Recent Posts

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Off the Record / Re: US Elections 2020

« Last post by Syt on Today at 02:24:11 am »

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Off the Record / Re: Covid-19 lockdown check-in

« Last post by Syt on Today at 02:12:46 am »

Yeah, but it is what it is. It's pretty near impossible to properly enforce, anyways.

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Off the Record / Re: Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

« Last post by Syt on Today at 02:12:26 am »

So to recap: many advisors called for strict measures to nip the surge in the bud. The government continued to resist this despite a clearly worsening situation not just at home but in Europe. They fiddled around until it got so bad the scientists warned worst case scenarios will be surpassed.

Austria is doing the same this time.

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Off the Record / Re: Covid-19 lockdown check-in

« Last post by Eddie Teach on Today at 02:05:18 am »

Doesn't sound much like a curfew if "getting fresh air" is a valid reason to be out.

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Off the Record / Re: Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

« Last post by Tamas on Today at 02:05:01 am »

So to recap: many advisors called for strict measures to nip the surge in the bud. The government continued to resist this despite a clearly worsening situation not just at home but in Europe. They fiddled around until it got so bad the scientists warned worst case scenarios will be surpassed.

It's end of March all over again.

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Off the Record / Re: Covid-19 lockdown check-in

« Last post by Syt on Today at 01:41:53 am »

Well, Lockdown 2 - Electric Boogaloo is coming and will be announced today.

Our office sent an email that everyone should work from home until further notice. If anyone wants to work at the office, the usual rules apply (one per office), plus keeping 2 meters distance at all times, wearing a mask in public areas and during face to face meetings, though such meetings are strongly discouraged.

The details of the lockdown will be announced by the government today, but the key details that have seeped through are:
- restaurants, bars are closed down (they will receive last year's revenue for the close down period from the state as compensation)
- shops, supermarkets stay open, but we're back to max. 1 customer per 10 square meters
- hairdressers stay open this time
- curfew from 8 pm till 6 am (except for going to work if necessary, prevent danger to life or limb, buying necessities of life, or to get some fresh air/exercise)

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Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

« Last post by Syt on Today at 01:35:17 am »

Not entirely serious:

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Off the Record / Re: Meanwhile in the Labour Party...

« Last post by Sheilbh on Today at 01:25:34 am »

[devil's advocate]Doesn't mean it's not diverse though. Plenty of cultures there. And I'm assuming not all of them will come from the same class either. And I can only hope not all of them adhere to the same set of ideas. And maybe a few of them aren't lawyertypes. There's more than just level of pigmentation to determine diversity.

Absolutely - that's partly what the whole idea of intersectionality is about.

these people saying "Brussels so white*", would they dare say the equivalent of the African Union? Or of ASEAN?
[/devil's advocate]

*That said: "Brussels so white" is clearly said by people who leave the city after working hours

I think so but it would be focused on the minorities in the African Union or ASEAN. And it is focused on the EU, from one article about this:

The EU may be respected for its defense of human rights worldwide but its own institutions have largely ignored evidence of racist harassment and violence across Europe, including at the hands of law enforcement agencies. Implementation of the EU’s Race Equality Directive, which dates back to 2000 and calls on member countries to adopt legislation to address discrimination, also remains patchy. Few European leaders or policymakers challenged Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s messaging on the need to protect a “besieged” Christian Europe from outsiders.

The EU institutions’ own track record on racial diversity isn’t very encouraging either. Although people from ethnic minority backgrounds make up around 10 percent of the EU’s population — that’s about 50 million people — they are severely underrepresented in EU bodies.

EU officials have become adept at talking about diversity in terms of the push to recruit and promote more women — but they routinely brush off questions regarding racial inclusion and diversity with statements that EU recruitment policies are “color blind.”

A 2017 Diversity and Inclusion Charter promising to create “a better workplace for all — including women, staff with disabilities, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex (LGBTI) staff and older staff” made no mention of the need to tackle the lack of ethnic and racial diversity within EU institutions. And according to the European Network Against Racism, women of color have largely not benefited from EU efforts to promote gender equality.

The EU has also fallen short in its response to the anti-racism protests sweeping across the Continent. Most European commissioners either stayed stoically silent or stumbled badly in their comments. When they did speak, they appeared either complacent as they deemed it unlikely that police brutality in Europe was as bad as in the U.S., or disingenuous in voicing surprise at Europe’s racist reality.

It is ironic that one of the prime backers of a European Parliament resolution last week calling for EU action to combat structural racism, Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana, who is also Germany’s first MEP of African descent, reported a traumatizing encounter with Belgian police the day before she spoke in plenary.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s speech in the Parliament last week sought to make amends, by acknowledging a lack of ethnic diversity in EU bodies and the need to fight both overt injustices and invisible biases.

But her message rang hollow to anti-racist groups who remember her praise for Greece as a “shield” against refugees and migrants and her stubborn commitment to tasking a commissioner to “protect” (later changed to “promote”) a “European way of life,” seen by many as a dog whistle to far-right populists.

It’s fair to say von der Leyen and her team in the Commission are not used to grappling with racism in either their private or professional lives. Former British-Somali MEP Magid Magid isn’t alone in questioning the potential relevance and impact of a debate on racial justice conducted by an all-white team of 27 women and men with no first-hand experience of racial discrimination.

The comments by Margaritas Schinas in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing were insane in their ignorance/arrogance:
"There is no doubt that Europe as a whole has been doing better than the United States in issues of race, also because we have better systems for social inclusion, protection, universal health care."
"And there’s also a European tradition for protecting minorities, we have less issues than they have in the States."
"I do not think that we have issues now in Europe that blatantly pertain to police brutality or issues of race transcending into our systems, but we do have an issue in Europe, which is the issue of inequalities and income distribution — making the best for everyone of what we have."
"What I can say is that in Europe we keep our armies only for our foreign enemies."

My favourite was when he said Europe isn't complacent about this - but we are world champions in protecting minorities

Edit: And in their defence the Fundamental Rights Agency has done really good work on the "being black in Europe". But they publish the report and ultimately it's often about law enforcement which is a member state competence:
https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-2018-being-black-in-the-eu_en.pdf

It'd be interesting to see similar research for other minority groups.

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Off the Record / Re: Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

« Last post by Sheilbh on Today at 01:04:25 am »

'Confirmed rumours' are that the UK as a whole will enter a national lock-down of some form next week.

The Johnson cabinet has bowed to the scientific advice, has/will talk with the leaders of the other devolved administrations and will announce it this Monday with implementation of measures starting on Wednesday for four weeks.

England, surely?

Wales is already in week 2 of lockdown. I think Northern Ireland's locked down too. Scotland hasn't locked down yet and I've not seen any plans for a full lockdown there in the Scottish press.

The thing in the latest SAGE release that admissions and deaths in this wave are at the top of "reasonable worst case scenario" is really concerning.

Edit:

Czechs have a 30% positivity rate?  That's pretty fucking bad...

Not all countries provide this data and I think it's maybe not as up to date as others - but the hospital admissions rate in the Czech Republic is very, very high right now:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/weekly-hospital-admissions-covid-per-million?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&time=2020-03-09..latest

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Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

« Last post by viper37 on Today at 12:41:38 am »

Why would anyone defend conversion therapy?

But why criminalize it?

because it apparently fucks up people more than it helps them?because it has been decided a long while ago that homosexuality is not a psychiatric disease and there's nothing wrong with it?