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chilling things you've learned recently (warning: abandon all hope)

Started by Thomas, April 22, 2021, 05:48:53 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Thomas

A podcast about a supremely disturbing murder case sent me along on a Wikipedia jaunt, where I happened upon this passage from the article for Organ harvesting in China, which, in the hushed tones of Wikipedia's mission for objectivity, encourages you to read between the lines -

QuoteDespite the absence of an organized system of organ donation or allocation, wait times for obtaining vital organs in China are among the shortest in the world—often just weeks for organs such as kidneys, livers, and hearts. This has made it a destination for international transplant tourism and a major venue for tests of pharmaceutical anti-rejection drugs. The commercial trade in human organs has also been a lucrative source of revenue for the Chinese medical, military and public security establishments. Because there is no effective nationwide organ donation or allocation system, hospitals source organs from local brokers, including through their connections to courts, detention centers and prisons.

Organ transplant recipients in China are generally not told the identity of the organ donor, nor are they provided with evidence of written consent. In some cases even the identity of the medical staff and surgeons may be withheld from patients.

I had a vague awareness that organs are murkily traded, but I wasn't aware of the (alleged) scale.

Obviously, we live in a four-dimensional 24 hour mesh of horrifying events - the recent loss of Prince Philip, for example - but have you learned of anything particularly chilling lately, anything hinting at the true Lovecraftian depths of the unlit human spirit?

We can bathe too long in the dungeon of facts unhappy, but a consciousness of human extremity is useful for many reasons. It might bolster our will to be kind. If you're an artist, it might spur some exorcistic creative odyssey or help you come up with a grimdark band name. It might save our lives. We love horror films because they are safe; we learn horror fact because it is not. But - and I'm sensitive to the importance of this - for gawd's sake don't depress yerself. Remember that blackbird song, cups of tea, and McVitite's Gold Bars still exist. Now chill me.

Sebastian Cobb

We're at the point where people in the FREE SPEECH UNION want to BAN taking the knee at sports.
https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1385242194370514944

I know we all knew that these people were only really interested in free speech when it cut in a reationary way, but it's kind of chilling they don't even feel the need to keep the pretence up.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I talked about this in the film thread as Dark Waters is all about the DuPont scandal, but well worth putting in here

A basic rundown of the case:
https://www.levinlaw.com/dupont-c8-litigation

However what isn't mentioned there is the extensive efforts made to prevent the case from going ahead despite knowing their liability, and their use of soft power as a major employer to turn the locals (who they had been poisoning) against the firm litigating against them.

I was already very wary of corporate behaviour and inclined to believe the worst, but this lays it all bare in a truly terrifying way.

Most chilling of all is that these unregulated chemicals are now in the bodies of you, I and nearly every living thing on Earth.

I know Emma Kennedy has an Irish passport though, so she's golden.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Thomas on April 22, 2021, 05:48:53 PM
But - and I'm sensitive to the importance of this - for gawd's sake don't depress yerself. Remember that blackbird song, cups of tea, and McVitite's Gold Bars still exist. Now chill me.

McVities's Gold Bars use palm oil. You must HATE Sumatran orangutans.

https://www.ecowatch.com/u-s-banks-financing-rainforest-destruction-for-palm-oil-plantations-1881826935.html

mothman


Tony Tony Tony

Bit of a hackneyed one however....

If you buy a lottery ticket during the week, you have more chance of dying before the draw on Saturday than winning the jackpot.

Moral: Don't buy your ticket until just before the draw. That way you could live forever.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Thomas on April 22, 2021, 05:48:53 PM
A podcast about a supremely disturbing murder case sent me along on a Wikipedia jaunt, where I happened upon this passage from the article for Organ harvesting in China, which, in the hushed tones of Wikipedia's mission for objectivity, encourages you to read between the lines -

Quote
Despite the absence of an organized system of organ donation or allocation, wait times for obtaining vital organs in China are among the shortest in the world—often just weeks for organs such as kidneys, livers, and hearts. This has made it a destination for international transplant tourism and a major venue for tests of pharmaceutical anti-rejection drugs. The commercial trade in human organs has also been a lucrative source of revenue for the Chinese medical, military and public security establishments. Because there is no effective nationwide organ donation or allocation system, hospitals source organs from local brokers, including through their connections to courts, detention centers and prisons.

Organ transplant recipients in China are generally not told the identity of the organ donor, nor are they provided with evidence of written consent. In some cases even the identity of the medical staff and surgeons may be withheld from patients.

We know all of those things. There was no attempt to even try and conceal it when the thread was started by pancreas.

Emma Raducanu

When a bird creates a nest in your loft, you've just got to let it get on with it. Maybe give them something to eat even though they're keeping you awake from 4:30am every day. And even though you read their droppings may eventually become infested with maggots, which in turn arouse the presence of mice and all your half baked, intermittent, warped dreams of rats poking their faces out of your walls cause deep anxiety. Noo, the RSPB just tell you everything is fine. You're the lucky chosen one.

dissolute ocelot

Quote from: DolphinFace on April 23, 2021, 10:33:40 AM
When a bird creates a nest in your loft, you've just got to let it get on with it. Maybe give them something to eat even though they're keeping you awake from 4:30am every day. And even though you read their droppings may eventually become infested with maggots, which in turn arouse the presence of mice and all your half baked, intermittent, warped dreams of rats poking their faces out of your walls cause deep anxiety. Noo, the RSPB just tell you everything is fine. You're the lucky chosen one.
I don't think a bird nest really counts as chilling (bats on the other hand are even more protected, you can't even shout at a bat, and they don't just nest and go, they roost forever...) Seagulls are definitely the Nightmare Tenants of the bird world, you get them nesting on your roof and you can't go out your front door without being attacked, but while they're nesting they're protected and you can't even shoot them with a Kärcher pressure washer, let along a shotgun.

Have we done eyelash mites lately (cute CGI mites)?

jobotic

Might be a mite overload, might not be a mite overload. It's mighty unclear.

seepage



Wet Blanket

Those museums where they have plasticised dead people playing cards and whatnot source their corpses from China with few questions asked. Every so often they have to send one back because it has a bullet hole in its head or something

JaDanketies

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on April 22, 2021, 06:49:50 PM
We're at the point where people in the FREE SPEECH UNION want to BAN taking the knee at sports.
https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1385242194370514944

I know we all knew that these people were only really interested in free speech when it cut in a reationary way, but it's kind of chilling they don't even feel the need to keep the pretence up.

Surprised to see them doubling-down on it as well. You'd think with a load of people pointing out their anti-free-speech stance they would've at least revised their statement. Their defence, if you're interested, is that they actually want everyone's speech to be equally-restricted.

Sebastian Cobb

I thought it was odd how nobody even raised an eyebrow with "it goes beyond civil rights stuff and MLK and on to left-wing politics".

WhoMe

The fate of that Indonesian submarine crew lost at sea. Either asphyxiated or remained conscious long enough to watch the metal hull around them slowly implode until black, watery death crashed in.

Quote from: Thomas on April 22, 2021, 05:48:53 PM
A podcast about a supremely disturbing murder case sent me along on a Wikipedia jaunt, where I happened upon this passage from the article for Organ harvesting in China, which, in the hushed tones of Wikipedia's mission for objectivity, encourages you to read between the lines -

I had a vague awareness that organs are murkily traded, but I wasn't aware of the (alleged) scale.

Literally none of this is true. This is outright propaganda from a right-wing cult (most likely being used as a CIA propaganda front). Amazing that this is allowed on Wikipedia, but not really surprising I guess.

The extensive list of "sources" is a textbook example of how to launder fake information to make it appear as thought it is widely confirmed, when if you were to go through all of the sources in detail you will find that they all originate in one or two poorly sourced, highly non-credible, propaganda outlets. The same is true of the ongoing claims of "genocide" in China, which can all be traced back to a single right-wing evangelical zealot in Germany with no expertise in Xinjiang.


Polymorphia

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on April 25, 2021, 12:40:14 AM
which can all be traced back to a single right-wing evangelical zealot in Germany with no expertise in Xinjiang.

Name them. Prove it all goes back to them

Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on April 25, 2021, 12:40:14 AM
The same is true of the ongoing claims of "genocide" in China, which can all be traced back to a single right-wing evangelical zealot in Germany with no expertise in Xinjiang.
Sauce plox

Quote from: bgmnts on April 25, 2021, 12:59:43 AM
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-55097424#:~:text=Six%20people%20including%20several%20doctors,were%20making%20official%20organ%20donations.

https://www.healtheuropa.eu/im-going-to-china-theyre-shooting-my-donor/97063/

https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m859

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests-organs-detainees-tribunal-concludes-n1018646

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/17/china-is-harvesting-organs-from-detainees-uk-tribunal-concludes

1 - A story about a "several doctors" being jailed by the Chinese government for forging consent forms would seem to directly contradict the incredible claim that the Chinese government has a widespread practice of killing people to steal their organs. Even setting aside the BBC's notoriously poor track record for reporting on Chinese court cases.

2- Cites no source or evidence. The interviewee is on the "International Advisory Board for the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China," not exactly a disinterested "source."

3 - Behind paywall, appears to just summarize the report noted below. Zero independent reporting.

4 - This is not some neutral, disinterested tribunal; it is a report by the aforementioned "International Advisory Board for the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China" misleadingly implied to be a "judgment" by some international body. This is a common tactic in propaganda circles these days. If you click through to the actual report, the primary evidence is once again ridiculous speculation. The #1 cited evidence is that there are "extraordinarily short waiting times (promised by PRC doctors and hospitals) for organs to be available for transplantation."

5 - Just summarizes the above report. Zero independent reporting.

Quote from: Polymorphia on April 25, 2021, 01:00:20 AM
Name them. Prove it all goes back to them

If you actually read the Wikipedia article it all derives from two main sources, one is a "journalist" employed by the Victims of Communism Memorial Fund (a right-wing propaganda outlet with the aim of destabilizing the Chinese government in any way possible), and a mid-2000s report by two guys who seemingly have never set foot in China. Their primary methodology, as relayed in part in the Wikipedia article, is wild speculation based on statistical inferences; such as there being more organ transplants in China than the authors would have expected; therefore all of the excess must come from murdered Falun Gong prisoners. Zero academic rigor or credibility. This is the same kind of methodology used by Dr. Adrian Zenz to conclude that "millions" of Uighurs are being held in concentration camps - just wild speculation to support a predetermined conclusion based on the abuse and misreading of data.

There are countless legitimate reasons to criticize the Chinese government if you want to, rather than these sensationalist (and fundamentally racist) stories favoured by Western propagandists because they dehumanize the Chinese population by making China seems like a dystopia.

Quote from: Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse on April 25, 2021, 01:00:49 AM
Sauce plox

If you click through virtually any news report about the "genocide" you will find that they all lead back to Dr. Adrian Zenz.

Kankurette

The Nutty Putty Cave incident. I'm claustrophobic and it's pure nightmare fuel.

Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

Quote from: Kankurette on April 25, 2021, 01:59:31 AM
The Nutty Putty Cave incident. I'm claustrophobic and it's pure nightmare fuel.
Oh, yeah, that's a bad one.

Cold Meat Platter

QuoteIn 1758, Benjamin Franklin and John Hadley, professor of chemistry, collaborated on a project investigating the principle of evaporation as a means to rapidly cool an object at Cambridge University, England. They confirmed that the evaporation of highly volatile liquids, such as alcohol and ether, could be used to drive down the temperature of an object past the freezing point of water.

I mean fucking hell

Mr Banlon

Found out about two fatal accidents in close succession during the Manhattan Project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#Harry_Daghlian's_death
Pretty grim, but clumsiness seems to have played a part in both of them.

Sonny_Jim

I used to read IAEA accident reports, so this wasn't recent.   Apart from the usual 'lost source' incidents (scrap metal merchants cracking open radiation therapy machines and the like), there's the occasional 'guy walks into the irradiation room at a sterilizing facility whilst the source is still active'.  Even the picture on the front cover gives me the willies:

https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub847_web.pdf

Milo

Really enjoyed that IAEA report. Absolutely love the technical detailology stuff and the way it feels like an episode of Casualty where the audience can see exactly where it's going. There would have been lingering shots as each safety measure gets defeated. Somebody tripping over the knackered portable radiation detector, the bit where the guy notices the Cherenkov radiation despite the radiation source being 'switched off'.

bgmnts

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on April 25, 2021, 01:35:51 AM
1 - A story about a "several doctors" being jailed by the Chinese government for forging consent forms would seem to directly contradict the incredible claim that the Chinese government has a widespread practice of killing people to steal their organs. Even setting aside the BBC's notoriously poor track record for reporting on Chinese court cases.

2- Cites no source or evidence. The interviewee is on the "International Advisory Board for the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China," not exactly a disinterested "source."

3 - Behind paywall, appears to just summarize the report noted below. Zero independent reporting.

4 - This is not some neutral, disinterested tribunal; it is a report by the aforementioned "International Advisory Board for the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China" misleadingly implied to be a "judgment" by some international body. This is a common tactic in propaganda circles these days. If you click through to the actual report, the primary evidence is once again ridiculous speculation. The #1 cited evidence is that there are "extraordinarily short waiting times (promised by PRC doctors and hospitals) for organs to be available for transplantation."

5 - Just summarizes the above report. Zero independent reporting.

If you actually read the Wikipedia article it all derives from two main sources, one is a "journalist" employed by the Victims of Communism Memorial Fund (a right-wing propaganda outlet with the aim of destabilizing the Chinese government in any way possible), and a mid-2000s report by two guys who seemingly have never set foot in China. Their primary methodology, as relayed in part in the Wikipedia article, is wild speculation based on statistical inferences; such as there being more organ transplants in China than the authors would have expected; therefore all of the excess must come from murdered Falun Gong prisoners. Zero academic rigor or credibility. This is the same kind of methodology used by Dr. Adrian Zenz to conclude that "millions" of Uighurs are being held in concentration camps - just wild speculation to support a predetermined conclusion based on the abuse and misreading of data.

There are countless legitimate reasons to criticize the Chinese government if you want to, rather than these sensationalist (and fundamentally racist) stories favoured by Western propagandists because they dehumanize the Chinese population by making China seems like a dystopia.

If you click through virtually any news report about the "genocide" you will find that they all lead back to Dr. Adrian Zenz.

Is there literally anything on the planet that would convince you there is dodgy organ trafficking going on in China?

JaDanketies

I would be inclined to agree that trusting Western media about what is going on in China makes just as much sense as trusting Russian and Chinese media about what is going on in the West.

However we all saw plenty of video footage of some shitty things happening to Uyghurs in China. Thousands of them packed into re-education centres. Hard to fake that. I pretty much always trust organisations like Amnesty International who say China is targeting Uyghurs and that non-consensual organ transplantation from prisoners is happening.

bgmnts

Quote from: JaDanketies on April 25, 2021, 09:11:45 AM
I would be inclined to agree that trusting Western media about what is going on in China makes just as much sense as trusting Russian and Chinese media about what is going on in the West.

However we all saw plenty of video footage of some shitty things happening to Uyghurs in China. Thousands of them packed into re-education centres. Hard to fake that.

Fair enough:

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2011/5/17/organ-trafficking-her-heart-was-missing

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/9/25/un-urged-to-investigate-forced-organ-harvesting-in-china