Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalChanging China: Xi Jinping's effort to return to socialism
For decades life in China had evolved around its home-grown version of let-it-rip capitalism.
Despite being technically a "communist" country, the government had put its faith in trickle-down economics, believing that allowing some people to become extremely rich would benefit all of society by dragging it out of the disastrous quagmire of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution as quickly as possible.
To an extent it worked. A large middle class has emerged and people in virtually all strata of society now have better living standards as a result.
From the stagnation of the 1970s China has been thrust to the top of the pile, now challenging the United States for global economic dominance.
But it left a chasm of income disparity.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58579831
The Wire creator avoids filming new show in Texas over abortion law
David Simon, who created the Emmy-nominated US crime series The Wire, has said he will not film his forthcoming show in Texas, due to a new law there restricting access to abortions.
The new law bans abortion from as early as six weeks into pregnancy.
"As an employer, this is beyond politics," Simon posted on Twitter. "I can't and won't ask female cast/crew to forgo civil liberties to film there.
He also asked his followers to suggest alternative filming locations.
The new law came into effect on 1 September and does not allow abortions after the detection of what anti-abortion campaigners call a foetal heartbeat, something medical authorities say is misleading.
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-58662529
'We risked it all': Country music's Black voices are striving to be heard
As she waited to go on stage, Mickey Guyton found herself in a position that not even the most confident up-and-coming country singer would envy. It was late July at the star-studded "CMA Summer Jam," and Carrie Underwood was treating the sold-out crowd to a parade of her hits, as fans in sleeveless flannel shirts hoisted beer cans to songs like “Cowboy Casanova.”
Then as midnight neared, the superstar paused her set to bring out a lesser-known artist, who’d go it alone to sing a song that no one heard before.
This scenario was particularly daunting for Guyton, a country singer who’s dared to speak her truth about being Black in America – and has been confronted with the consequences.
As she approached the microphone, Guyton says, “I felt like I was looking out at the people that were in my Instagram DMs,” recalling messages such as “Take your Black ass out of country music.”
“So I was terrified. For all I knew, those people could have booed me out of there.”
https://www.knoxnews.com/in-depth/entertainment/music/2021/09/23/country-music-black-voices-mickey-guyton-kane-brown-darius-rucker/5646962001/
What women see when they look at Gabby Petito
On Sunday, human remains consistent with the description of Gabby Petito, the "van life" blogger who disappeared while on a cross-country van trip with her fiancé Brian Laundrie and whose fate has stirred a growing digital frenzy, were found in Wyoming. On Tuesday, a tweet from the FBI Denver field office confirmed the remains found were those of Petito, who was reported missing on September 11, and said "the initial determination for the manner of death is homicide."
A police affidavit filed last week for a search warrant indicated that before she vanished Petito's conversations with her mother appeared to reveal "more and more tension" between Petito and Laundrie. As of last weekend, roughly 50 law enforcement officers from five local agencies and the FBI were searching for Laundrie, who hasn't been named a suspect or charged, and hasn't been seen since September 14.
Every element of the disturbing circumstances surrounding Petito's disappearance and death has been dissected across the internet and discussed constantly in the news over the last few days. The couple's August 12 encounter with the police in Utah during which Petito described a fight between herself and Laundrie that morning. The TikTok-er who claimed that she and her boyfriend gave Laundrie a ride on August 29 in Wyoming. The odd text message from Petito's phone on August 30, which her family doubts was written by Gabby herself.
Everything has been combed over again and again, the public obsessing over theories, the media racing to deliver each new tidbit of information. It feels impossible that something horrific could have happened to a young woman whose life and relationship -- documented on her beautiful Instagram grid -- appeared to be perfect. The fact that it likely wasn't -- and that the stories of most women who go missing remain untold -- both speak to a darker truth about the dangers all women face every day.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/22/opinions/how-women-see-gabby-petito-disappearance-death-thomas/index.html
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This isn't about "missing white woman". It's about intimate partner violence. Please, no thread hijacking.
New Jersey boy gets vaccinated for his 12th birthday after losing his dad to Covid last year
For his 12th birthday, Gavin Roberts only had one request: get vaccinated against the coronavirus that killed his dad last year. So when he reached the legal age to get the shot on Sunday, his wish was finally granted.
Alice Roberts, Gavin's mother, told NBC New York that her son's decision was strongly influenced by his dad's death early in the pandemic.
"I kept asking him what he wanted for his birthday," she said. "He was always saying it's the vaccine, we're going to get that."
Charles "Rob" Roberts, a Glen Ridge police officer and Gavin's father, died of Covid-19 on May 11, three weeks after he collapsed in his home in late April, Alice wrote in a column published on NJ.com Sunday. He was 45.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-jersey-boy-gets-vaccinated-his-12th-birthday-after-losing-n1279815
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The kids are all right!
After backlash, Illinois Catholic school reverses course, hires lesbian coach
Amanda Kammes was offered a position earlier this month as the head girls lacrosse coach at Benet Academy, a private Catholic high school in suburban Chicago.
A day later, after Kammes submitted paperwork listing her wife as her emergency contact, the offer of employment was rescinded, according to Kammes’ supporters.
The Lisle, Illinois, school justified its decision to “defer” Kammes’ offer at the time, referring to its mission as a Catholic institution.
“Benet Academy respects the dignity of all human beings to follow their conscience and to live lives of their choosing,” spokeswoman Jamie Moss said. “Likewise, as a Catholic school, we employ individuals whose lives manifest the essential teachings of the church in order to provide the education and faith formation of the young people entrusted to our care.”
However, after a groundswell of support for Kammes, including a rally outside the school and a letter signed by more than 3,000 alumni and members of the community, Benet reversed its decision Monday
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/backlash-illinois-catholic-school-reverses-course-hires-lesbian-coach-rcna2177
Murdaugh housekeeper's heirs were never paid millions after she died from fall, lawyer says
The children of a longtime Murdaugh family housekeeper who died in 2018 following what has been described as a "trip and fall accident" are entitled to at least five times what their attorneys initially believed they were owed as part of a wrongful death settlement but were never paid.
As beneficiaries, they should have received over $2.7 million in life insurance proceeds, according to a previously undisclosed order. Details of the financial arrangement, which were provided to NBC News and first reported by The State, have been shared with South Carolina authorities, Eric Bland, an attorney for the heirs, said Wednesday.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division opened a criminal probe a week ago into the death of housekeeper Gloria Satterfield as part of a wider investigation into Alex Murdaugh, the embattled personal injury attorney under scrutiny after he was accused of trying to stage his own death over Labor Day weekend in a life insurance scheme, and allegedly stole money from his family's law firm to feed a 20-year opioid addiction.
"In my 33 years of being a lawyer, I've never seen a larger breach of trust, a more concerted effort by lawyers and individuals involved to enrich one person — a powerful person — at an expense of needy clients who are owed fiduciary duties," Bland said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/murdaugh-housekeeper-s-heirs-were-never-paid-millions-after-she-n1279855
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More Murdaugh murk. Ain't he a peach?
On These Grounds: a shocking film about police brutality within US schools
In On These Grounds, an expansive, insightful and infuriating documentary about police brutality in the public education system, former school resource officer Ben Fields makes his case. Fields, a hulking and defensive white cop, meekly looks at the camera, clinically explaining away his actions when confronting a 16-year-old Black student identified as Shakara at Spring Valley high in South Carolina. The violent incident caught on multiple videos immediately went viral and led to his dismissal.
Fields arrived at Shakara’s classroom on 15 October 2015 after a math teacher accused the young student of being a disturbance. When Shakara refused to leave her desk, Fields wrapped his arm around her neck, slammed her to the ground, flung her across the classroom and put his knee on her as he made his arrest. He also arrested a fellow classmate, Niya Kenny, for speaking out against the use of force that left Shakara with a carpet burn over her right eye, a hairline fracture on her wrist and trauma that she will carry for years.
You’ve probably seen the videos, recorded by Kenny and her classmates, but you’ll be forgiven if you don’t remember which specific incident this is. There have been so many like it: the 2016 video of 12-year-old Janissa Valdez slammed to the ground, leaving her unconscious; the 2017 video of 15-year-old Jasmine Darwin thrown down in a cafeteria, enduring a concussion; the 2019 video of officer Zachary Christensen pinning an 11-year-old to the ground in Farmington, New Mexico, and so on. Just as I’m speaking to Garrett Zevgetis, the director of On These Grounds, over Zoom, a new video surfaces of a California school resource officer body-slamming 16-year-old Mikaila Robinson to the ground.
The issue is systemic, which is why there’s a sustained push among activist organizations to remove police from US schools. But Fields, and the majority in South Carolina who defend police conduct on campus and beyond, refuse to believe that either he or the system is to blame. Instead, they pick at Shakara, a child in foster care, and everything she may have done to bring that violence on herself.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/sep/21/on-these-grounds-documentary-police-brutality-us-schools
With A Spotlight On Gabby Petito, The Parents Of 2 Missing Black Men Call For Action
There's been national focus over the last few days on the unfolding story of Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old white woman whose death was ruled a homicide on Tuesday, nearly two weeks after she was last seen on a cross-country road trip with her now-missing boyfriend.
Media coverage of the case is intense and, as some people have pointed out, disproportionate to the kind of attention typically given to missing Indigenous women and people of color.
The families of two Black men who have gone missing in recent months — Jelani Day and Daniel Robinson — are drawing attention to this disparity, and pleading for the public's help in finding answers. Here are their stories.
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/22/1039653626/jelani-day-daniel-robinson-missing-black-men-gabby-petito-case
The Tragic Curse of Being the 'Most Beautiful Boy in the World'
The story of the “Most Beautiful Boy in the World” unfolds like a dark thriller.
It’s a story about the perils of child stardom. It’s a cautionary tale about the exploitation of young stars and the commoditization of beauty. It’s a horror story about the stripping of one’s agency at a young age and the reverberating effects that has on the rest of their life. It’s a glimpse at the generational cycle of trauma, guilt, and depression, and the seeming impossibility of feeling one’s own worth.
Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is a documentary entry in the beloved “Where are they now?” genre, albeit one of the more curious and unusual ones we’ve seen.
In 1970, when Björn Andrésen was 15, he was personally cast by famed Italian director Luchino Visconti in the film Death in Venice. The role of Tadzio required a vessel to live up to the description written by Thomas Mann in the novella from which the film was adapted: “...having honey-coloured hair, like a god in greek mythology. And the boy is not really human—rather, an angel of death.”
When the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival a year later, Visconti proudly heralded Andrésen “the most beautiful boy in the world,” a coronation that made international headlines and turned the young teen into an overnight star and, to his great discomfort, sex symbol.
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World marries archival footage from the time with new interviews with Andrésen, now an aging actor and musician in his sixties living in Stockholm. (In a great piece of trivia, Andrésen played the community elder whose disturbing, grotesque death is the turning point to madness in the 2019 film Midsommar.)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-tragic-curse-of-being-the-most-beautiful-boy-in-the-world?ref=home
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