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March 29, 2024, 03:49:06 PM

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

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

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Sonny_Jim

Quote from: Milo on April 25, 2021, 08:38:22 AM
There would have been lingering shots as each safety measure gets defeated.
This is the bit where the audience knows 'oooh, he's going to get hurt'.  Maybe edit in a quick shot of the exposed source 'burning' away as he's fiddling with the buttons trying to override the door safetys:

Quote
In its original design, the facility had a fixed radiation monitor in the radiation
room which would have detected radiation from the (still raised) source rack and
prevented unlocking of the personnel access door. However, this monitor probe had
been removed more than five years before and had not been replaced. To unlock the
door, Worker A followed another 'usual' procedure at the facility (not recommended
by the supplier) of rapidly cycling the buttons on the LI 18 radiation monitor panel
There's another IAEA report about a similar situation, except the room has a floor that disappears bond-style to stop people from walking in when it's not safe, only for the guy to heroically jump across the gap to his certain doom.

Also this scene:
Quote
After about two metres of cable had
been paid out, the source rack reached the surface of the water, and the men saw
the blue glow due to Cerenkov radiation. Worker A was surprised at this and, on
fully lowering the source rack, he told his helpers to withdraw quickly. At this point,
apparently, he began to suspect that there was some kind of hazard[
Apparently because he turned the power off, he assumed that would also 'turn off the radiation'.  Whoopsy daisy.

chveik

Quote from: bgmnts on April 25, 2021, 08:55:59 AM
Is there literally anything on the planet that would convince you there is dodgy organ trafficking going on in China?

i'm guessing you actually haven't bothered to look into the links you posted. the sources are very dubious

#33
Quote from: bgmnts on April 25, 2021, 08:55:59 AM
Is there literally anything on the planet that would convince you there is dodgy organ trafficking going on in China?

Sure, but a sensationalist claim requires very strong evidence. The existing "evidence" being relied upon is preposterous. A common misunderstanding from anti-China people seems to be that China is a dystopian panopticon with no dissent. There are a billion people in China, many of whom are very internet savvy and have access to the outside world. The notion that this kind of thing is going on on such a scale without widespread outcry by the population or by the medical staff involved is inherently implausible.

Quote from: JaDanketies on April 25, 2021, 09:11:45 AM
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.

Setting aside the validity of whatever video footage you are referring to, shitty things happening to Uighurs is not the same as claims of "genocide" or of millions of people in concentration camps. Those are sensational claims wholly supported by any evidence. Nor are Western NGOs like Amnesty International particularly trustworthy on every issue; they have their own political axes to grind. Human Rights Watch, for example, has really gone off the rails in recent years.

Anyway, if there is evidence that Amnesty International has reported on "organ trafficking" I would be interested to see it, as nothing in the Wikipedia article links to reporting by AI. I suspect this is another instance of classic propaganda reporting; the Wikipedia article suggests that the aforementioned "tribunal" relied on a report by AI, with the implication being that was a report on organ trafficking. In reality, it seems they simply cited an AI report about the general mistreatment of Falun Gong followers in China.

Quote from: bgmnts on April 25, 2021, 09:14:47 AM
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

Al-Jazeera is not any better just because it is based in the Gulf rather than the US/UK. It openly engages in propaganda, probably even more so than other outlets, due to its ties to the Qatari government. (Just look at its coverage of the war in Yemen.)

The articles you've linked have zero original reporting and link to zero sources. The first mentions China in passing and simply alleges that China uses organs from dead prisoners - a much less sensationalist claim that I'm not as inclined to doubt. The second article you've linked once again simply summarizes the "tribunal" report referenced in my previous post. (A good example of how information laundering works in practice - a single dubious report is amplified by being fed to countless "news" outlets to make it appear as if the report is vetted or confirmed. That Wikipedia article is almost comical in the number of different websites it cites to make it appear as if there is real evidence, when they are all parroting a single document.)



Also worth highlighting the other classic propaganda technique at work here, which is taking a kernel of truth and turning it into a massive sensationalist claim. For example, the fact that Uighurs in Xinjiang are discriminated against and a small number probably are being sent to reeducation centers with minimal due process - bad things worth criticizing - are transformed into claims of "genocide" or of millions of people in "concentration camps."

Without wasting my time researching this issue exhaustively, I would not be surprised if there was an ethically dodgy practice in China of using organs from recently executed prisoners without obtaining some kind of consent from the prisoner or the family. (Though personally the only real ethical issue I would see there is the use of the death penalty, as who cares about prisoner "consent" in such a situation. I also would not be surprised of the U.S. does the same thing with the many prisoners it executes.) That is then used to support the sensationalist claim that the Chinese government is killing people on demand specifically to "harvest" their organs. And the further claim that they are specifically targeting a group that coincidentally is incredibly well funded and connected to the U.S. government.

RetroRobot

Found out what Rupture Farms "New n Tasty" is made of. Grim stuff.

Milo

Quote from: Sonny_Jim on April 25, 2021, 11:35:49 AM
There's another IAEA report about a similar situation, except the room has a floor that disappears bond-style to stop people from walking in when it's not safe, only for the guy to heroically jump across the gap to his certain doom.

That sounds like an absolute cracker, I think I have a new hobby!

Sebastian Cobb

Plainly Difficult on youtube does some good 10ish minute episodes on nuclear disasters.

Milo

Cheers. I'll have a look but I need to know how the different stances of the people involved affected the radiation doses in each part of their bodies and ten minutes is probably not enough. That first report had a diagram of the three people trying to free the stuck radiation source and the way they'd have been stood.

GoblinAhFuckScary

#38
.

Zetetic

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on April 25, 2021, 03:21:55 PM
a small number probably are being sent to reeducation centers with minimal due process
Do you know what the number of people is that the Chinese government say have been "placed" in "education and training centres" in Xinjiang (under "Articles 29 and 30 of the Counterterrorism Law of the People's Republic of China" or similar, I suppose)?

I note that this would include people who participated in "activities ... that were not serious enough to constitute a crime", so the number is presumably larger than the 43,000 people arrested as "terrorists" for participating in "illegal religious activities" since 2014.

(This isn't a gotcha or anything. I'm really interested to know if a claim exists. The Employment and Labor Rights in Xinjiang (September 2020) white paper sets out a claim that some people have interpreted as specifically referring to placement in these centres, but it's quite ambigious.)

The Crumb

If you're in a nuclear horror rabbit hole, the Japanese worker called Ouchi is probably the end point. Absolutely god awful stuff. Not going to provide links because I really don't want to see it again.

Cuellar


EOLAN

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on April 23, 2021, 06:43:38 AM
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.
I found it very chilling when I did a Youtube dive after watching the film. That one of the leading influences in mass media; Whoopi Goldberg when introducing Mark Ruffalo and the lawyer he portrayed in the film; declaratively stated that the thing about this film is that it is NOT at all political.
Basically just because both Democrats and Republicans would pander to the massive corporations (not that she spelt it out exactly like that).
It's one of the most political films I have ever seen.

JamesTC

Quote from: The Crumb on April 27, 2021, 11:10:32 AM
If you're in a nuclear horror rabbit hole, the Japanese worker called Ouchi is probably the end point. Absolutely god awful stuff. Not going to provide links because I really don't want to see it again.

He's the guy kept alive for a ridiculously long time, wasn't he? If it is, I remember the picture of him in the hospital being one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen.

EDIT: Yep, it is.

GoblinAhFuckScary

Quote from: JamesTC on April 27, 2021, 01:38:37 PM
He's the guy kept alive for a ridiculously long time, wasn't he? If it is, I remember the picture of him in the hospital being one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen.

EDIT: Yep, it is.

agh. is that particularly nasty photo real???

JaDanketies

Quote from: GoblinAhFuckScary on April 27, 2021, 02:08:20 PM
agh. is that particularly nasty photo real???

Some guy on Quora and some other guy on Reddit said it was fake because the guy in the picture doesn't have a right foot and Ouchi did. Not 100% convinced it's not Ouchi though. It's certainly a picture of someone.

These might be the real pics (nsfl).

This is the picture everyone in the thread is referring to, which I am saying might be fake. (also nsfl).

JamesTC

Just looked at one of the Reddit threads on it (the picture is not directly on this link so it is only NSFW rather than NSFL) and the picture is apparently from a burn ward in the US.

EDIT: Pretty incredible that there is a reasonable chance the guy in that horrifying picture may have survived.

SteveDave

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.

David Hepworth went on a high voiced rant about sports people taking the knee (as well as having a minutes silence for Prince Philip) on the latest available Word In Your Ear podcast. It's quite funny.

chveik

Quote from: EOLAN on April 27, 2021, 01:23:18 PM
That one of the leading influences in mass media; Whoopi Goldberg when introducing Mark Ruffalo and the lawyer he portrayed in the film; declaratively stated that the thing about this film is that it is NOT at all political.

that woman has no shame