KirbyKhan posted:

The 20 year olds of 2010 who pioneered vaping technology in strip malls and parents garages are still alive or dead because of the usual reasons. But mankind has only had like 15 years max of individual dragon clour ripping so it is to early to tell.

Antonymous posted:

Vaping is a chinese technology that was popular in China about 5 years before it hit western markets. it's chinese culture bro

Antonymous posted:

Like, there's so many documentaries and films that go "china is oppressing minorities, killing babies, enslaving workers" etc and my friends are like "yeah we should be better".

AnimeIsTrash posted:

indigi posted:

your friends legitimately believe that China is killing babies? the other two examples are obviously ongoing issues (if exaggeratedly phrased) but that one seems hosed

In Training posted:

presumably in reference to one child policy era

Antonymous posted:

late term abortions yeah. the documentary One Child Nation goes into that and asks if there wasn't infanticide too.

indigi posted:

they consider late abortions baby killing, or do you mean the conjectured infanticide

Antonymous posted:

The Exiles - Grand Jury Prize - Sundance 2022

Antonymous posted:

sorry, the documentary opens with a doctor who said she gave abortions where the baby came out crying and she killed it in her hands and that's sorta projected by the documentary to be what "abortion" means in a chinese context.

Antonymous posted:

I'm working on a feature documentary about chinese immigrants who came over to Los Angeles in the 1970s. Basically when china had the cultural revolution, students started to go abroad, and the USA warmed up to china. So I'm watching all of these documentaries as reference and the director, producer, editor are also chinese immigrants.

Anyway our film is from a chinese-born-american perspective, rather than an outsider one, and it's positive and uplifting and I get a sense that the US culture will not tolerate it. China also probably doesn't have a market for it, no one cares about expats.

Antonymous posted:

we're still doing private fundraising, we've actually been shooting for 8 months and will do another year. If we exhaust all the grants and so on we'll do crowdfunding.

Learning about documentaries, its an insane job. We were in a sundance lab and another team has an amazing film where they followed a honduran family across the US border, all the way finally getting asylum, finding where they will live in the US etc. There's no way, setting out, to know if a family will even make it across the border so it's pretty incredible. and they have $750,000 in debt and got told "we have enough immigration films, and your liabilities mean no one will touch it". I think their total budget was 1.5. psycho poo poo

Antonymous posted:

China also probably doesn't have a market for it, no one cares about expats.

indigi posted:

wow that stinks for them. there are so few slam dunk documentary subjects, everything else is crossing your fingers. I guess that’s why so many documentaries start out about something else then realize in the middle of production they found a way better story to tell

AnimeIsTrash posted:

Orange Devil posted:

There's a complete and utter failure in Western decision making to see non-western foreigners as people.


It seeps into our media narratives and infects plenty of regular people as well. When discussing geopolitics with my friends, when they get too overly abstract discussing "Russia" or "China" or things like that I regularly feel compelled to break down the abstractions and make things as concrete as possible to drive home the point that these others are people exactly like them, with very similar needs and desires, and when presented with problems will use their mental faculties and material options to work towards a solution.

It's difficult to even get them to accept that the average Chinese person is not some poor horribly oppressed victim of their government only to be pitied, but actually reasonably content with their life and generally supportive of their government. Certainly more supportive of their own government and its interests than a random Western government or its interests.

BrutalistMcDonalds posted:

vietnamese flag

Samog posted:

RRR is about as subtle as the battle at lake changjin

Antonymous posted:

lmao

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/serena-oberstein-07212022183907.html posted:

Interview: ‘You have to put people over profit’

Serena Oberstein discusses the new Uyghur Forced Labor Database her organization created.


The U.S. enacted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in December 2021 to strengthen an existing ban on the importation of goods made wholly or in part with forced labor from China’s Xinjiang region. The law, which took effect on June 21, requires U.S. companies that import goods to prove that they have not been manufactured at any stage with Uyghur forced labor.

On Wednesday, Jewish World Watch (JWW), a nonprofit humanitarian organization dedicated to helping survivors of genocide and mass atrocities around the world, launched an online database listing Western companies in the automotive, energy, fashion, food and technology sectors that have been implicated as benefiting from Uyghur forced labor, so concerned consumers can avoid purchasing their products. Serena Oberstein, JWW’s executive director, spoke with RFA Uyghur reporter Nuriman Abdureshid about the Uyghur Forced Labor Database and what the group hopes to accomplish with it. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RFA: What motivated JWW to create the Uyghur Forced Labor Database?

Oberstein: What we’re hearing coming out of East Turkestan [Xinjiang] about Uyghurs being taken in the night, having their heads shaved, being put on trains, and especially the companies that are using Uyghur forced labor, also has direct ties to the Holocaust. I remember mentioning one of them and someone said, ‘Oh, what have they said? Do they know?’ And I said, ‘Yes, they know. They have a factory. They signed a contract with the Chinese Communist Party.’ And they’ve made a public statement where they’ve said that as long as there’s a profit to be made, essentially they’re going to be there. Having this type of database where you can see that companies know exactly what they’re doing or they know where in their supply chain they’re using Uyghur forced labor and have chosen not to stop and chosen to be complicit. It’s really important information for consumers.

RFA: Tell us more about the database.

Oberstein: The Uyghur Forced Labor Database is a project detailing how global companies are complicit in Uyghur forced labor, and it’s the most extensive [database] to date. It brings to light more than 600 national and international companies and their reported links to Uyghur forced labor in the ongoing genocide against the Uyghur people in East Turkestan. We highlight a number of companies by industry, but you can also go in and search if there’s information available. It’s something that we launched in the days immediately after the implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. What we know is that the [U.S.] entity list that’s being utilized is not extensive enough. Not only do we really want individuals and consumers to use this database to make more ethical decisions about the companies they support, but also we’re really hoping to share this with the U.S. government and that they utilize it and understand that this information is available. We will link to all of the studies and investigative reports that have thoroughly mapped how these companies are complicit in genocide. We hope that first and foremost, it’s an educational tool, but that it becomes a tool that empowers people to stop using products made with Uyghur slaves and by Uyghur slaves.

RFA: Have any companies contacted you about the database?

Oberstein: No, not yet. We just released it Wednesday afternoon, so we definitely haven’t heard from anybody yet. We hope that with the implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act that companies will start to come off of this database and we’ll update people. We want to support companies [in making] more ethical decisions. The purpose of this isn’t to necessarily tell [consumers] not to buy a product; it’s to say that they have an obligation to do the right thing. They have an obligation to be ethical in their decision making, and here is information so that you can make the right decision.

RFA: What do you want to say to companies that have supply chains related to Uyghur forced labor?

Oberstein: We feel like you always have to put people over profit. … When I talk to companies and they say, ‘Well, we don't want to lose our market share in China,’ it’s horrific to me. What about the millions of people who are being interned? What about the people who are dying? What about the children who are growing up without parents who are being ‘reeducated’ and indoctrinated? That’s what we care about. That’s what should be our priority. We worked with someone a few months ago, whose family helped start the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and he had a factory in East Turkestan and went to go visit it a few years ago. When he saw what was happening, he said to himself, ‘I can’t ethically do that,’ and he closed his factory and reopened one in Mexico. So, we know that it’s possible, that you don’t need to rely on forced labor in your supply chain and that you can ethically source your labor. You have to act. You have to put people over profit.

RFA: Is there anything else you want to add?

Oberstein: I hope that people use [the database] and share it with their friends. If people have questions about it, if they think that there is information missing, they should definitely feel free to reach out to us and say, ‘We know this company is doing it.’ We know that there is knowledge of this involved in [a] company that maybe we missed. We would welcome that kind of feedback. We hope that what comes of it is that this is a first step. Now that people have the information, they can start to make educated decisions. But this is [also] so that companies know that we’re watching, and we see what they’re doing, and that we expect more from them.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/dangogi-07212022163826.html posted:

Hungry North Koreans bristle as elites feast on expensive dog meat

Food is in short supply and prices continue to rise, but the privileged aren’t feeling the squeeze.

While citizens in North Korea are nearly starving in the face of food price hikes and shortages, the country’s elite are feasting on one of the country’s most expensive delicacies: dog meat.

Meat of any kind is a rarity in the North Korean diet these days, and dog meat costs twice as much as pork. A single bowl of dog meat stew, called dangogi-jang, can cost the same as two kilograms of rice.

After a ban on imports at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in January 2020, and with harvests failing to yield enough food for the country’s needs, food shortages are widespread, a resident of Chongjin, in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong, told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“Prices for food such as rice, corn and flour keep rising. Residents are frustrated as they suffer, … but high-ranking government officials and the wealthy class, for whom money is not an object, are busy looking for dog meat restaurants and taking care of themselves,” the source said.

Dog meat is not common in the typical diet of either North or South Korea, but it is considered by some to be a summer delicacy with purported virility-enhancing and medicinal properties.

This summer, while the bellies of average citizens in the country of 25 million people rumble, the most popular dog meat restaurants in Chongjin and elsewhere are still bustling with powerful military and ruling party clientele.

“Since last summer, the Kyongsong Dangogi Restaurant has been operating out of a two-story traditional Korean building in Chongjin’s Pohang Square. As the hot days of summer begin, it is buzzing with people who have come for their fill of dog meat,” the source said.

“Kyongsong is the second largest dog meat restaurant in the country next to the Pyongyang Dangogi Restaurant on Tongil Street in Pyongyang. I believe [former leader] Kim Jong Il gave the restaurant its name. He was treated to dog meat stew every time he came to North Hamgyong province, and stayed at a hotel within the Kyongsong restaurant that has a scenic view,” he said.

The source was aware that outside of Korea, dog meat consumption is rare.

“In foreign countries, people don’t eat dog meat, but in our country, dangogi-jang is known for its invigorating effect on the body in summer. There’s even a saying that if you were to spill some of the soup on your foot, it would be like medicine to heal the body,” he said.

“Ordinary residents cannot even dare to eat a bowl of dangogi-jang, no matter how good it is for the body,” the source said. “It is the cheapest dish among the various other dog meat dishes like steak or braised ribs. The stew costs 12,000 won [U.S. $1.70] for a single bowl, about the price of two kilos [4.4 lbs] of rice.”

Besides Kyongsong, there are several other restaurants in Chongjin that serve dog meat dishes, according to the source.

“People in power, such as party officials, prosecutors, social security agents and state security agents do not like to stand out and be seen in public, so they prefer to go to privately run restaurants to eat dog meat rather than public ones,” he said.

A source in the northwestern province of North Pyongan said he believed dangogi-jang helped to heal his sick mother.

“Everyone knows that dog meat is good for your health in the summer. But most residents cannot afford to eat even a single bowl each year,” the second source said.

“There are several restaurants serving dog meat in Uiju county. On July 16, the first of the three hottest days of summer, for the first time in five years, I visited a dog meat restaurant with my mother, who was suffering from a fever and was terribly weak,” he said.

The second source said that there were many elites at the restaurant, including officials of the ruling Korean Workers’ party, agents of the Ministry of State Security and law enforcement officials.

“It took a long time for my mother to eat her bowl of stew because her teeth are weak. So when other customers finished their meal and new customers replaced them, I recognized the faces of several well known Uiju county officials,” said the second source.

“Ordinary residents are angry now because food prices are too high and there is no way to make money,” the source added. “I felt a sense of disappointment when I saw so many people in power who lined up to eat expensive dog meat … without a care about worrying how they would be able to earn a living.”

Dog meat is available at restaurants in both North and South Korea, but the dog meat trade is of questionable legality in the South. A South Korean court ruled in 2018 that killing dogs for their meat was illegal, but the law did not specifically ban selling or eating the meat.

Some Guy TT posted:

wait poo poo this isnt the pop culture thread

uhhh which famous names from the three kingdoms era were the most bromantic

atelier morgan posted:

its not a failure, read Losurdo's Liberalism: A Counter-History

proposing government by supposed universal while keeping 'who counts as people' a moving target to the benefit of the rich is the founding principle of the enlightenment and every western government

Some Guy TT posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/AskAKorean/status/1550540002257317888

it isnt lol

Tankbuster posted:

Bring back smoking in hookahs.

Marenghi posted:

Is vaping really that much safer than cigarettes?
Wasn't it only in 2019 America had that epidemic of pneumonia from vapes.

HiroProtagonist posted:

wait, really????? expats who only ever interact with expats or something??

i guess i could see that being common but how on earth do you LIVE in china and just fail to grasp general sentiments like overall satisfaction

Antonymous posted:

If you show chinese people an anti-chinese propaganda documentary I've found that they generally agree with it, because they don't see it as threatening them personally.

Like, there's so many documentaries and films that go "china is oppressing minorities, killing babies, enslaving workers" etc and my friends are like "yeah we should be better". they don't sense it's an existential threat to have US films turn the world against them and make them ok to bomb in a hot war - destroy empathy - the actual purpose of those films. The question of "why does the US keep giving awards to films that critize china" doesn't immediately pop out.