Tag Archives: WorldNews

As China Fights the Coronavirus, Some Say It Has Gone Too Far

What’s more important: people’s lives or short term profit? Get real executives! Some Chinese business figures are taking an unusual public stand, saying the containment efforts threaten to strangle the economy if applied too broadly.

How Hindu supremacists are tearing India apart

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For seven decades, India has been held together by its constitution, which promises equality to all. But Narendra Modi’s BJP is remaking the nation into one where some people count as more Indian than others. By Samanth Subramanian

Soon after the violence began, on 5 January, Aamir was standing outside a residence hall in Jawaharlal Nehru University in south Delhi. Aamir, a PhD student, is Muslim, and he asked to be identified only by his first name. He had come to return a book to a classmate when he saw 50 or 60 people approaching the building. They carried metal rods, cricket bats and rocks. One swung a sledgehammer. They were yelling slogans: “Shoot the traitors to the nation!” was a common one. Later, Aamir learned that they had spent the previous half-hour assaulting a gathering of teachers and students down the road. Their faces were masked, but some were still recognisable as members of a Hindu nationalist student group that has become increasingly powerful over the past few years.

The group, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP), is the youth wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Founded 94 years ago by men who were besotted with Mussolini’s fascists, the RSS is the holding company of Hindu supremacism: of Hindutva, as it’s called. Given its role and its size, it is difficult to find an analogue for the RSS anywhere in the world. In nearly every faith, the source of conservative theology is its hierarchical, centrally organised clergy; that theology is recast into a project of religious statecraft elsewhere, by other parties. Hinduism, though, has no principal church, no single pontiff, nobody to ordain or rule. The RSS has appointed itself as both the arbiter of theological meaning and the architect of a Hindu nation-state. It has at least 4 million volunteers, who swear oaths of allegiance and take part in quasi-military drills.

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Fates of humans and insects intertwined, warn scientists

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Experts call for solutions to be enforced immediately to halt global population collapses

The “fates of humans and insects are intertwined”, scientists have said, with the huge declines reported in some places only the “tip of the iceberg”.

The warning has been issued by 25 experts from around the world, who acknowledge that little is known about most of the estimated 5.5 million insect species. However, enough was understood to warrant immediate action, they said, because waiting for better data would risk irreversible damage.

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Eugenics refuses to die – and now Andrew Sabisky has put it back in the headlines | Angela Saini

Racism, not science

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Today’s right still turns to 19th-century pseudoscientific ideas of ‘human breeding’ to avoid responsibility for social problems

If there’s one thing policymakers love, it’s simple technical ideas that can solve complex problems at a stroke. They’re always on the lookout for what the American nuclear physicist, Alvin Weinberg, in 1965 termed the “technological fix”, be it a high-speed rail network to solve regional inequality, or nuclear power as an answer to the climate crisis.

This week, one old and discredited technological fix has reared its head: eugenics, the pseudoscientific belief that humans can be bred to “perfection” in the same way we breed cattle or domestic pets for particular traits. Developed by Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, in the 19th century, it was promoted by politicians and intellectuals in Britain, before becoming the justification for millions of involuntary sterilisations globally, mainly of the poor and disabled, and the Nazis’ devastating programme of “racial hygiene” that culminated in the Holocaust.

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Virus-hit cruise liner passengers start disembarking in Japan after controversial quarantine

Controversy created by press and lawyers. Would you rather that they all be free to spread the disease and help create a global pandemic? 2.3% of global population and mostly people over 50 – you ready for that. Passengers on the virus-hit cruise ship moored near Tokyo began disembarking on Wednesday, public broadcaster NHK said, after a controversial two-week quarantine that saw more than 500 people infected with the new coronavirus originating in China.

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UK to close door to non-English speakers and unskilled workers

Racism runs deep in England

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Government plans to take ‘full control’ of borders a disaster for economy and jobs, say industry leaders and Labour

Britain is to close its borders to unskilled workers and those who can’t speak English as part of a fundamental overhaul of immigration laws that will end the era of cheap EU labour in factories, warehouses, hotels and restaurants.

Unveiling its Australian-style points system on Wednesday, the government will say it is grasping a unique opportunity to take “full control” of British borders “for the first time in decades” and eliminate the “distortion” caused by EU freedom of movement.

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