoed by the United Nations and others." "In the year that Sabit had been confined, Chen Quanguo was transforming Xinjiang. Cherished symbols of Muslim heritage were systematically targeted for destruction. Experts estimate that, since 2017, some sixteen thousand mosques have been razed or damaged, with minarets pulled down, and decorative features scrubbed away or painted over."
"As a recent Freedom House report notes, 'China conducts the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression in the world. It's tactics have ranged from digital intimidation and threats of lawsuits, to unlawful deportations.' "
#Channing Gerand Joseph, "Media Monuments and Hooded Headlines," The Nation, 5.3 - 10.2021. - "Two decades into the 21st century, more than a century and a half since the legal abolition of slavery, and other forms of racist terror -- much of it promoted and perpetuated by the news media." "Papers not only reported of lynchings in a manner that implied or explicitly indicated approval, they even published ads from racial terror groups." "American papers typically assumed that the victims of lynchings were guilty and deserved their fates."
" 'In practice, lynchers enjoyed immunity from state or local prosecution,' David Garland, a professor of sociology at New York University wrote in 2005,' " "Lynching 'was usually regarded with broad approval by large sections of the communities in which the lynchings occurred, and it was tolerated (and often applauded) by local politicians and law officials' ".
#John Seabrook, "Scooter City," The New Yorker," April 26 & May 3, 2021. - "New York also engineered and built a subway system, above ground and below ground, which before the COVID- 19 pandemic hit, carried five and a half million riders every week day -- a landmark of American people -- movings the city may never reach again if remote work is here to stay." "Transportation wonks hailed scooter-sharing as the best solution to their 'last closest mile' problem." The N.Y.P.D. issued numerous citations for bike riders, and sometimes took away bikes. "The lockdowns in the face of the pandemic brought scooter-mania to an abrupt halt."
"In the U.S., sixty per cent of all car trips are less than six miles. "If cities are going to meet the zero-emission goals they've set, and if automakers like Ford and G.M. are going to electrify their fleets by 2030, respectively, as they pledged, automobiles will have to become smaller, lighter, and more efficient, given the limits of lithium-ion-battery technology."
"In 2019, cars and trucks killed twenty-nine cyclists in New York City, a twenty-year high." "Ridership on the subway is still at only thirty-five per cent of its pre-pandemic levels; bus ridership is at about fifty per cent in NYC."
#Ed Caesar, "Rocket Men," The New Yorker, April 26 & May 3, 2021. - "Only Pyongyeng, the capital, emits a recognizably modern glow. The dark country is one of the last nominally Communist nations in the word -- a Stalinist personality cult centered on Kim Jong Un, the peevish, ruthless scion of the dynasty that has ruled North Korea since 1948, after the peninsula was divided."
"A tiny fraction of one per cent of North Koreans has access to the Internet." North Korea, moreover, is the only nation in the world whose government is known to conduct nakedly criminal hacking for monetary gain." According to the U.N., many of the funds stolen by North Korea hackers are spent on the Korean Peoples' Army's weapons program, including the development of nuclear weapons."
"On February 4, 2016, the U.S. Federal Reserve received instructions from Bangladesh to make dozens of payouts, totaling nearly a billion dollars, to various accounts including one in Sri Lanka and four in the Philippines."
"The North Korean regime has long been considered a fundamentally criminal enterprise." "According to many estimates, about seven thousand North Koreans work in the country's cyber program. The employees are split between the General Staff Department of the military, which assists the Army's operations, and the Reconnaissance General Bureau." "North Korean hackers have conducted operations in more than a hundred and fifty countries."
#Elie Mystal, "Racism Never Sleeps," The Nation, 5. 17 - 24.2021. - "As always, white supremacists are pretty sure Black people should just be happy to be here, and any one of us who is not smiling and thankful under the yoke of unruly white rule is a dangerous Negro who should go back somewhere else." "That's the relentless of white supremacy. Every trauma must be dissected, every pain must be justified, and the prevailing white majority claims the sole right to determine whether those pains and traumas are legitimate, as if white people are the sovereigns of reality itself." "Black people are always on trial. We are always being policed: in how we fight, how we mourn, and how we die."
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