It's news you can use from places with different views! (Don't misuse or abuse you yahoos.)
Turkey and Syria rescuers persist as death toll passes 25,000
Rescuers continued to pull some survivors out of the rubble on Saturday, five days after the tremors of the first earthquake struck Syria and Turkey, but hopes were fading for many more to be found.
Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake is Turkey’s most devastating since 1939 and the death toll continues to rise. The death toll exceeded 21,000 in Turkey as of 20:00 GMT, and more than 3,500 others were confirmed dead in Syria, as the overall toll surpassed 25,000.
Reporting from Antakya, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith said that despite the overwhelming level of destruction in the capital of Turkey’s Hatay province, there was still a glimmer of hope.
“We are in the 135th hour now since the quakes, but there is still some hope. In the 132nd hour, a toddler was rescued, and a couple of hours before that, a man and woman were rescued alive. The search for survivors has not stopped,” said Smith.
He added the government plans to reopen the airport in the city within 24 hours.
“The airport runway was badly damaged. They said they are about to re-tarmac. This will be essential for relief flights. The need is so desperate for aid,” said Smith.
Turkey earthquake: The children whose names have been erased
The wounded children in Adana City Hospital are too young to know how much they've lost.
I watched doctors in the intensive care unit bottle-feed an injured six-month-old girl whose parents can't be found.
There are hundreds more cases of unidentified children whose parents are dead or untraceable.
The earthquake broke their homes and now it has taken away their names.
Dr Nursah Keskin grips the hand of the baby girl in intensive care - known only by the tag on her bed: "Anonymous".
She has multiple fractures, a black eye and her face is badly bruised; but she turns and smiles at us.
"We know where she was found and how she got here. But we're trying to find an address. The search is continuing," says Dr Keskin, a paediatrician and deputy director at the hospital.
What.
In addition: the f*ck
This is VERY Australian, FYI.
Nigeria election 2023: Votes are counted but final results may take days
Vote counting is under way in Nigeria's tightest presidential election since military rule ended in 1999.
Turnout appeared to be high, with many young, first-time voters arriving before dawn to cast their ballots.
Saturday's voting was marred by long delays at polling stations, as well as scattered reports of ballot box snatching and attacks by armed men.
And some parties have raised alarm over allegations of irregularities, which could lead to a disputed outcome.
The elections are the biggest democratic exercise in Africa, with 87 million people eligible to vote.
Politics has been dominated by two parties - the ruling APC and the PDP - since the restoration of multi-party democracy 24 years ago.
But this time, there is also a strong challenge from a third-party candidate in the race to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari - from the Labour Party's Peter Obi, who is backed by many young people.
Tens of thousands of polling stations are counting the results, which will be collated and sent to the electoral headquarters in the capital Abuja.
The final result is not expected until at least Tuesday.
Good on Nigeria! It's been a proper democracy for two decades without military butting in at any point, that's very important considering that like every 8th African is also Nigerian.
Netanyahu and cronies seem to be hell bent on driving Israel to the brink of all out mayhem. For Bibi it's all about saving his corrupt ass from prison, but his ultra right wing cronies are ready to solve the Palestinian problem once and for all.
was idly looking at streams tonight, and....
....the fetishization/fantasy viewiong of Japan by Westerners is just SO WEIRD.
Like, the large community of weebs do not appear to understand that it's a normal country? Full of regular people? With regular problems? It's not literally your favorite slice-of-life anime, except real? They have a cost of living crisis, just like the rest of the planet? Every woman doesn't look like a waifu? They have farms? Like regular-degular farms?
I mean, I know that this is the result of a lot of other moving parts. Beyond fetishization and ludicrous fantasies, there's race, idealized gender roles, and like several other things, but what I would give for more English-language streams or information about Japan that doesn't treat it like "anime, but real" all the goddamn time.
I wonder how many livestreaming weebs are walking around that country at any given time.
Whenever I see an article like this, I'm always inclined to wonder "is this actually a movement of any significance or is this like, 30 people on Twitter?"
Nevertheless, curious!
Whenever I see an article like this, I'm always inclined to wonder "is this actually a movement of any significance or is this like, 30 people on Twitter?"
Nevertheless, curious!
The article actually discusses the numbers of the movement, with estimates ranging from five thousand to five hundred thousand. There are more out there than you think.
Sounds nice.
was idly looking at streams tonight, and....
....the fetishization/fantasy viewiong of Japan by Westerners is just SO WEIRD.
Like, the large community of weebs do not appear to understand that it's a normal country? Full of regular people? With regular problems? It's not literally your favorite slice-of-life anime, except real? They have a cost of living crisis, just like the rest of the planet? Every woman doesn't look like a waifu? They have farms? Like regular-degular farms?
I mean, I know that this is the result of a lot of other moving parts. Beyond fetishization and ludicrous fantasies, there's race, idealized gender roles, and like several other things, but what I would give for more English-language streams or information about Japan that doesn't treat it like "anime, but real" all the goddamn time.
I wonder how many livestreaming weebs are walking around that country at any given time.
There are a couple of folks currently living there that could probably answer this better than I can, but in my years there the people who went there expecting it to be just like an anime generally stuck out like a sore thumb. Didn’t get many of them out in the boonies where i was, but they were plentiful in the major cities.
Oh yes, the annoying weebs all appear to be in the big cities. It's very much like someone talking about how amazing the U.S. is when they're only in NYC (and probably haven't even left Manhattan).
We have a similar problem. People think we're all sitting at cafés with our baguettes, béréts, glass of red wine, and croissant all day. And that we strike all the time. Well, okay, yes, sure, we're on strike right now, but not ALL the time.
I mean, TO BE FAIR, it really should read "Liberté, égalité, fraternité, grèveité."
Y'all are REALLY good at them.
Anyway, I wade into this topic lightly, but Israel has been seeing absolutely massive protests for weeks now over Netanyahu's proposed changes to the judiciary.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis rallied against the government's judicial plans on Saturday night, in what organisers said were the biggest street protests in Israel's history.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the changes - which would curb the power of courts - will restore balance between the branches of government.
Opponents say they threaten democracy.
At one of Saturday's rallies, opposition leader Yair Lapid said this was Israel's "greatest crisis".
In a separate development, Israeli troops shot dead three armed Palestinians near the West Bank city of Nablus on Sunday, the Israeli army said. It said the gunmen had fired at an Israeli army post.
Palestinian officials have not commented on the incident. There has been a marked surge in violence between Palestinians and Israel in recent months.
On Saturday, protest organisers said as many as 500,000 demonstrators took to the streets across Israel for the 10th consecutive week, in what the Haaretz newspaper called "the largest demonstration in the country's history".
About 200,000 people turned up in Tel Aviv - many carrying Israel's national flag - to rally against planned reforms by Mr Netanyahu's hardline government.
A BBC producer in the city described the protests as the busiest yet, with a non-stop flow of demonstrators packing the streets until late into the night.
In remarkable scenes, crowds applauded Tel Aviv police chief Amichai Eshed as he walked in uniform through the rally.
On Thursday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had said he was transferring Mr Eshed to head a training division, amid reports the ultra-nationalist politician accused the commander of being too soft on protesters, whom he calls "anarchists".
But Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara later overruled Mr Ben-Gvir, saying the decision was being frozen, while national police chief Kobi Shabtai on Saturday said he had "made a mistake" in dismissing Eshed.
Oh, and Iran and Saudi Arabia are (publically, at least), making nice.
Honestly, I feel like this is mostly about China, and them taking the position of a global broker.
We have a similar problem. People think we're all sitting at cafés with our baguettes, béréts, glass of red wine, and croissant all day. And that we strike all the time. Well, okay, yes, sure, we're on strike right now, but not ALL the time.
You're only making France sound cooler :V
Eleima wrote:We have a similar problem. People think we're all sitting at cafés with our baguettes, béréts, glass of red wine, and croissant all day. And that we strike all the time. Well, okay, yes, sure, we're on strike right now, but not ALL the time.
You're only making France sound cooler :V
They also eat croissants!
I've only been to Japan for a week back in May 2019. My wife and I are somewhat weeb-like (although we're not wearing any blinkers in this regard).
I can't say I noticed many weebs, even in Tokyo's Akibahara district where all the maid cafes and anime/manga merch shops are concentrated. However we couldn't stop stumbling into fellow Aussies the major cities we visited (Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo). We were walking to our accommodation in Kyoto when we overheard two Aussies who were kind enough to try and capture an evening shot of us in a picturesque laneway (the shots turned out poorly but oh well).
I wonder if it's the 1%er effect of noticing the outliers because they tend to be more vocal or prominent in representation?
Anyway, I wade into this topic lightly, but Israel has been seeing absolutely massive protests for weeks now over Netanyahu's proposed changes to the judiciary.
255 US Jewish business leaders, with billions of dollars in Israel, warn Netanyahu they will halt Israel investments if he pursues his régime change plan.
There are a couple of folks currently living there that could probably answer this better than I can, but in my years there the people who went there expecting it to be just like an anime generally stuck out like a sore thumb. Didn’t get many of them out in the boonies where i was, but they were plentiful in the major cities.
As a longtime resident here, personally I'm sympathetic to anime fans who fetishize Japan. It's not a utopia, but Japan really is starkly different from the US in lots of ways - the collectivism, general lack of sarcasm, etc. And below the surface level stuff about mecha or demon swords I think anime usually depicts those differences pretty accurately, so I suspect that's what a lot of fans are subconsciously latching on to and idealizing.
Cute recent example incidentally - a massively famous athlete hit his first-ever home run in a big tournament, and the lucky girl who caught the ball passed it around for other fans to take pictures with. I didn't think anything about it at the time, but seeing it discussed in overseas media reminded me of how other Japan can look from the outside.
China’s ‘rotten girls’ are escaping into erotic fiction about gay men
In the 1990s, Japan’s “boys love” subculture crossed over to Hong Kong and Taiwan, before spreading in China. Today, danmei fans call themselves “rotten women”, a term that comes from Japan’s “fujoshi” or “rotten girls”. At first, danmei “occupied only a very niche market,” in China, says Wang, but today it is more popular than ever.
Many of the stories subvert traditional Chinese literary forms. Heaven Official’s Blessing is “full of religious connotations,” says Wang. It has all the tropes of “a traditional Chinese literary genre highlighting magical arts, martial arts, kung fu and imaginary worlds.”
But the Chinese Communist party (CCP) sees homosexuality as a challenge to traditional family structures, says Wang. The Jinjiang website, in response to government pressure, has strict policies on erotic scenes: nothing below the neck. So danmei writers use a website called Ao3 to publish missing sex scenes.
The publications are strictly controlled by the government, says Wang. Often the TV or movie versions will remove the romantic element between the protagonists, turning the stories into ones about “socialist brotherly love”, says Walsh.
Despite attempts to censor the stories, the genre has struck a chord with many young women and the government, says Walsh, is nervous about “millions of fangirls reading between the lines”.
The CCP has launched an initiative aimed at gaining control over online fandoms including danmei and K-pop called “Qinglang” or “clean and clear”, Vox reported in 2022. These feminine artforms with largely female fanbases challenge what Vox described as, “Xi’s narrative of an idealized China that’s strong physically as well as economically and politically”. Among the consequences was that 60 danmei adaptations were cancelled.
Several danmei writers have been jailed by the CCP, which uses pornography rules to crack down on writers whose books get too popular or are too homoerotic. In 2014 a writer called Big Grey Wolf was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. In 2018, a danmei author, a woman identified only as Liu, was sentenced to more than a decade in prison. In 2019, police arrested eight danmei writers, sentencing one of them for four years.
Writers are now using “increasingly silly metaphors” to describe sex in order to avoid censorship, Walsh says. But censors have also started encouraging readers to report danmei works that break the rules: rewarding them with points or tokens that allow them to buy more danmei content.
Love that every world leader is one of these guys now:
Mexican president says his country safer than United States
Mexico’s president claimed Monday that his country is safer than the United States, a week after two U.S. citizens were killed and two kidnapped and later rescued in the border city of Matamoros.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said U.S. travel warnings and reports of violence in Mexico were the result of a conspiracy by conservative politicians and U.S. media outlets to smear his administration.
Despite López Obrador’s assurances that Mexico was safe for travel, the FBI confirmed last week that three other women from the small Texas town of Peñitas have been missing in Mexico since late February.
“Mexico is safer than the United States,” López Obrador said at his morning news briefing. “There is no problem in traveling safely in Mexico.”
Mexico’s nationwide homicide rate is about 28 per 100,000 inhabitants. By comparison, the U.S. homicide rate is barely one-quarter as high, at around 7 per 100,000.
The president brushed off continued concern over violence. Currently, the U.S. State Department has “do not travel” advisories for six of Mexico’s 32 states plagued by drug cartel violence, and “reconsider travel” warnings for another seven states.
“This is a campaign against Mexico by these conservative politicians in the United States who do not want the transformation of our country to continue,” López Obrador said.
The Mexican president included U.S. media outlets in the supposed conspiracy.
“These conservative politicians ... dominate the majority of the news media in the United States,” he said. “This violence is not a reality,” he added. “It is pure, vile manipulation.”
As if to undercut that statement, police in the industrial and farming state of Guanajuato reported that 8 people had been shot to death and another seven wounded in an attack on a nightclub over the weekend.
The attack late Saturday killed six men and two women at the club in the largely rural township of Apaseo El Grande, where rival cartels have been fighting for control for years.
Y'know, if he'd said "for Americans," he might've had a point!
China’s ‘rotten girls’ are escaping into erotic fiction about gay men
In the 1990s, Japan’s “boys love” subculture crossed over to Hong Kong and Taiwan, before spreading in China. Today, danmei fans call themselves “rotten women”, a term that comes from Japan’s “fujoshi” or “rotten girls”. At first, danmei “occupied only a very niche market,” in China, says Wang, but today it is more popular than ever.
Many of the stories subvert traditional Chinese literary forms. Heaven Official’s Blessing is “full of religious connotations,” says Wang. It has all the tropes of “a traditional Chinese literary genre highlighting magical arts, martial arts, kung fu and imaginary worlds.”
But the Chinese Communist party (CCP) sees homosexuality as a challenge to traditional family structures, says Wang. The Jinjiang website, in response to government pressure, has strict policies on erotic scenes: nothing below the neck. So danmei writers use a website called Ao3 to publish missing sex scenes.
The publications are strictly controlled by the government, says Wang. Often the TV or movie versions will remove the romantic element between the protagonists, turning the stories into ones about “socialist brotherly love”, says Walsh.
Despite attempts to censor the stories, the genre has struck a chord with many young women and the government, says Walsh, is nervous about “millions of fangirls reading between the lines”.
The CCP has launched an initiative aimed at gaining control over online fandoms including danmei and K-pop called “Qinglang” or “clean and clear”, Vox reported in 2022. These feminine artforms with largely female fanbases challenge what Vox described as, “Xi’s narrative of an idealized China that’s strong physically as well as economically and politically”. Among the consequences was that 60 danmei adaptations were cancelled.
Several danmei writers have been jailed by the CCP, which uses pornography rules to crack down on writers whose books get too popular or are too homoerotic. In 2014 a writer called Big Grey Wolf was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. In 2018, a danmei author, a woman identified only as Liu, was sentenced to more than a decade in prison. In 2019, police arrested eight danmei writers, sentencing one of them for four years.
Writers are now using “increasingly silly metaphors” to describe sex in order to avoid censorship, Walsh says. But censors have also started encouraging readers to report danmei works that break the rules: rewarding them with points or tokens that allow them to buy more danmei content.
While back was reading a light comedy romance webtoon. A nice one. Funny and a good read. Then all of a sudden I noticed the story and releases took a rather large 180. One of the main couples was gay and the Chinese author was scared of being arrested so they basically had to abandon it. Such a waste.
Let's say I have a friend who is into that scene. From what I've been told, many of the most popular danmei stories aren't even in the category of outright smut / homo-eroticism; they focus on the relationship tension and anguish but not the act itself which is abstracted for censorship reasons.
Yet their drama adaptations are completely rewritten to purge those elements to fastidiously avoid censorship.
Heck, fallen actress Fan Bing Bing (the one who disappeared due to alleged tax evasion) had an ancient Chinese drama about 5 years ago where the plunging necklines of the time (actually historically accurate) were considered too salacious that the producers were ordered to cut the footage above the collarbone level or so.
Even so, it seems the market for boy love / danmei content in China is apparently larger and overt than what I've seen from South Korea, despite messages from various K-pop idols about diversity acceptance and inclusiveness. I've never read boy love / danmei content but one day I think I will try it out for academic purposes (not a joke! I am curious about what my uh friend finds so enthralling in them).
Heck, fallen actress Fan Bing Bing (the one who disappeared due to alleged tax evasion) had an ancient Chinese drama about 5 years ago where the plunging necklines of the time (actually historically accurate) were considered too salacious that the producers were ordered to cut the footage above the collarbone level or so.
This just reminds me of that one period of European history where the style at the time was just to wear a corset with your yiddies hangin' out. There's a painting of some Queen wearing it, but I'm too lazy to look atm.
Let's say I have a friend who is into that scene. From what I've been told, many of the most popular danmei stories aren't even in the category of outright smut / homo-eroticism; they focus on the relationship tension and anguish but not the act itself which is abstracted for censorship reasons.
Yet their drama adaptations are completely rewritten to purge those elements to fastidiously avoid censorship.
Heck, fallen actress Fan Bing Bing (the one who disappeared due to alleged tax evasion) had an ancient Chinese drama about 5 years ago where the plunging necklines of the time (actually historically accurate) were considered too salacious that the producers were ordered to cut the footage above the collarbone level or so.
Even so, it seems the market for boy love / danmei content in China is apparently larger and overt than what I've seen from South Korea, despite messages from various K-pop idols about diversity acceptance and inclusiveness. I've never read boy love / danmei content but one day I think I will try it out for academic purposes (not a joke! I am curious about what my uh friend finds so enthralling in them).
I'm not surprised that there's a large market for it. I read an unreasonable amount of manga/webtoons/manwa. While usually looking for more and I always see huge variety of lgbt stuff being posted. I mostly read trash isekai but even I can tell the vast majority are fairly tame. Something about the medium seems to draw that crowd pretty heavily. I can't imagine these rules will actually stop it. Just drive it underground like it was in Japan.
From what I understand, it's not that difficult to figure out a way around The Great Firewall, and as long as you're not doing any wild illegal stuff or hosting illegal Winnie the Pooh streams, you'll probably be fine.
I mean, TO BE FAIR, it really should read "Liberté, égalité, fraternité, grèveité."
Y'all are REALLY good at them.
Actually, the UK is starting to give us a run for our money on that front!!
Things are.... tense in Israel atm.
Israeli president: civil war is ‘within touching distance’
The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, has announced alternative changes to the judiciary in response to a planned overhaul by Israel’s far-right coalition that has triggered mass protests in recent weeks.
But the Israeli cabinet’s secretary confirmed the coalition was not behind the president’s proposal.
“Anyone who thinks that a real civil war, of human life, is a line that we will not reach has no idea,” Herzog said during a televised evening address. “The abyss,” he warned, “is within touching distance.”
The drive by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government to enact sweeping changes to Israel’s courts has sparked domestic uproar and alarm among the country’s western allies. If the initial proposal passed, it would mean greater government sway in selecting judges and limit the power of the supreme court to strike down legislation.
A main point of contention in the planned overhaul is an amendment to the way in which judges are selected. The president’s plan would see the selection committee include three ministers, the president of the high court, two judges and two civil servants who will be agreed upon by both the president of the supreme court and the justice minister.
The justice minister, Yariv Levin, has said the coalition’s proposed measures would change the way judges are appointed by giving the Knesset more oversight and the government more power on the committee which selects them.
The president warned on Wednesday that Israel was at a turning point and stressed he had been involved in mediation efforts and speaking with “thousands of people” for weeks.
The president said Israel was “in the depths of a real crisis” but also “in front of a huge opportunity” and “at a fork in the road”.
“Most Israelis want a plan that will bring both justice and peace,” he said.
The government’s secretary, Yossi Fuchs, confirmed on Twitter that the coalition did not support the president’s plan. “The president’s plan is one-sided of the president and has not been agreed upon by any member of the coalition,” he said.
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