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Darren Byler

@dbyler.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.8K following 24 posts

Anthropologist at Simon Fraser University. Author of Terror Capitalism (Duke 2022) and In the Camps: China’s High-Tech Penal Colony (Columbia 2021).

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Reposted by Darren Byler
Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
“Autonomy from men is autonomy from capital that uses men’s power to discipline us.” —Silvia Federici Happy International Women’s Day! www.bostonreview.net/articles/eve...
bostonreview.net
Every Woman Is a Working Woman - Boston Review
Silvia Federici interviewed by Jill Richards.
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reijer hendrikse @reijer.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
NEW PUBLICATION 'Capitalising on conjunctures: Tesla's ups and downs in financialised capitalism' With Tobias Klinge and Stefan Ouma (@econgeo.bsky.social), we analyze the driving forces behind Elon Musk's wealth. Open access with @finandsoc.bsky.social here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
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Ruha Benjamin @ruha9.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Black Studies and the Fight Against Fascism on March 4 @ 6pm ET, register here: www.tickettailor.com/events/hayma...
Black Studies and the Fight Against Fascism with Davarian Baldwin, Johanna Fernandez, Sarah Haley, Robin D.G. Kelley, Barbara Ransby, Robyn Spencer-Antoine, on Tuesday March 4 @ 6pm ET, register here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/haymarketbooks/1611646
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Darren Byler @dbyler.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
Chilling essay from Alberto Toscano and Brenna Bahndar:
Text describing right wing talking points regarding Gaza as real estate.
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Darren Byler @dbyler.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
“In the illegal settlements, we find Israelis who [.] are [.] often young families priced out of Tel Aviv real estate. Similarly, affordability meant that the so-called “Gaza Envelope” was again leading in home purchases in Israel only months after October 7th.” proteanmag.com/2025/02/27/s...
proteanmag.com
Slumlord Empire • Protean Magazine
In this essay, Alberto Toscano and Brenna Bahndar explore how the ideology of real estate has come to find direct geopolitical expression in Trump’s crass drive to acquire territory as “property”—a tu...
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Democracy Now! @democracynow.org · 20/02/2025
Some strains of the MAGA movement hope to return to “what they see as a more natural world, where men are in charge, white people are in charge,” says @quinnslobodian.com, commenting on the role of masculinity in "right-wing accelerationism."
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Darren Byler @dbyler.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
“With that kind of access, even a small team can search the entire government for employees whose job titles contain suggestions of wrongthink, or who might resist takeovers or wield bureaucratic tools to slow the pace of change.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Here Are the Digital Clues to What Musk Is Really Up To
What will DOGE do with access to personal data on almost all Americans?
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Tilted Axis Press @tiltedaxispress.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
“Tilted Axis has carved out a unique literary niche, and has caught the attention of critics and prize juries, landing major awards and winning acclaim for writers who were unknown in the Anglophone world.” Thank you Alexandra Alter & @nytimes.com for spotlighting our work! bit.ly/3X6h1fh
nytimes.com
A Tiny Press Took a Big Risk on Experimental Books. It Paid Off.
The British publisher Tilted Axis specialized in innovative translated literature. It won them major awards. Now they’re coming to the U.S.
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Darren Byler @dbyler.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Disturbing genealogy of libertarian white supremacy. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa
Elon Musk grew up with the privileges of a stratified racial order and Peter Thiel lived in a city that venerated Hitler
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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
⭐ New essay on AES Online! ⭐ "Snapshots of Post-Assad Syria" by Charlotte Al-Khalili @sussexuni.bsky.social @leverhulme.bsky.social #AnthroSky Read it here: ⬇️ americanethnologist.org/online-conte...
americanethnologist.org
Snapshots of Post-Assad Syriaby Charlotte Al-Khalili - American Ethnological Society
“Welcome to Syria,” greeted the robust man as he took our passports. He was seated at a counter, behind security glass. The man, unlike the young men carrying
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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
*️⃣ *️⃣ AE FORUM (52.1): I Was Wrong *️⃣ *️⃣ Featuring articles by Veena Das, Hugh Gusterson, Gil Hizi, Carole McGranahan, Erin Routon, Meredith G. Marten, & Laura A. Meek, w/eds' note by @llwynn.bsky.social, Susanna Trnka, & @kopyor.bsky.social! Find it here!: ⬇️ americanethnologist.org/journal/issu...
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Rep. Greg Stanton @repgregstanton.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
The termination of 850 Indian Health Service physicians, nurses, and dentists will have a grave impact on access to care for millions of Native Americans. Upholding our treaty obligations is not optional.
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nyrolaelima.bsky.social @nyrolaelima.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
Today, at a hearing in the South Bangkok Criminal Court regarding the unlawful detention of 43 Uyghur men for 11–12 years, I testified as an expert witness. My statement in English is below. The Thai and Uyghur versions will be posted soon.
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Joe Katz @joekatz45.bsky.social · 13/02/2025
For the record this story was originally reported by @capitol.press, who is out with another profile of another Venezuelan refugee with no criminal record who has been sent to Guantanamo for having tattoos:
migrantinsider.com
ICE Transfers Venezuelan Barber to Guantánamo (SCOOP)
Another Latino with no criminal record (but four tattoos) gets disappeared offshore by the Trump administration.
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Vittoria Elliott @telliotter.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
ICYMI from me and @timmarchman.bsky.social, in the months between November 5 and January 20, at least three individuals associated with Palantir or its cofounder Peter Thiel were involved in an online recruiting effort for DOGE. @wired.com www.wired.com/story/elon-m...
wired.com
The Recruitment Effort That Helped Build Elon Musk’s DOGE Army
At least three individuals associated with Palantir or its cofounder Peter Thiel were involved in an online recruiting effort for DOGE late last year, WIRED has learned.
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Jason Diamond @jasondiamond.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
Getting Andrea Long Chu to stick a fork in Pamela Paul is the critic version of a Mortal Kombat fatality. nymag.com/intelligence...
nymag.com
Goodbye, Pamela Paul
The contrarian columnist showed us the intolerable side of liberalism.
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Josh Sheehan 🪷🌳🏳️‍⚧️🎸🐕🧡 @sheehanistan.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Bangladesh: "At least five hospitals run with US funding have suspended operations in the Rohingya camps" "...waste management and landfill activities, managed by a large Bangladeshi non-governmental organisation, have also been suspended a day after the USAID letter was issued..."
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dell cameron @dell.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Update from WIRED head @katie-drummond.bsky.social. We're hosting a webinar for subscribers w/ our reporters and editors next Thursday, Feb 13 @ 1pm ET.
System Update by Katie Drummond:

Ever since Elon Musk dove headfirst into backing Donald Trump’s presidential bid last year—to the tune of $280 million in contributions—WIRED has been tracking the billionaire’s political exploits and growing sphere of influence within the GOP and the Trump administration more specifically. We’ve been sourcing up, talking to people within and around federal agencies, as well as experts in disciplines including cybersecurity, AI, medicine, and more, about Musk’s potential impact. 

What would Musk do, we wanted to understand, once Trump took back the White House on January 20? How would our government—and our country —change with Trump at the steering wheel and Musk riding shotgun?

Now the world, and WIRED, are finding out. The entire WIRED newsroom, from editors and reporters to fact-checkers and photo editors, has been working relentlessly to unearth new information about what exactly Elon Musk and his allies are doing across federal agencies, and to what end. What is changing, how, and what are the consequences? Amid the findings of our reporting, one overarching fact has become extremely clear: Musk is now in the driver’s seat, and he is implementing sweeping, shocking, and largely unchecked changes across the entirety of our country’s federal apparatus.

So what do we know so far? WIRED has in recent days revealed that Elon Musk has taken over swaths of government infrastructure, from installing his lackeys in senior positions within governmental HR to leading the charge on a chaotic “deferred resignation program”—one that closely echoes a similar Musk initiative at Twitter—that could see millions of federal workers leave their posts. Musk has been instrumental in attempting to dismantle USAID, with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutting off funding for lifesaving work before the State Department put the majority of USAID personnel on administrative leave.Every day, we’ve revealed new details on who, exactly, Musk has installed inside federal agencies —they include at least six young men, aged 19 to 24, with little or no government experience. We’ve also documented what those and other Musk acolytes are doing, from conducting “sneak attack” meetings to discuss civil servants’ code and projects to accessing the federal systems that handle Social Security payments and tax returns to announcing plans to transform a key federal tech agency into the AI-fueled equivalent of a “startup software company.”

Of course, we’re also keeping close tabs on likely agency heads and members of Trump’s cabinet. His pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, repeatedly claimed at a Senate hearing that he’d never promoted QAnon’s theory. We tracked all the times he did. And though RFK Jr. said he’d support vaccines if he became Health and Human Services Secretary, we outlined his long history of anti-vax positions.

We’re not done. Our reporters are getting hundreds of new tips every day and are publishing their latest reporting on WIRED.com at a breakneck pace. To say this moment is unpredictable would be an understatement, but trust me—we’ll continue to do our jobs with utmost vigor, and we’ll work to bring you the most authoritative, trustworthy coverage of tech’s all-out invasion of the American government. We’ve gained tens of thousands of new subscribers in the past few days. If you’d like to join them, you can support us here.

P.S. We’ll be hosting a webinar with the editors and writers leading this coverage next Thursday, February 13, at 1pm ET. It’s exclusively for subscribers; if you become one today, you will receive an invitation prior to the event.
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Darren Byler @dbyler.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
The Rohingya community is being devastated by the suspension of USAID. www.thedailystar.net/rohingya-inf...
thedailystar.net
Rohingyas hit by US fund cuts
Trump administration’s executive order to suspend US-funded projects and funding globally has started hitting the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh, which is sheltering more than a million Rohingya and tak...
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Joshua L. Freeman @jlfreeman.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
The Trump administration has tapped Darren Beattie to handle public diplomacy at the State Department. This is an appalling choice for many reasons. One is that Beattie has spent the last few years alternately denying and cheering on China's repression of its #Uyghur community. 1/3
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Darren Byler @dbyler.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
“The stock price of Geo Group, a private prison operator that sells monitoring technology to ICE, has more than doubled since Mr. Trump won [.] Cellebrite’s shares have also nearly doubled in the past six months and Palantir’s shares have risen nearly 80 percent.” www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/t...
nytimes.com
The Surveillance Tools That Could Power Trump’s Immigration Crackdown
Border enforcement agencies have spent billions assembling surveillance tools to track and find people. These could be critical in President Trump’s immigration agenda.
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Darren Byler @dbyler.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
“The Government of Thailand must immediately halt the possible transfer of 48 Uyghurs to the People’s Republic of China [.] warning the group was at real risk of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment if they are returned.” www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...
ohchr.org
Thailand must immediately halt deportation of 48 Uyghurs to China: UN experts
GENEVA – The Government of Thailand must immediately halt the possible transfer of 48 Uyghurs to the People’s Republic of China, UN experts* said today, warning that the group was at real risk of tort...
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David Tobin @drdavidtobin.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
48 Uyghurs face immediate deportation from Thailand to China where they will face persecution. If you work in HE or research, we urge you to sign the statement addressed to the Thai authorities asking for the group of detained Uyghur men to be given safe haven. forms.gle/zWw3GbTvvqiu...
forms.gle
Urgent Researcher Statement on the Status of Uyghur Asylum Seekers in Thailand
Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra Office of the Prime Minister, Royal Thai Government Government House 1 Phitsanulok Road Dusit District, Bangkok 10300, Thailand Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampo...
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Hannah Theaker @htheaker.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
This is a horrifying prospect. The deportation of Uyghurs in Thailand to the PRC is such a flagrant breach of the principle of non-refoulement.
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Ben Mauk @benmauk.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Went long on our two-year investigation into the Uyghur refugee crisis and the reporting behind the story. With @nyrolaelima.bsky.social benmauk.substack.com/p/40-the-lon...
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nyrolaelima.bsky.social @nyrolaelima.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
apnews.com/article/uygh...
apnews.com
Uyghurs detained in Thailand say they face deportation and persecution in China
A group of Uyghurs who were detained in Thailand over a decade ago say that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists who say the men are at risk of abuse and tortur...
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Darren Byler @dbyler.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
Horrific news coming from Thailand of imminent mass deportation of Uyghur migrants to China where they face long term imprisonment. www.change.org/p/the-petiti...
change.org
Sign the Petition
The Petition to Thai Government: Don't Deport Uyghur to China
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Darren Byler @dbyler.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
GEO Group on a post-election earnings call: ​“We expect the incoming Trump administration to take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement, and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals.” inthesetimes.com/article/depo...
inthesetimes.com
The Profits of Fear
Trump’s mass deportation plans are a racist racket with deep roots in U.S. history and law.
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Darren Byler @dbyler.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
WTF. Appalling to see @nytimes.com publish this imperialist drivel. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | O Canada, Come Join Us
Perhaps Trump is not making a threat but offering an opportunity.
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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
Jamal is so close to raising the funds to get his whole family out — almost 90% there. Can you help him over the finish line?
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Julia Métraux @juliametraux.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
For my first piece of 2025 at @motherjones.com, I spoke with Anita Say Chan on the history of eugenicists corrupting data to be discriminatory–which continues today in Big Tech. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
motherjones.com
Eugenics isn't dead—it's thriving in tech
A new book takes on the throughline from the rise of 20th-century eugenics to Silicon Valley.
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msafri.bsky.social @msafri.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
In July 2024, research published in the medical journal The Lancet estimated 186,000 deaths in Gaza, Dr Abu-Sittah estimates 300,000 two days ago. They are not just numbers, but people, families, infants.
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s. e. smith @sesmith.lol · 27/12/2024
Really horrific conditions in this facility where Israel holds Palestinians in detention. This is about retaliatory vengeance, not 'security.'
972mag.com
Gazans reveal horrors of Ofer Camp
Detainees in Israel's shadowy new facility face non-stop abuse — from electric shocks and constant handcuffing, to skin diseases and deadly beatings.
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
I found this article ont YES BUT helpful. It's usually is said as if the person to whom it's said is naively uninformed, as in X says, "it's great the prisoner was released"; Y, "yeah, but not all prisoners were released." Lots of yeah but here these days. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-...
psychologytoday.com
How a Yabut Can Kill a Conversation
Nothing sucks the blood out a great idea faster than the dreaded "Yabut." Yabuts need to feel in control and by adding the word "but" they discount everything leading up to it.
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Duke University Press @dukepress.bsky.social · 26/08/2024
"Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism" by Mingwei Huang is an ethnography of Chinese capitalist projects in Johannesburg that traces the development of new forms of racial capitalism in the twenty-first century. Read the intro for free now: ow.ly/i8kV50T6rlH
Cover of Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century by Mingwei Huang. The cover features a photo of a parking lot at daytime. The photo has been taken from a dark hallway; the lot is visible through a wide doorway. Although several cars, parked trucks, and a row of cargo containers occupy the parking lot, a distinct lack of human figures gives the landscape an empty atmosphere.
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Paul Mozur @paulmozur.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
For years the U.S. has struggled to convince countries to shun Huawei and other China tech. Now it believes it has a way to do it, offer Nvidia chips in exchange. That's the basis of a new A.I. diplomacy emerging as a last gasp policy from the Biden Admin. Nvidia, caught in the middle, is not happy.
nytimes.com
Nvidia’s Global Chips Sales Could Collide With US-China Tensions
The chipmaker expects more than $10 billion in foreign sales this year, but the Biden administration is advancing rules that could curb that growth.
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Alison Killing @alisonkilling.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
For anyone wanting to know more about Xinjiang/the Uyghur region I have made a starter pack of campaigners, academics and journalists who research and write about the region. It's still very incomplete - I'd be grateful for more suggestions! go.bsky.app/PWzGYxx
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 16/12/2024
Dear computer vision researchers, students & practitioners🔇🔇🔇 Remi Denton & I have written what I consider to be a comprehensive paper on the harms of computer vision systems reported to date & how people have proposed addressing them, from different angles. PDF: cdn.sanity.io/files/wc2kmx...
Screenshot of Table of Contents (Part 1)

Contents
1 Introduction 217
2 Positionality 221
3 Overview of Risks and Harms Associated with Computer
Vision Systems and Proposed Mitigation Strategies 223
3.1 Representational Harms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
3.2 Quality-of-Service and Allocative Harms . . . . . . . . . . 229
3.3 Interpersonal Harms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
3.4 Societal Harms: System Destabilization and Exacerbating
Inequalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
4 Frameworks and Principles for Computer Vision
Researchers 266
4.1 Guidelines for Responsible Data and Model Development . 267
4.2 Measurement Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
4.3 Reflexivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
5 Reorientations of Computer Vision Research 276
5.1 Grounded in Historical Context and Considering
Power Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
5.2 Small, Task Specific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
5.3 Community-Rooted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280Screenshot of Table of Contents (Part 2)

6 Systemic Change 285
6.1 Collective Action and Whistleblowing . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
6.2 Refusal/The Right not to Build Something . . . . . . . . . 287
6.3 Independent Funding Outside of Military and Multinational
Corporations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
7 Conclusion 291
References 293
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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
I really recommend taking some time to read the report itself www.amnesty.org/en/documents...
amnesty.org
Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territory: ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza - Amnesty International
This report documents Israel’s actions during its offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip from 7 October 2023. It examines the killing of civilians, damage to and destruction of civilian infrastructure, ...
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Darren Byler @dbyler.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
“The two big private prison operators, GEO Group and CoreCivic have rallied 85% and 59% respectively since the beginning of November […] they're rallying particularly hard this time because Trump ran on an agenda of mass deportations.” finance.yahoo.com/news/jim-cra...
finance.yahoo.com
Jim Cramer Reports The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO) ‘Rallied 85% And 59% Respectively Since The Beginning Of November’
We recently published an article titled Jim Cramer Thinks These 13 Stocks Will Benefit From the New Administration. In this article, we are going to take a look at where The GEO Group, Inc. (NYSE:GEO)...
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William C. @williamcson.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
“Israel killed more than 200 Palestinians in Gaza on Saturday, including 40 members of a single family. The official death toll in Gaza is now over 44,000, although experts believe that is a vast undercount of the true figure.”
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Alison Killing @alisonkilling.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
NEW: A year-long BBC Eye investigation has uncovered that tomato paste produced using forced labour in Xinjiang, western China, is likely being sold in major UK and German supermarkets. Watch the documentary here: youtu.be/dtv_1eafJn4?...
youtu.be
Blood on the Shelves: The Secrets of Xinjiang’s Tomato Industry - BBC World Service Documentaries
YouTube video by BBC World Service
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Made in China Journal @madeinchinajournal.com · 02/12/2024
Over the past decade, we have published hundreds of essays. Rather than letting this material rest in our archives, we have decided to draw from it to offer a series of ‘modules’ on key topics. Here's the first one, on internationalist activism and solidarity. 1/
madeinchinajournal.com
Module: Internationalist Activism and Solidarity | Made in China Journal
This module revolves around one of the key themes we covered in our publications, that is, internationalist activism and solidarity, notably the ways in which Chinese activists, both abroad and within...
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Made in China Journal @madeinchinajournal.com · 03/12/2024
‘Northern frontier culture’ has recently become a trendy term in propaganda texts and academic publications in and about Inner Mongolia. In this piece, an anonymous scholar discusses how this discourse ends up marginalising and deterritorialising one group: ethnic Mongols from the region.
madeinchinajournal.com
Constructing a De-Ethnicised Inner Mongolia | Made in China Journal
‘Northern frontier culture’ (北疆文化, umrat khiliin soyol) has recently become a trendy term in propaganda texts and academic publications in and about Inner Mongolia. Numerous activities, including cult...
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Marc Steinberg @msteinbrg.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Incredibly excited: In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical Surround is now out!!! 4 years in the making, co-edited by @joshua-neves.bsky.social and me, this OA volume is full of chapters that will make you rethink the oft-used word. Please read & circulate! networkcultures.org/blog/publica...
networkcultures.org
TOD #54 In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical Surround
Theory on Demand #54In/Convenience: Inhabiting the Logistical SurroundEdited by Joshua Neves and Marc SternbergConvenience is the feeling and aspiration that animates
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