Whoever makes excuses for this is obviously very much willing to tolerate genocide, regardless of how loudly they condemn other states for doing it. Hypocrisy goes both ways.

Rather disgraceful discrimination against Indians from a TPP member running as an independent

I'm not a great fan of this rising xenophobia in an already quite closed Japanese society, especially having just moved to Japan for work

this is very clearly and directly genocidal: "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" is explicitly listed as a genocidal act in the 1948 convention, and Russia's intent to destroy Ukrainians as a people has been made clear over and over again

A lot of people don't seem to know this but the Genocide Convention does not require a single person to have been killed for it to have been violated.

Everything can be flexible if the state needs it to be in authoritarian governance. Love to enter the post-rule of law world

wow it's almost like staying on Twitter warps your sense of reality because it's run by a nazi who uses the algorithm to feed you nazi shit and suppress normie content

BYD is like all corporations, they can be forced to be less exploitative. Their bus factory in LA is unionized and reportedly a decent employer. But if left to their own devices they will end up doing this stuff over and over again

Western ‘Realists’: “Putin was reacting to NATO expansion in Europe; Ukraine is a one off scenario we can appease our way out of” Putin “yeah Ukraine is about the EU, and I might do it again if anyone else thinks about joining”

This is absolutely outrageous. SCOTUS reinstated Texas gerrymander 15 weeks before primary because they claimed it was too close to election to block it but now allowing Alabama to gerrymander one week before primary after trial court found map was intentionally discriminatory against Black voters

First two groups mentioned weren't formed in 1979 but in 1982 & 1988 respectively, and in places that Israel was at the time (and still is) consistently occupying, bombing, and displacing people within. It for whatever reason is still controversial to say but: occupation begets militancy in response

Just published! My book, Easting the West: Theorizing the Postliberal Conjuncture from China, is now available online for institutional users with subscription to Oxford Scholarship Online! academic.oup.com/book/62722 The print version will come out next month.

China is winning its language war in Tibet. thediplomat.com/2025/03/chin...

I complain about some students but it is such a huge honour to be teaching a language endangerment course this semester and have an actual native speaker of one eagerly attending. I feel like I'm finally helping the world.

What happens when we lose a language?

People tend to assume that annexation would be a quick, one-and-done, problem-solved kind of affair, but the occupation by a vindictive Beijing would be brutal and last decades, as would the inevitable resistance

"The implementation of Xi’s plans could see millions of Taiwanese excluded from public life and tens of thousands jailed unless they renounce support for an autonomous Taiwan and pledge loyalty to the CCP as Chinese patriots."

Rather concerning, this may be another sign of Beijing's long reach

The EBU claimed that voting rule changes had "solved" the issue and therefore obviated the need for the demanded vote on expelling Israel. That has not stopped Israel from its usual open disdain for its own supporters and cheating yet again escxtra.com/2026/05/09/e...

“There’s no other way to put it. They don’t know because they don’t want to know. They exist on a more privileged plane, and don’t want to look down.”

Mosley?? They picked an actual Mosley for this?? No that's just too on the nose

Israeli television news investigation confirms what we already knew, which is that the 3 hostages who were shot and executed by Israeli soldiers were killed because the overarching rules of engagement in Gaza were such that "a man, no matter the age, you kill him straight away".

people are all like "we can't replace starmer, otherwise we'd lose all our seats" and then lose all their seats

"Grief From 1,600 Kilometers Away: Mourning the 19 Massacred in Negros Island and Its Connection To Taiwan" by @ginollopez.bsky.social

‘They have built a machine that pulls out their mother tongue’: why Tibet’s children ‘think they are Chinese’ - www.theguardian.com/global-devel... "insistence on Mandarin in schools is eroding the Tibetan language and culture right from early childhood" #culturalgenocide #china #tibet

Chinese state media does President lai in blackface after eSwatini trip.

The official State Of Israel social media account claims that the occupied Syrian territory of Mount Hermon is "in Israel".

I enjoy how Russia invented a hitlerjugend years ago and we all just sort of went "yeah yeah that's just the sort of thing that happens there"

British Gaza flotilla activists say they needed hospital care after Israeli forces’ abuse

Israel seizes nearly 60 percent of Gaza as it plans to resume war, report says - https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-seizes-nearly-60-percent-gaza-despite-ceasefire-plans-resume-genocide

With Huang having tied the party to the KMT and still failing to negotiate a single TPP candidate for county/city head, I don't see how the TPP can justify its presence for many more cycles. focustaiwan.tw/politics/202...

A fun (for me I guess) thing about moving to a new place is decoding the local placenames and finding the hidden patterns of migration buried within a supposedly monocultural place

This is the Israeli government.

While Eswatini is in the news because of Lai, let's not forget that it's an absolute monarchy where the constitution is suspended, there are no elections, and protests calling for the right to vote were repressed by force. Life expectancy has halved under the current king

The biggest risk is of course PRC warmongering to annex Taiwan.

"One day after a government press release endorsed #RightsCon, we received a phone call [...] and were told that diplomats from the People's Republic of China (PRC) were putting pressure on the Government of Zambia because Taiwanese civil society participants were planning to join us in person."

My latest hobby is just mentally reading all the local Japanese place names in Mandarin (like the KMT did to Taiwan). Life is going well in Fugang, the largest city of Jiuzhou.

Thinking of the pro-cop folks who said Hong Kongers didn't care about democracy it was just a cost of living issue. Turns out workers might need democracy if they're going to force the oligarchs to pay them more

It seems a sign of the times that a major human rights convention is being cancelled because the host country thought some of the human rights being discussed aren't in its "national interest"

Really shocking. Comes a few days after Zambia signed a cooperation agreement with China. It was a big effort to bring this conference (which was in Taiwan last year) to Africa Sad state for #humanrights right now around the world www.404media.co/rightscon-hu...

I understand the excitement about cheap EVs. But workers at BYD are treated terribly, they went on strike in Feb bc take home pay was under US $300/month. We can't overlook the social impact of green energy just b/c it's happening in China

I'm on week 4 of my first semester teaching as faculty and i'm already getting pre-depressed/anxious about course evaluations

If you haven’t applied yet for the Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics, then please do so soon: the deadline is 11 May. Hope to see you in Leiden this summer! www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/education...

Got awoken by ultranationalists protesting near the Korean and Chinese consulates (can't tell which one) on Showa Day for another quality Japan Experience

This is a great account of a livestreamed discussion on city-dwellers’ unrealistically sunny views of life in rural China. Worth noting that these misconceptions can easily be transmitted to Westerners and taken as authoritative commentary on “the real China.” There *is* no single “real China”!

The remarkable thing about this essay—written by a Palestinian who denies Chinese atrocities in Xinjiang—is how much the author justifies China’s claims over Xinjiang using exactly the same argumentation with which Israel claims Palestine

Great piece from @chenchenzhang.net on how to think about the right (and the left) in China, a common stumbling block

people actually understanding purchasing power would go a long way to avoiding stupid discourse around things like this (so we can actually Do Things About It instead of complaining wages are higher in country x than y)

Yep. deep into the 1940s the CCP supported Taiwan independence, as it had in the 20s and 30s, a feeling widespread among educated Chinese. globaltaiwan.org/2026/04/the-...