France saw its largest protest so far against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform on Thursday, with more than a million people taking to the streets across the country. The gatherings started peacefully, but were marred by violence in Paris and several other cities, as police used batons, tear gas and water cannons to disperse rioters, who hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers, set up barricades, and vandalised public property. The French Interior Ministry said 1.089 million people took part in the ninth nationwide rally against the government’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. According to official data, attendance doubled compared to March 15, the previous day of protests. The CGT confederation of trade unions claimed that the number of demonstrators on Thursday was far higher, totalling 3.5 million.
Violence and arrests Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday morning that 457 people were arrested across the country, most of them in Paris, where 903 fires were lit on the streets. The scuffles saw 441 police officers injured, he said. There were reportedly dozens of wounded among the demonstrators, including a woman, who lost a thumb in the town of Rouen in Normandy. In his comments late on Thursday, Darmanin said the damage caused by the riots was more significant than on previous days. He singled out incidents in Bordeaux, where the entrance to the city hall was set on fire, and Lorient, where a police station was targeted. The minister blamed the chaos on some 1,500 “thugs, often from the far left, who want to bring down the state and kill police officers.” Those people are already known to law enforcement, he added. However, the deputy secretary general of the CFDT union, Marylise Leon, insisted that the “responsibility for this explosive situation lies not with the unions, but with the government.” The unrest is a result of “the falsehoods expressed by the president and his incomprehensible stubbornness,” she said. When is the next protest? The unions have called for the next – tenth – day of nationwide strikes and rallies against the pension reform to be held on Tuesday, March 28. The development could potentially distrupt a planned visit by Britain’s King Charles III, who is scheduled to travel to Bordeaux by train on that day. Speaking about future protests, which have been building momentum since January, Leon claimed that “the powerful social rejection of this project is legitimate and its expression must continue.” Pension reform Thursday’s huge turnout follows a decision by Macron’s government earlier this week to use executive privilege to pass the pension reform bill without a parliamentary vote. Despite fervent opposition and calls to resign, the president is insisting on raising the retirement age to 64 by the end of the year. He argues that failure to do so will cause the entire French pension system to collapse. Macron, whose ratings have slumped to below 30% since the onset of the crisis, said on Wednesday that he would always choose the future of the nation over short-term opinion polls, pledging: “If it is necessary to accept unpopularity today, I will accept it.” However, trade unions insist that the reform is “unfair” and mainly harms low-skilled workers with physically draining jobs and women with interrupted careers. One of attendees at Thursday’s rally claimed Macron’s plan was “a death sentence” for him.
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Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has issued a response to the recently leaked ‘Twitter Files’, admitting to a host of major mistakes during his time as chief executive, while warning against “centralized control” of the internet by governments and corporations. The tech entrepreneur addressed the leaked internal documents in a Tuesday blog post, acknowledging that Twitter failed to uphold its guiding principles near the end of his tenure, and that he “completely gave up” on his own vision for the site after “activist” investors bought into the company sometime in 2020. Though he did not elaborate on the new investors or how they might have swayed the platform, Dorsey said Twitter’s focus on controlling public dialogue was ultimately one of its greatest errors. He cited the decision to permanently suspend President Donald Trump in the wake of the riot at the US Capitol in January 2021, saying it was “the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society.”“The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves,” he said. “This burdened the company with too much power, and opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets). I generally think companies have become far too powerful, and that became completely clear to me with our suspension of Trump’s account.”
Dorsey was reportedly on vacation at the time of the Trump ban and had delegated decision-making to executives Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde – as revealed in the Twitter Files – but nonetheless said he bears sole blame for the errors in judgment. “The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and [don’t] solve anything. If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof,” he continued, also insisting “there was no ill intent or hidden agendas” behind Twitter’s more contentious decisions and that the company “acted according to the best information we had at the time.” Tuesday’s blog post also included a lengthy section warning of “centralized” power over the internet, stating that social media platforms should remain “resilient to corporate and government control” while suggesting Twitter had failed to do so under his watch. The former CEO, who stepped down from the role in November 2021, went on to say that he welcomes the “fresh reset” brought by Twitter’s new owner, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, expressing hopes that the site will become “uncomfortably transparent.” However, he argued that the Twitter Files should have been released “Wikileaks-style,” or in full, rather than being leaked to select journalists by the site’s new management. Spearheaded by reporters Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, the documents have been published on a rolling basis with Musk’s blessing, shedding light on a number of controversial decisions made by the company. Five installments have gone public so far, including material surrounding Trump’s suspension, Twitter’s close cooperation with US intelligence agencies, the practice of shadow banning, as well as a site-wide ban on a New York Post report about the foreign business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden. An Iranian football player was reported to face a death sentence for "campaigning for women's rights" in his country, as the FIFPRO World Players' Union on Tuesday asked Tehran to lift his penalty."FIFPRO is shocked and sickened by reports that professional footballer Amir Nasr-Azadani faces execution in Iran after campaigning for women's rights and basic freedom in his country," the union said on Twitter.
"We stand in solidarity with Amir and call for the immediate removal of his punishment," it added. FIFPRO is a global union for professional football players to defend their rights. Iran has been rocked by protests since mid-September after the custodial death of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the country's morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic dress code. The country has been dealing with protesters in a very hard way to deter them, punishing those who campaigned for women's rights and freedom. Nasr-Azadani, 26, is among them. Iran on Monday executed the second person convicted over the killing of two security personnel in the northeastern city of Mashhad in November amid months-long ongoing protests across the country. Majid Reza Rahnavard, 23, was hanged in public in his hometown Mashhad in the wee hours of Monday on charges of "moharebeh" (waging war against God), judiciary-affiliated Mizan News Agency said. Last week, Iran executed Mohsen Shikari for "threatening citizens with a cold weapon and injuring a security guard" during protests in the Sattar Khan neighborhood of west Tehran. In the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the Iranian national team refused to sing their national anthem before their match against England to protest Amini's death. Iran were eliminated in the group stage in Qatar 2022 where they played against England, the US, and Wales. A post on Presskit Facebook page announces that Julian Assange’s defence has filed an appeal against the UK to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to prevent his extradition to the US, which was authorised in June by then British Home Secretary Priti Patel. An ECHR ruling could order the extradition to be blocked.
Assange, 51, is wanted by U.S. authorities on 18 counts, including one under a spying act, relating to WikiLeaks' release of vast troves of confidential U.S. military records and diplomatic cables which Washington said had put lives in danger. The United States launched at least 251 military interventions between 1991 and 2022. This is according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, a US government institution that compiles information on behalf of Congress. The report documented another 218 US military interventions between 1798 and 1990. That makes for a total of 469 US military interventions since 1798 that have been acknowledged by the Congress.This data was published on March 8, 2022 by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), in a document titled “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2022.” The list of countries targeted by the US military includes the vast majority of the nations on Earth, including almost every single country in Latin America and the Caribbean and most of the African continent. From the beginning of 1991 to the beginning of 2004, the US military launched 100 interventions, according to CRS. The report shows that, since the end of the first cold war in 1991, at the moment of US unipolar hegemony, the number of Washington’s military interventions abroad substantially increased. Of the total 469 documented foreign military interventions, the Congressional Research Service noted that the US government only formally declared war 11 times, in just five separate wars. The data exclude the independence war been US settlers and the British empire, any military deployments between 1776 and 1798, and the US Civil War. It is important to stress that all of these numbers are conservative estimates, because they do not include US special operations, covert actions, or domestic deployments. The report likewise excludes the deployment of the US military forces against Indigenous peoples, when they were systematically ethnically cleansed in the violent process of westward settler-colonial expansion. CRS acknowledged that it left out the “continual use of U.S. military units in the exploration, settlement, and pacification of the western part of the United States.” The Military Intervention Project at Tufts University’s Center for Strategic Studies has documented even more foreign meddling. “The US has undertaken over 500 international military interventions since 1776, with nearly 60% undertaken between 1950 and 2017,” the project wrote. “What’s more, over one-third of these missions occurred after 1999.” The Military Intervention Project added: “With the end of the Cold War era, we would expect the US to decrease its military interventions abroad, assuming lower threats and interests at stake. But these patterns reveal the opposite – the US has increased its military involvements abroad.”
It comes just days before the Communist Party's National Congress, which only occurs every five years. A banner was unfurled on Sitong Bridge in the Chinese capital's Haidian district, brandishing the words: "We need food, not COVID tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns," in reference to China's strict zero-COVID policy.
"We want dignity, not lies. We need reform, no cultural revolution," the white banner continued in red letters. "We want to vote, not a leader. Don't be slaves, be citizens." 'Dictator Xi Jinping' heard on a megaphone Over a megaphone, a voice could be heard demanding: "Oust dictator Xi Jinping," according to footage circulating on social media. Smoke was also set off at the scene of the protest, and a scorched pavement could be seen from the same location later on Thursday. According to news agency dpa, police could also be seen taking one person into custody and loading him into a van while the banner was removed. Shortly after the protest, the search term "Sitong Bridge" was blocked on the Chinese short message service Weibo. The incidents come as members of the country’s ruling Communist Party gather for a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle that begins Sunday. At the meeting, Xi is poised to tighten his grip as China's most powerful leader in decades by securing a third leadership term. We'll be fighting in the streets With our children at our feet And the morals that they worship will be gone And the men who spurred us on Sit in judgement of all wrong They decide and the shotgun sings the song I'll tip my hat to the new Constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again A change, it had to come We knew it all along We were liberated from the fold, that's all And the world looks just the same And history ain't changed 'Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war I'll tip my hat to the new Constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again, no, no I'll move myself and my family aside If we happen to be left half-alive I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky For I know that the hypnotized never lie Do you? Yeah There's nothing in the street Looks any different to me And the slogans are effaced, by-the-bye And the parting on the left Is now parting on the right And the beards have all grown longer overnight I'll tip my hat to the new Constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again Don't get fooled again, no, no Yeah Meet the new boss Same as the old boss © The Who
Fender has reportedly made over 300 employees at its California operation redundant, with the layoffs including everyone from production line workers to senior management positions. According to YouTuber Dylan Mckerchie – AKA Dylan Talks Tone – a source stated that the workers making up the “entire afternoon shift” of Fender’s Corona, California factory were laid off, amounting to around 300 people – including the plant manager and assistant manager, and a number of the quality control team. This, Dylan states, reduces Fender’s production capacity by between 200-250 instruments a day.
Mckerchie states that the employees “Did not get some fluffy email or severance package” – for the most part receiving just a few days extra pay. The layoffs don’t seem to be limited to the factory floor, either, with Mckerchie the vice president of design for EVH and Charvel has been let go, alongside Brian Swerdfeger. Swerdfeger was Fender’s vice president of research and design, and the spearheaded the design of the Acoustasonic range.Additionally, several other former employees, with roles ranging from graphic designers, recruiters and communications managers, have taken to LinkedIn in recent days to share the news of their terminations. “There are days that you always fear will come,” wrote one employee, “and today was mine. This morning I was laid off from my dream company, losing a team of remarkable people and a community I was honoured to be a part of.” On the Fender website’s careers page, there are currently 19 operations jobs with roles open, 18 of which are in the Corona factory. In May, there were only seven. The newly-recruiting jobs include robotics engineers, quality assurance inspectors, production planners, maintenance mechanics and safety directors. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used mobile location data to track people’s movements on a much larger scale than previously known, according to new documents unearthed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
It’s no secret that U.S. government agencies have been obtaining and using location data collected by Americans’ smartphones. In early 2020, a Wall Street Journal report revealed that both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bought access to millions of smartphone users’ location data to track undocumented immigrants and suspected tax dodgers. However, new documents obtained by the ACLU through an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit now reveal the extent of this warrantless data collection. The 6,000-plus records reviewed by the civil rights organization contained approximately 336,000 location points across North America obtained from people’s phones. They also reveal that in just three days in 2018, CBP obtained records containing around 113,654 location points in the southwestern United States — more than 26 location points per minute. The bulk of the data that CBP obtained came from its contract with Venntel, a location data broker that aggregates and sells information quietly siphoned from smartphone apps. By purchasing this data from data brokers, officials are sidestepping the legal process government officials would typically need to go through in order to access cell phone data. Documents also detail the government agencies’ efforts to rationalize their actions. For example, cell phone location data is characterized as containing no personally identifying information (PII) in the records obtained by ACLU, despite enabling officials to track specific individuals or everyone in a particular area. Similarly, the records also claim that this data is “100 percent opt-in” and that cell phone users “voluntarily” share the location information. But many don’t realize that apps installed on their phones are collecting GPS information, let alone share that data with the government. The ACLU says these documents are further proof that Congress needs to pass the bipartisan Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, proposed by by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY), which would require the government to secure a court order before obtaining Americans’ data, such as location information from our smartphones, from data brokers. Shreya Tewari, the Brennan Fellow for ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said: “Legislation like the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act would end agencies’ warrantless access to this data and head off their flimsy justifications for obtaining it without judicial oversight in the first place.” Spokespeople for Venntel and Homeland Security did not immediately comment on the report. An article published by the United Nations hailing the benefits of hunger has gone viral on social media today, with netizens expressing shock over the claims made in the article titled “The Benefits of World Hunger”. Written by retired Hawaiian professor George Kent, the article explains how hunger is needed to get workers for low-level manual jobs. It was published on UN Chronicle, the flagship magazine of the UN. The article argues that people work to fight hunger, and if there is no hunger, there will be nobody to do the manual jobs. Kenk shockingly says, “For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster. If there were no hunger in the world, who would plow the fields? Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would work in the rendering plants? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our own toilets.”
George Kent also claims that only hungry people work hard, while well-nourished people are far less willing to do such work. He termed the notion that people should be fed well to make them more productive ‘nosense’, saying that “No one works harder than hungry people.” The article caused great outrage on social media across the world, with common netizens and well-known people slamming it for glorifying hunger for the benefits of the rich. While the article has gone viral today (6th June 2022) for some reason, actually it was published more than a decade ago. The article was originally published on the UN Chronicle, the flagship magazine of the United Nations, way back in 2008 in printed form. Later the article was republished on the UN website in 2019, which has gone viral now. The same article is also available on researchgate, the repository of research papers, which says that it was written in June 2008. While the premise of the article is indeed absurd, it actually seems to be a work of satire. George Kent, who was a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaii and now a Professor Emeritus at the university, had actually written the article to claim that the rich keep the poor people hungry so that they work for the comfort of the rich. In fact, he has added in the article, “people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.” In the article, George Kent also claimed that people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem due to this reason. Although subtle, this suggests that the article was satirical in nature. While most people were outraged by the article, some people said that it was a satire. George Kent has written extensively on the issue of global hunger, including a book titled “Freedom from Want: The Human Right to Adequate Food”. Therefore it is unlikely that he will write something positive about the issue, and hence it can be said that the article is satirical. WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has been treated “very unfairly” to the shame of the entire world, and Mexico has offered to take him in, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters on Tuesday. He said he would bring up Assange’s case with his US counterpart Joe Biden when they meet in July. The UK announced last week it would extradite the jailed journalist to the US, where he faces espionage charges and up to 175 years behind bars if convicted. The decision by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel was “very disappointing,” said Lopez, who also goes by his initials AMLO. He also said he intends to ask Biden to drop charges against Assange when they meet next month. Such an action would go counter to the “hardliners in the US” but “humanity must prevail,” AMLO added. “Julian Assange is the best journalist of our time in the world and he has been treated very unfairly, worse than a criminal,” AMLO said. “This is a shame for the world.” Mexico is willing to provide Assange sanctuary if and when he is released, the president added, reminding reporters that he had called on the previous US administration to drop charges against Assange as “a prisoner of conscience.”
Assange, an Australian citizen, sought asylum in Ecuador in 2012, suspecting that Washington wanted him arrested and extradited over WikiLeaks publishing the documents about US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. He spent the next seven years trapped at Ecuador’s embassy in London – as the UK refused him safe passage – until his asylum was revoked by a new US-friendly government in Quito. British police dragged Assange out of the embassy in April 2019 and put him in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison in south London, where he remains to this day. Within a month of his arrest, the US unsealed an indictment charging him of offenses under the Espionage Act, for which he could face 175 years in prison. Assange has denied all allegations, and a key witness in Washington’s case against him admitted he lied in his testimony. Canberra has not spoken up for Assange’s release, even though the recently elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had opposed the charges against the journalist during the election campaign. Albanese said Monday that he still believed Assange should go free, but that his government would not publicly intervene with the US on his behalf, because it “engages diplomatically and appropriately with our partners.” Alan Li no longer sees any future for his family in China after harsh Covid rules decimated his business, upended his son's education and left his country out of step with the rest of the world. He has given up hope of a return to normal after months of lockdowns in Shanghai, and now plans to close his firm and move to Hungary, where he sees better opportunities and his 13-year-old son can attend an international school.
"Our losses this year mean that it's over for us," he told AFP wearily, asking to withhold his real name. "We have been using our own cash savings to pay 400 workers (during the lockdown). What if it happens again this winter?" Shanghai's long shutdown, which brought food shortages and protests, has driven some to reconsider staying in a country where livelihoods and lifestyles can vanish at the whim of the state. Schools have been closed and exams called off, including assessments for applying to American universities. Li is frustrated that his son's expensive bilingual schooling has been mostly online for two years, and he is anxious about the way Beijing has tightened oversight of the curriculum. "This is a waste of our children's youth," Li said. Being fairly well off, he has been able to take advantage of a European investment scheme that grants him and his family residency in Budapest. "Many people know that if they sold all their assets they could 'lie flat' in a European country," he said, using a slang phrase meaning to take it easy. Beijing-based immigration consultant Guo Shize told AFP his company has seen an explosion of enquiries since March, including a threefold increase in Shanghai clients. Even after the lockdown eased, requests continued flooding in at more than double the usual level. "Once that spark has been lit in people's minds, it doesn't die down quickly," he said. Exit ban Censors have sought to suppress discussion of emigration, prompting nimble internet users to adopt the term "run" instead. Searches for the term on messaging app WeChat peaked during Shanghai's shutdown. But as more people consider ways to leave, Beijing has doubled down on strict exit policies for Chinese citizens. All "unnecessary" travel out of the country has been banned. Passport renewals have been all but halted, with authorities blaming the risk of Covid being carried into the country. In the first half of 2021, immigration authorities issued only two percent of the passports given out in the same period in 2019. One woman who emigrated to Germany told AFP she receives dozens of messages from Chinese people looking for tips on escaping. Emily, who did not want to use her real name, tried to help a relative obtain a new passport to take up a job in Europe, but the application was denied. "It's like being a child who wants to go to their friend's house to play but their parents won't let them leave," she said, adding that she has heard of passports being sold for up to 30,000 yuan ($4,500) on the black market. 'Absolutely insane' A Chinese freelancer told AFP he was turned back by immigration officers while attempting to fly to Turkey for work last October, despite having already checked in. "My itinerary sounded too suspicious to them. They took my passport into an office and 15 minutes later told me I do not meet the requirements" for leaving, he said on condition of anonymity. "It was absolutely insane." He managed to leave weeks later by entering semi-autonomous Macau on a different travel document, before catching an onward flight. Some are disillusioned with Beijing's growing controls, which have been ramped up during the pandemic. "I just want to live in a country where the government won't crudely interfere in my personal life," said Lucy, a 20-year-old student at an elite Beijing university involved in LGBTQI+ and Marxist activism. The virus policies had "allowed the government to control and monitor everything", she said. "Perhaps rather than accepting and adapting to this system, we must go elsewhere and create a new life." A group of institutional investors in the Netherlands, led by Peter Savelberg of Peter Savelberg en Partners, have joined forces to present the Netherlands plus parts of Belgium and Germany as a single city network named Tristate City.
By treating the Netherlands as an urbanised delta with 17 million inhabitants, the project’s supporters say that are creating a very strong player in this ‘battle of the titans.’ ‘Our city marketing is too fragmented and inefficient,’ the project website says. ‘In practice, the Dutch cities compete with each other abroad.’ Amsterdam Metropool, Brainport Eindhoven, Twentestad, Ede Food Valley, Regio Groningen Assen and Dairy Delta are just some of the names Dutch regions use when marketing themselves abroad. The Netherlands must present itself as one of the ‘most powerful and sustainable city networks in the world,’ the project’s backers say.
Podcaster Matt Walsh can be abrasive on Twitter, where he’s known for skewering liberals and their causes mercilessly. But when he began posing a four-word question to strangers a year ago, Walsh was polite and nonconfrontational; it was the question itself — and his insistence that there is a correct answer — that got under people’s skin.
The question was “What is a woman?” and it’s both the title and subject of a film released last week by Walsh and The Daily Wire, the conservative media company founded by Jeremy Boreing and Ben Shapiro. In the film, Walsh, a 35-year-old father of four who lives in Nashville, travels around the world asking the question of strangers, from women on the streets of U.S. cities to men in Africa. He also interviews specialists, including a gender-affirming marriage and family therapist in Nashville and author and psychologist Jordan Peterson. The Daily Wire bills the film as a documentary, although it’s not quite a documentary in the vein of those produced by National Geographic; it’s too cheeky for that. But neither is Walsh a conservative Borat making an outlandish “mockumentary” like those produced by Sacha Baron Cohen. He’s just a funny guy asking a serious question, one that he believes “brings down the house of cards” of gender ideology. “Most of the people we talked to either didn’t want to talk about it, or they appeared to be confused about something as simple as what a woman is,” he told me. The wafflers included the Nashville therapist who said, “I’m not a woman so I can’t really answer that,” to a group of women who laughed and said, “That’s a stumper,” to a man on the street who said, “I honestly don’t know.” Dr. Marci Bowers, a gynaecologist and surgeon, said womanhood is “a combination of your physical attributes and what you’re showing to the world and the gender clues you give.” Patrick Grzanka, an associate professor at the University of Tennessee, said a woman is “a person who identifies as a woman” and angrily pushed back at Walsh, asking why he would even ask the question. It’s a question, of course, that’s not only being asked by a podcaster on the street but also in the halls of Congress. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to define a woman during Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings in March. Jackson replied that she couldn’t, “not in this context. I’m not a biologist.” There is method in what Walsh’s critics see as his madness. He believes that extremists in gender ideology have dealt conservatives a winning hand in the culture war by trying to vaporize ideas about sex and gender that were unquestioned for most of human history. Walsh points out that he’s being called an “extremist” and a “dinosaur” for saying things that were widely considered biological facts two decades ago. “This is a fight we can actually win,” he told me. “When I say ‘we,’ I mean rational, sane people. "You don’t have to be a conservative to realize that men are men and women are women.” He added, “The other side can be brought to its knees by one question, ‘What is a woman?’ There’s a real weakness there, and we can win this fight, and then it becomes like kicking blocks out of the Jenga tower. You win this one, and then you move on to the other cultural battles.” Beyond that, Walsh hopes to bring the issue to the attention of people beyond the “conservative bubble of people who listen to my podcast” and reach people who are not politically engaged and may be unaware of what’s being taught on the frontlines of gender ideology. Some of the people Walsh interviews in the film say that gender cannot and should not be assigned by doctors at birth and that children should be encouraged to explore different forms of gender expression without being influenced by their parents or society. At the centre of this discussion is the issue of transgender rights, which Americans are still divided on, largely along party lines. According to a February report from Pew Research Center, 38% of Americans said that greater acceptance of transgender people is generally good for society, 32% said it is bad and 29% said neither good nor bad. Although a growing share of Americans say they know someone who is transgender or uses gender-neutral pronouns (they/theirs instead of she/hers and he/him) they remain sharply divided on the subject of pronouns. Last year, half of respondents said they are comfortable using alternative pronouns when asked, while 48% said they are not. These percentages are “virtually unchanged” since 2018, Pew said. Walsh, who calls progressive gender ideology a cult, uses the divide over pronouns as a tidy insult, often responding to negative tweets about him by simply saying of his critics “pronouns in bio.” It is a route Wei Siu-lik remembers by heart. She knew where to turn, where to cross, where to pause but mostly she cherished the sense of camaraderie with others who ran alongside her. For more than 10 years, she had joined the annual marathon in Hong Kong commemorating the Tiananmen Square crackdown ahead of its anniversary on June 4. Starting from Tsim Sha Tsui, dozens of them would cross the harbour by ferry, run past government headquarters in Admiralty and the Pillar of Shame – a sculpture at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) honouring those who died in the crackdown in 1989 – before finishing at Beijing’s liaison office in Western district.
But this year, Wei and three friends were left on their own to carry on their decade-long tradition on May 22, after event organiser, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which was behind the annual candlelight vigil marking the crackdown anniversary, disbanded last September. Three core leaders of the alliance were charged with subversion under the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 and which also bans acts of secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. Apart from having to accept that some of her running peers were now behind bars amid a new political landscape, Wei also found it hard to believe the Pillar of Shame was gone. Last December, HKU removed the eight-metre sculpture in light of “external legal advice and risk assessment”. Depicting a mass of writhing, tortured bodies, the artwork, a gift to Hong Kong from Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt, was regarded as a June 4 icon. A day after HKU’s move, Chinese University and Lingnan University followed suit, removing a statue known as the Goddess of Democracy and tearing down a wall relief respectively, both symbols marking the crackdown. “Things have taken a drastic turn at a fast pace,” Wei, a former district councillor, said. “I still remember we decided to start in Tsim Sha Tsui because we wanted to promote the cause to mainland tourists there. But now maybe even Hongkongers will refrain from sharing any posts related to the crackdown on social media.” That insecurity was also carried by Wei, who did not take any group pictures following the run. “I know in my heart what we did is not illegal, but you just never know where the so-called red line is being drawn,” she said. In 1989, China was gripped by a pro-democracy movement, leading to street protests, weeks of sit-ins and hunger strikes at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Students and residents demanded reforms, culminating in a military crackdown on June 4. It is still unclear how many died. |
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