U.S. Places Restrictions on China’s Leading Chip Maker The export controls follow a review in which the United States concluded that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation’s chips may be used by the Chinese military. .......... Factories in China churn out a huge share of the world’s cellphones, computers and internet equipment. But the silicon brains of that gear are often shipped in from overseas. ........... Last year, mainland China imported more than $300 billion in computer chips, more than it spent on crude oil.
Brushing Off Criticism, China’s Xi Calls Policies in Xinjiang ‘Totally Correct’ Mr. Xi made the remarks at a meeting on the region of western China, suggesting that the Communist Party remains committed to drastically changing Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. ....... and vowed more efforts to imprint Chinese national identity “deep in the soul” of Uighurs and other largely Muslim minorities. ......... Mr. Xi’s unyielding words signaled that condemnation from the United States, the European Union and other powers has not shifted his determination to subdue Xinjiang’s Muslim minorities through a dual strategy of political indoctrination and state-driven demographic change. ............ Mr. Xi used a similar meeting in 2014 to demand a much tougher approach to unrest, resistance and separatist violence in the region. .......... Ever since Chinese Communist Party forces took over Xinjiang in 1949, the authorities have struggled to establish lasting control over the region’s Uighurs, Kazakhs and other minorities. Their Turkic language and Muslim traditions have set them apart from China’s Han majority, and many members of these minorities have resented the expanding presence and power of the Han Chinese majority. .............. the Chinese government has tried to uproot hundreds of thousands of Uighurs from villages and assign them urban and factory jobs, where officials hope they will earn more and cast aside their traditional lifestyles. .......... thousands of mosques, shrines and other Islamic religious sites have been demolished in Xinjiang since 2017. .......... the indoctrination camps, which Chinese government officials have defended as a friendly vocational training centers .......... internal speeches by Mr. Xi in 2014, when he called for all-out “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism” in Xinjiang using the “organs of dictatorship,” and showing “absolutely no mercy.” ............ what he said were rising incomes of the people of Xinjiang and government spending. ........... the Chinese government would continue investing heavily in industrial and urban development in Xinjiang
How to Debate Someone Who Lies Truth sandwiches, ridicule and other tactics for Joe Biden when he faces President Trump. ........ If you attempt to counter every falsehood or distortion that Mr. Trump serves up, you will cede control of the debate. .......... The first weapon maybe the most effective: humor and ridicule. .......... Mr. Trump, faced with a pandemic and an economic downturn, tells Americans what a great job he’s done. In response, Mr. Biden should smile and say with a bit of laugh: “And just where have you been living? South Korea? Or Fiji? You cannot be in the United States — except maybe on the golf course. We’ve got about 4 percent of the world’s population and 21 percent of all Covid deaths and the highest unemployment since the Great Depression! You must be living on another planet!” ............... He is apparently so fearful of being the target of a joke that — unlike any president before him — he has skipped the last three roasts at the White House Correspondents Dinner............ “This is like the bad joke about the arsonist who shows up at the bonfire and started posing as a fireman! The guy who calls himself a stable genius seems to have forgotten that he’s been president during all this violence and that he’s been the instigator in chief with his racist rhetoric. The country’s biggest bully thinks he can fool you by playing sheriff.” ........... the president’s lies generally fall into two categories. The first are boastful and self-aggrandizing claims, such as “Only I can fix it. ” This swagger betrays a fragile self-esteem, and while outlandish and amusing, the lies are typically harmless. ................ The second type of lie aims to deceive others in pursuit of a specific goal. ............ This kind of lie is emblematic of individuals with antisocial traits who have a deficit in moral conscience. But if they also have strong narcissistic traits, they are exquisitely sensitive to criticism and especially to ridicule. Derisive humor threatens to expose them for the loser they secretly believe they are. .............. “The fact is that more than 200,000 American have died — even if the president falsely suggests that the number is lower. But let’s focus on the grim truth: More than 200,000 of our loved ones died from coronavirus, many because of the president’s deception.” ............. a “truth sandwich” — a lie gets sandwiched between true statements. .............. “Wearing a mask is one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of coronavirus. But you sure wouldn’t know it from the president, who has run around in public without one and mocks people like me who wear them. Is it vanity or that he just doesn’t believe in science? I don’t know, but the science is undisputed: wearing masks saves lives.” ............. the goal is serious: to expose the truth and unnerve Mr. Trump by getting under his skin.
This Is the Casual Racism That I Face at My Elite High School Unexpectedly, the school did something about it. ........... Navigating college applications and maintaining my G.P.A. while dealing with Zoom burnout and no physical connection to my friends. ............ I attend Regis, the academically rigorous Catholic high school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. To those who get in, it is tuition-free, and it is regularly recognized as one of the top high schools in the country. ........... Even as classes have started remotely, the racism that many Black students like me have experienced and continue to experience in school feels more emotionally draining than ever. ............. Getting the “best education possible” is the mantra of my Jamaican-immigrant parents. ............. And yet even in this high-achieving environment, among peers who are “supposed to know better,” I have felt constantly diminished. ........ Classmates have made numerous comments over the years about how affirmative action puts them at a disadvantage for getting into top schools. ............. schools still need to do work to address institutionalized racism within their communities. ............. I am no stranger to racist behavior. In middle school, I was targeted with it, as well as enduring classmates casually using the N-word. ......... Within the first two weeks there, a photo of me was shared around school by a white classmate; the caption referred to me as a monkey. ........... Whether it’s heads turning toward you during a lesson about slavery in fourth grade or everybody staring at you when the civil rights movement is discussed ............... restorative justice. ........... a collaboration between victim and offender. The process is uncomfortable and tedious for everyone involved, but it leads to a transformative result. ................ Administrators facilitated real dialogue between me and my main offender, a former friend who had used the N-word in front of me on several occasions. ........... We talked at length over his thought process, and he even sent me a message apologizing and telling me exactly what it was he did wrong and that my frustrations were valid. .............. Restorative justice doesn’t allow an institution to simply remove the bad apples. It inspires solutions that achieve value and respect for everyone. It forces an institution to look at community-oriented solutions that make everybody uncomfortable, not just those who are involved. But it’s the only way real change can be made.
The Gilgo Beach serial killings were a cold case. Then a new police chief arrived.
‘I Feel Sorry for Americans’: A Baffled World Watches the U.S. From Myanmar to Canada, people are asking: How did a superpower allow itself to be felled by a virus? And why won’t the president commit to a peaceful transition of power? ............ Two out of three Canadians live within about 60 miles of the American border. ........... it’s like watching the decline of the Roman Empire ............ How did a superpower allow itself to be felled by a virus? ............... “Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power,” Mr. Romney wrote on Twitter. “Without that, there is Belarus.” ............ its reputation seems to be in free-fall. .......... over the past year, nations including Canada, Japan, Australia and Germany have been viewing the United States in its most negative light in years. In every country surveyed, the vast majority of respondents thought the United States was doing a bad job with the pandemic. .............. a disease unchecked, mass protests over racial and social inequality, and a president who seems unwilling to pledge support for the tenets of electoral democracy. ......... In places like the Philippines, Mexico and others, elected leaders have been compared to Mr. Trump when they have turned to divisive rhetoric, disregard of institutions, intolerance of dissent and antipathy toward the media. ........ Because of the coronavirus, American tourists are banned from most of Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America. ............. “He has many nuclear weapons,” Sok Eysan, a spokesman for Mr. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party, said of Mr. Trump. “But he is careless with a disease that can’t be seen.”
Violinist Concetta Abbate Talks Trauma, Empathy & The Healing Process Of 'Mirror Touch' The prolific musician and music teacher shares the process of creating a poignant album from candid conversations with women and people who identify as nonbinary ........... Abbate’s lyrics, which filters the many stories she heard and absorbed into poignant, poetic verses that use just enough detail to be recognizable to the people that inspired her words, but open-ended enough to allow anyone to find solace within them. ...... this concept of mirror touch, which is a really extreme form of empathy ............. A large part of my livelihood is being a music teacher. I run a private school in Brooklyn teaching adults and kids. When you work one-on-one with someone, you end up being the first person to hear about a lot of difficult situations. It’s something that, as a music teacher, you don’t really get trained to deal with because you’re not a therapist. But the reality is that there’s some overlap there. ............ That’s why conversation and listening and empathy and validation are so important. As we share perspectives, we build and grow. ............ historically, certain demographics of people feel more comfortable talking to me. I could also be because men are less likely to express personal feelings and emotions. But if enough people are willing to share their stories, the systemic problems of society start to reveal themselves. ............. And this was all before the age of 12! [laughs] “Who am I if I don’t play violin? No one’s going to value me.” ......... I have students who never perform but they play every day. There’s something really special about that—that music is a personal thing instead of a product. ............... When we have conversations, there should be a lot of moments of silence and listening.
America is the Holy Roman Empire of the 21st century The American Constitution is the oldest in the world still operating, and has been obviously out of date for well over a century. Half the basic mechanics of government are either malfunctioning kludges or a gross betrayal of its own founding principles. .......... Let's start with the Electoral College, which has developed a clear bias towards Republicans — a 2-3 point Biden popular vote win would mean a tossup according to its rules, while he would need about a 5-point victory to be sure. As I have argued before in detail, this is the goofiest method of selecting a head of government found in any rich nation, and quite possibly in the entire world. Not only has it delivered the presidency to the popular vote loser twice in less than two decades, it is mechanically possible to win while losing the popular vote 4-1. ................. The vast majority of states, both large and small, are virtually ignored by campaigns because their electoral votes can be taken for granted ............ another janky aspect of American government: gerrymandering. In most states today, it is also legal for the members of the state legislatures to draw their own district boundaries — choosing their own voters rather than the other way around. This is wildly impermissible in about every other advanced democracy, because it amounts to election-rigging. ................ (the most cutting-edge democracies today use multi-member districts or some kind of proportional representation). ........ in Wisconsin in 2018, for instance, they got 46 percent of the vote but 64 percent of the seats in the state Assembly. In other words, several of the legislative majorities that could potentially steal the upcoming election for President Trump are themselves the product of flagrant cheating. ............. one could theoretically rig the Senate such that Democrats had a permanent super-majority with the strategic migration of a few hundred thousand solid liberals from California and New York into sparsely-populated Western states. .............. So we have a founding document declaring that "all men are created equal" and an 18th-century jalopy constitution that allows legal election theft and randomly gives residents of one state over 70 times the influence of another in one chamber of Congress. .......... Simply voting is a complicated and burdensome pain in the neck in many states. Voters routinely have to wait in line for hours, or face ridiculous administrative complexities. In Pennsylvania, for instance, thanks to a vaguely-written law and a recent idiotic court decision, mail-in voters are legally required to put their ballot into a pointless "secrecy envelope" before they put it in the normal envelope. Fail to do this, as about 5-6 percent of mail-in voters routinely do, and your vote will be thrown out. .................. The Holy Roman Empire was finally dissolved when Napoleon, commanding the first modern national army, steamrolled the coalition opposing him at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805.
