#it was mostly because of chinese camp but like...that also defined my summer so it makes sense

[transranp0]

i barely listened to kpop last summer but two songs that defined my summer were sherlock by shinee and queencard by (g)i-dle

[trainsinanime]

Percy Jackson and Western Civilisation

Okay, I’m gonna do it. I know it’s a bad idea, but I’m gonna do it anyway, because someone has to and either nobody else is, or they’re hiding behind fandom-specific hashtags that I’m not familiar with. Basically my question is: What is up with the concept of "Western Civilisation" in the Percy Jackson books, and is it really as stupid as the first book makes it seem?

I know the correct answer is "read the rest of these Harry Potter wannabe books and find out for yourself, and then make a post about that or maybe a Youtube video essay or something", but I don’t care enough about the question to do that and I didn’t like the first book enough to want to. Also I don’t know how to make Youtube video essays. So if you think that my take is uninformed and not worth your time because of that… well, you’re probably right. That said, I think the question is still valid, and maybe this will prompt someone more knowledgable than me to make a Content™ about this or something.

To briefly sum up what this is about: In the Percy Jackson books, the ancient greek gods are real, are around, and keep having children with mortals, one of whom is our hero Percy. These kids get sent to a summer camp that is totally not Hogwarts because it’s a camp, not a school, you see. This summer camp is on Long Island, New York, USA. The gods themselves have moved to the US and live on a mystical 300th floor of the Empire State Building.

Obviously the question here is what the gods are doing there. Is this situation similar to Neil Gaiman's amazing book "American Gods", where local versions of the gods appeared because their worshippers are here? Are there versions of the gods everywhere? Turns out no, they’re just in the US. They moved here because they are bound to a mystical concept known as "the heart of western civilisation", also sometimes called "the flame". This used to be in Ancient Greece, but then moved to Rome, then around Europe for a bit and eventually settled in New York.

Depending on your point of view, you could describe this as either a neat solution, or as an intriguing piece of world building, or as what the fuck is this shit. I’m in the latter camp, if you can’t tell. Because while it seems neat and simple on the surface, it actually presupposes a lot of things and raises a lot of questions, like:

What even is western civilisation?

What languages does western civilisation speak? What alphabet does it use to write them?

Which stories and myths do all of western civilisation share?

Since western civilisation has a center, it seems logical to assume that it must also have limits; things that are not western civilisation, but something else. Which of these "something else" exist? Presumably at least one "eastern civilisation", I guess, but how many and what else?

What parts of the world are and are not part of western civilisation? For example, is the middle east part of the western civilisation? I mean, islamic tradition played a huge part in preserving ancient greek texts, and their reintroduction to Europe during the Reconquista of Spain is what triggered the Renaissance and is a big part of why we care about Ancient Greece today at all.

What, if any, are the religions of western civilisation? Apparently Greek Gods are one of them, okay. What about Christianity, what about Judaism, what about Islam?

What is the philosophy of western civilisation, if any?

It is established that Roman Gods and Greek Gods are actually identical, as the Romans claimed, even though that's historically wrong. Okay, fine, that's a choice. What about the Norse gods or those of ancient Egypt? The Romans did the same with them.

What happens with immigrants into western civilisation, and with people who were conquered by it? Are Chinese immigrants to the US part of Western Civilisation? Are Native Americans? Why or why not?

Was Rome part of Western Civilisation before they took over Ancient Greece?

When did Western Civilisation move to the US, and why then?

Again: What exactly is Western Civilisation and how do you determine where it goes next? Is it based on followers of a religion, or is it about culture, or mythology, or language? Because trying to paint a continuous line along any of these axises is at least somewhat problematic.

That’s just a small selection. I could go on, but the book doesn’t even acknowledge that these questions are real, much less try to provide any sort of answer. And from what I heard when I asked around, it seems like the later books in the series don’t either.

All these questions ultimately center around one key concept: The book assumes that there is such a thing as Western Civilisation, that it is clearly definable, and that it follows a neat line from Greece to Rome to Europe to the US. This is an assumption that is incredibly easy to poke holes into on every single level, so for me the really interesting question is really why the book even makes it at all.

I’m kidding, I know perfectly well why the book does this. This mental model of a single western civilisation that starts with ancient Greece and has found its modern form in the modern US is old and super popular. This continuinity is a story we in the western world tell ourselves. This story is the reason why most buildings in Washington DC look like greek temples. And most importantly, this version of history, or a related one that mostly just stops in Europe, is what is told in high school history books all across, well, "Western Civilisation". And, oh yes, author Rick Riordan used to be a high school history teacher.

"Western civilisation moved around a bunch and is now home in New York city" is not the start of the world building here, it appears to be the end of it. You could just as well say, "The greek gods are here because of what you read in your history text book, and you're really smart for remembering it."

I could say something about how this is problematic™ actually, because it supports the same world view that was the underpinning of Manifest Destiny, and how it supports the toxic view of American Exceptionalism. But honestly, I don’t think the book intends to do anything like that. It seems genuinely disinterested in dealing with any questions like that. Likewise, there is a hypothetical version of this where "Western civilisation" is defined by people believing they are in "Western civilisation" and perpetuating that story, which would be interesting on a meta-level (well, it would be yet another American Gods, but there's nothing wrong with that, that was an amazing book). But again, that seems deeper than Percy Jackson wants to go.

"Western civilisation" is just a tool to move the setting from a wild, scary, unimaginably remote place like… modern Greece, I guess, to the mundane, familiar, safe and kind of boring setting of modern-day New York City. Making New York City and its surroundings feel boring and mundane is definitely an unusual choice, but the book really commits to it.

(Random aside: Is there any cross-US road trip story ever where the hero travels from the west coast to the east coast?)

At least as presented in the first book, "Western Civilisation" is just a tool to make sure that the book's fictional universe does not become too interesting. And it reuses an old and popular but also clearly incomplete, problematic and in many ways just plain wrong narrative to do so, because it assumes its readers know and believe that story. It’s not the only part of the book I dislike, but it’s one that really stuck with me.

Or maybe I’m completely misinterpreting all this because I didn’t read any of the subsequent books. If you have, then please, I genuinely would like to know what you think about this!

[silvertngs]

50 questions you've never been asked

I was tagged by @herefortommo @goldenhusbands and @valarrie, thank you so much, I really enjoyed this 🧡🌼

1. What is the color of your hairbrush? - plain black

2. A food you never eat? - bananas, rice, peas and artichokes

3. Are you typically too warm or too cold? - I get cold very easily but I prefer to be cold than too warm

4. What were you doing 45 minutes ago? - I was talking with a uni friend and he was calling me out for saying "pfffff" too much (I don't?)

5. What is your favourite candy bar? - twix

6. Have you ever been been to a professional sports event? - yes, only once though as far as I remember

7. What is the last thing you said out loud? - “pfffff" at myself? (okay maybe I do)

8. What is your favourite ice cream? - I love anything chocolate-y or with caramel/peanuts in it

9. What was the last thing you had to drink? - a new infusion tea my dad bought today, it's so RED and fruity I love it

10. Do you like your wallet? - yes!! it’s black and has embroidered flowers on it

11. What was the last thing you ate? - ice cream

12. Did you buy any new clothes last weekend? - not clothes, I ordered a small shoulder bag along with some clothes that my sister ordered for herself

13. The last sporting event you watched? - I don’t even remember tbh

14. What is your favourite flavour of popcorn? - plain with salt

15. Who is the last person you sent a text message to? - said friend from uni

16. Ever go camping? - nope. my uni friends and I were planning on going this summer but I can’t see how that’s gonna happen now :(

17. Do you take vitamins? - no, I only take some pills for my iron deficiency

18. Do you go to church every Sunday? - no, I don’t

19. Do you have a tan? - not yet because I barely go out these days anyways

20. Do you prefer Chinese food or pizza? - I love both but PIZZA

21. Do you drink your soda with a straw? - I think it depends whether I’m out or at home? out with a straw, at home without a straw

22. What color socks do you usually wear? - mostly patterned ones and also black, white, gray and burgundy ones

23. Do you ever drive above the speed limit? - pfff I can't drive, I'm planning on getting my license this summer

24. What terrifies you? - failure

25. Look to your left, what do you see? - my wardrobe

26. What chore do you hate? - I don’t hate any of them, I’m just always bored to do them

27. What do you think of when you hear an Australian accent? - I don’t think I can recognize an Australian accent to begin with

28. What’s your favourite soda? - coke

29. Do you go in a fast food place just hit the drive-thru? - go in but not if it was a fast food place, an ice cream shop or a cafe yes

30. Who’s the last person you talked to? - my mom

31. Favourite cut of beef? - I just realized I don’t ever eat beef, not even in burgers

32. Last song you listened to? - Sorry by Nothing But Thieves

33. Last book you read? - I... don’t even remember. I’ve started reading the picture of dorian gray weeks ago but I ditched it. I'm definitely gonna finish it sometime though

34. Favourite day of the week? - probably Saturday

35. Can you say the alphabet backwards? - no and I burnt my last brain cell trying to do that

36. How do you like your coffee? - usually with a bit of milk and no sugar. depends on what kind of coffee I'm drinking actually

37. Favourite pair of shoes? - a pair of burgundy biker boots

38. At what time do you normally go to bed? - define normal....... lately I’ve been sleeping at 2-ish am

39. At what time do you normally get up? - somewhere between 8:30 and 9 am

40. What do you prefer, sunrise or sunsets? - I don’t really ever get to watch the sunrise but I think I’d prefer that

41. How many blankets are on your bed? - only a comforter

42. Describe your kitchen plates? - we have so many different ones, my faves are probably some plain coloured ones, my siblings and I each have our own color and we use only that (mine is green, my brothers’ are blue and yellow and my sister’s is orange)

43. Do you have a favourite alcoholic beverage? - white wine I guess? but the most tasty I’ve ever tried was baileys for sure

44. Do you play cards? - yeah, sometimes

45. What color is your car? - I don’t have one

46. Can you change a tire? - nope

47. What is your favourite state/province? - I don’t have a favourite province of Greece? this is such a weird question

48. Favourite job you’ve ever had? - I’ve only ever had one job (HA) and I did not enjoy it at all

49. How did you get your biggest scar? - I have a 10 cm scar on my tummy which is from my appendicitis surgery and a hernia surgery at the exact same place

50. What did you do today that made someone else happy? - pfff I can’t think of anything :( I made my mom and brothers laugh many times today but not by doing something particular

I tag: @moonloueh @finngardiumleviosa @soft-lou @findeunaera @cuddlerlouis @matchingbees @aquarianlightlover @farmjpg @orchxids @pridesobright @teacupslou @enbyliam @actionlou @gaykissys

[specialsnowflakestorm]

Josh Yos, Son of Refugees, Is An American Success Story

In honor of #WorldRefugeeDay we are kicking off the series “Getting to Know Marginalized People,” where we’ll feature Trans, homeless, immigrant people and more. The first is an interview with the son of Cambodian Refugees, printed below. 

By Vince Martellacci

Josh Yos is the son of Cambodian refugees, both of whose journeys to America were long and painful. In just one generation, Josh and his family have found success, happiness, and even community in California, settled now mostly in and around Oakland. And thankfully so. They were running from an oppressive regime, the Khmer Rouge, who under Pol Pot were responsible for what in the 1970s was quickly becoming genocide. It is estimated that 21% of the population, or 1.7 million Cambodians, lost their lives under the Khmer Rouge (Yale University).

 With the horrorshow going on in Syria right now, it seems pertinent to shed some light on who refugees are as people, and what kinds of things they’re running from. Refugees are not terrorists--they are terror victims. Josh’s mother’s dad was killed in front of her, her two sisters, and her mother. He was a doctor, an intellectual, which the Khmer Rouge was seeking to cleave the population of. “Rich people, smart people, people who were involved in the arts,” says Josh, all were the first targets of the Khmer Rouge, and his family fell victim. The Khmer Rouge was seeking to create a classless, communist state, and anyone high in the ranks of class or the state was in jeopardy.

 Josh’s father’s dad, who had lost virtually his entire family to war, was a farmer, which gave him a sort of advantage in that he was able to “play both sides. He knew it was shady … and one day he just decided to leave with my dad and a bunch of people.” They waited in Khao i Dang, a refugee camp on the Thai/Cambodian border for sponsorship from American churches. There and in the Philippines, refugees were taught trades: “They learned how to make donuts, how to run a business, do books for a nail shop or a laundromat.”

 This quickly turned Josh and I to a discussion about how people only come to this country to work, not to mooch. Josh knows better: “The ignorant folks, they just want to believe that immigrants come here and they just take welfare.” He went on to make an excellent point about all people, regardless of race or national origin, “Have you ever not had a job? That shit eats at you. … People need a purpose in life or a calling.” Josh added that when it comes to refugees specifically, “Refugees or immigrants who’ve been working their whole lives, they just wanna get back to work, they don’t wanna sit at home … reliving the traumas of war.” And of course that’s true. People are fascinatingly resilient. No one wants to wallow in their trauma, or let it define them. Furthermore, “people crave social interactions,” and for most people that itch is scratched at work.

 Josh’s mom and dad met going to school in the refugee camps. Josh tells a dark story with comedic undertones: to protect her daughters, Josh’s grandma dressed them as boys while they were running (200 miles) to Thailand so they would not get abducted or raped. His mother became a tomboy in school at the camps, “My mom was skinny so she looked straight up like a dude, she was tough and was always protecting the family.” She would always defend herself and her sisters, and one day a group of boys was trying to bully them and she beat them all up. One of those boys turned out to be Josh’s dad.

 Flash forward to young adulthood in the states, and Josh’s respective grandparents got their children back in touch. His mom was in Stockton at the time, and his dad would make the drive from Oakland sometimes every night to see her. His paternal grandpa became a pastor, and made friends with his worship leader maternal grandma, and the rest is history.

 Josh’s family started out doing hard jobs--his mom came to the states at fourteen or fifteen and began picking fruit. But thanks to community and family--and America giving them a chance-- Josh’s mom is now a medical assistant and his father is a stationary engineer. Josh himself just graduated from California State University East Bay with a degree in Health Science and an emphasis in Administration and Management, and that may not even top the list of his accomplishments. For the last few years, he has been working on a project called Village Resting, where he does pop-up kitchens, sometimes even out of his own house. They were so wildly popular that he was able to take over a kitchen at a restaurant for one full Summer, creating and cooking his and his partners’ own menu. He supplements that with social media marketing and a podcast, of which the first episode boasted over 1000 listeners.

 Now, Josh is mulling over his next move: “Do i do food or do I pursue what I studied in school? I want to make people happy but I feel like I have an obligation to help out refugees and immigrants.” Josh goes onto say that his degree could really help disadvantaged people like refugees, adding, “Healthcare is a way to offer security and equity.”

 Caring about community is something it seems Josh learned from his grandfather, who he describes as a master storyteller who naturally became a pastor. More accurate is that he became a small business owner, and pastor in his spare time. Josh’s grandfather owned a donut shop “in which my entire family, including me, worked.” Josh’s grandfather used his business as a way to help others: “When somebody got out of prison he was like, ‘You wanna work at the donut shop?’ Or if someone just got here from Cambodia. He had homeless people work there. The dude is so cool and so trusting,” maybe even too trusting--Josh says he has been taken advantage of before, burgled by employees--but, “he’ll still have someone come in at night when he’s not there and work. We just don’t deserve some people.” His grandfather’s spirit is reflected in Josh’s own words: “I want Village Resting to be a way to open doors. I’ve opened doors for myself and I want to keep those open for other people. I want [my little brother] to have a part of it.”

 Being the son of refugees comes with it’s own struggles as well. Josh was quick to tell the story of how he learned of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot--from other Cambodian kids on the playground around age eleven or twelve. As Josh puts it, “My parents didn’t burden me with that story.” He muses that he may have complained about having to run a mile at P.E., and he feels like his own day-to-day struggles will never compare with his parents’, who had to run 200 miles to the safety of another country.

 Being Cambodian, Josh feels underrepresented in the American mainstream, and rightly so. He mentions that he wants to make being Cambodian an institution, with it’s own businesses and economic life. But it is not just that Josh feels the weight of being both Cambodian and American. He also exists in several worlds in America: “I never felt like I really fit in anywhere. I’m from The Town, I’m from Oakland, but we moved out just after I started elementary school. My life, my family was in the hood. But I was sheltered, I’m a church boy, I can’t relate.” Josh said whenever he spent extended time periods with his family in Stockton, he was seen as  spoiled, noting, “My parents gave me a good-ass life. I lived in the suburbs, I played baseball growing up. I was always involved in sports, I was in choir.” But Josh adds that this didn’t play well everywhere, “I don’t speak Khmer, I look Chinese, I play sports, they weren’t fucking with me at all.”

 At school, everyone told a young Josh that he was Chinese, and his parents had to dispel that for him. As his school years went on Josh felt, “I wasn’t ‘whatever’ enough. I’m not gonna say white enough because I didn’t grow up in a white area.” In college, Josh fell into a Chicano studies track, where he got to watch Latinx students discover their heritage, history, culture. This affected Josh, who thought “It was beautiful. … It gave me a platform to go back and learn what my heritage was.” He adds now that “it’s not about being Cambodian, it’s about being Cambodian American” at a time where no one really knows what that looks like yet. Josh wants to be something for the next generation of Cambodian Americans to look up to, to strive for.

 In a matter of decades after being given a chance and let into the United States, Josh’s entire family was able to build a legacy. Creating a community space like a donut shop for generations of your family and people in need to work in is a legacy, an awesome one. Rising from a fruit-picker to a medical assistant creates a legacy: like her father before her and her son after her, his mother found her way (through much struggle) into the medical field. This is a family who is contributing to what truly makes America great in so many ways: spiritually, as healers, as beacons for their community. This is the American Dream in action, if there ever really was such a thing. His family is not in the one percent, not in Senate, but they contribute in a much more real and tangible way, a way that creates a ripple effect throughout the entire bay area and throughout Josh’s family’s entire larger community. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, those contributions are why we must continue to accept refugees. Really, we must continue to accept refugees because they are people, people going through trauma who have the potential to be so much more than their trauma.

[dipulb3]

Trump asked China for help with 2020 election | Foxton News

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/trump-asked-china-for-help-with-2020-election-foxton-news/

Trump asked China for help with 2020 election | Foxton News

Nationwide Safety Adviser John Bolton listens as U.S. President Donald Trump holds a cupboard assembly on the White Home in Washington, April 9, 2018.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

President Donald Trump requested China’s chief, Xi Jinping, to assist him win the 2020 U.S. presidential election, suggesting that China’s boosted purchases of U.S. agricultural merchandise might get him a second time period within the White Home, former nationwide safety advisor John Bolton reportedly writes in his new book.

The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the forthcoming book, stated Bolton wrote that Trump in a one-on-one assembly on the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan with Xi “stunningly, turned the dialog to the approaching U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s financial functionality to have an effect on the continued campaigns, pleading with Xi to make sure he’d win.”

“He harassed the significance of farmers, and elevated Chinese language purchases of soybeans and wheat within the electoral end result. I’d print Trump’s precise phrases however the authorities’s prepublication overview course of has determined in any other case,” Bolton wrote within the e book “The Room The place It Occurred: A White Home Memoir,” in keeping with The Submit.

The Submit additionally reported that Bolton wrote that Trump at one level stated that invading Venezuela could be “cool,” and that that nation was “actually a part of america.”

The Wall Street Journal published a long excerpt of Bolton’s book on Wednesday, a day after the Justice Division filed a lawsuit that seeks to dam the e book’s launch subsequent week, at the least quickly. The Justice Division late on Wednesday filed an emergency utility for a brief restraining order and a movement for a preliminary injunction in opposition to Bolton to forestall the publication of his e book, NBC Information reported. The movement asks the court docket to schedule a listening to on Friday, 4 days earlier than the e book is scheduled to be launched.

Within the excerpt, Bolton wrote, “Trump’s conversations with Xi mirrored not solely the incoherence in his commerce coverage but additionally the confluence in Trump’s thoughts of his personal political pursuits and U.S. nationwide pursuits.”

“On the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 assembly in June 2019, with solely interpreters current, Xi had defined to Trump why he was mainly constructing focus camps in Xinjiang. In keeping with our interpreter, Trump stated that Xi ought to go forward with constructing the camps, which Trump thought was precisely the precise factor to do. The Nationwide Safety Council’s high Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, informed me that Trump stated one thing very comparable throughout his November 2017 journey to China,” the Journal quoted from the e book.

“Trump commingled the non-public and the nationwide not simply on commerce questions however throughout the entire subject of nationwide safety,” Bolton wrote.

“I’m hard-pressed to establish any important Trump resolution throughout my White Home tenure that wasn’t pushed by reelection calculations.”

The New York Times also reported Wednesday that Bolton’s e book says Trump engaged in what “appeared like obstruction of justice as a lifestyle” by looking for to offer “private favors to dictators he appreciated.” Bolton stated he took his considerations about Trump’s said willingness to intrude in felony probes associated to huge firms in China and Turkey to Lawyer Common William Barr.

The e book, in keeping with the Instances, additionally reveals that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as soon as wrote a word to Bolton saying that Trump was “so filled with s—” because the president met with the chief of North Korea, that Trump appeared unaware of the truth that Britain is a nuclear energy, and as soon as requested if Finland is a part of Russia, which it’s not.

The White Home declined to touch upon the studies in regards to the e book. White Home spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany informed reporters on Wednesday that the e book is “filled with labeled info,” which she stated was “inexcusable” and “unacceptable.”

John Bolton, nationwide safety advisor, proper, and Mike Pompeo, U.S. secretary of state, hear throughout a gathering between U.S. President Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, not pictured, within the Oval Workplace of the White Home in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, June 20, 2019.

Jim Lo Scalzo | Bloomberg | Getty Photos

The Justice Division on Tuesday sued to dam the discharge of Bolton’s e book, which was the No. 1 bestseller on Amazon on Wednesday morning based mostly on presale orders, in keeping with the positioning’s gross sales tracker.

The swimsuit claims that Bolton has not completed a review process required of authors who had authorities safety clearance. Bolton’s e book is because of be formally launched Tuesday.

In keeping with the Instances, Bolton particulars within the e book his concern that Trump was appearing improperly by withholding congressionally applicable army assist to Ukraine final summer season as he pressed the chief of that nation to research former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

In August, the Instances reported, Trump “stated he wasn’t in favor of sending them something till all of the Russia-investigation supplies associated to Clinton and Biden had been turned over.”

The e book says that Bolton, Pompeo and Protection Secretary Mark Esper tried to get Trump to launch the help as much as 10 occasions.

Trump was finally impeached by the Home of Representatives for his actions, however was acquitted earlier this yr by the Senate after a trial.

Bolton in his e book accused Home Democrats of “impeachment malpractice” by not increasing their investigation past the Ukraine quid professional quo.

He wrote that Congress ought to have examined Trump’s willingness to skew felony probes of Halkbank in Turkey and ZTE in China as favors to these international locations’ leaders.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat who served as an impeachment supervisor in the course of the Senate impeachment trial, famous Wednesday that Bolton had not cooperated with the impeachment investigation, which occurred months earlier than the collection of accusations in opposition to Trump got here out in his new e book.   “John Bolton had each alternative to talk to Home impeachment managers, the Home Judiciary committee, in addition to the Home Intelligence committee as we have been conducting our investigation, the Home vote and subsequently the Senate impeachment trial,” Jeffries stated.

“It’s curious to me that he now has one thing to say when he might have stepped ahead as a patriot when the stakes have been excessive and the president was on trial and he ran and hid within the different course.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who’s the chairman of the Home Intelligence Committee and performed a key function in Trump’s impeachment, criticized Bolton for ready to voice his complaints in regards to the president’s conduct.

“Bolton could also be an writer, however he is no patriot,” Schiff wrote on Twitter.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., stated, “Thanks, John Bolton, for being the firefighter that reveals as much as the constructing that is already burned with the fireplace hose and saying, I am right here to assist.”

The previous presidential candidate added: “Too late, John Bolton, not likely occupied with what he has to allege now. Time has handed, and he might have saved the nation by coming ahead.”

[tortuga-aak]

Facebook can't cope with the world it's created

Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Governments in Southeast Asia use Facebook as public evidence of wrongdoing, imprisoning activists and journalists for expressing dissent.

Facebook does not have an office in Cambodia or Myanmar, and only a small office in Thailand despite its popularity in the countries.

Facebook is affecting Southeast Asia politically just as much as the rest of the world, but the tech giant does not seem to act.

  As Mark Zuckerberg returns from his latest pilgrimage to Beijing, it's time for him to pay more attention to the countries in Asia where Facebook actually matters.

The Facebook CEO has spent years courting Chinese officials in the hopes of winning admittance to the world's largest internet market. But while he's been beating his head against the Great Firewall, Facebook has swept like wildfire through the rest of Asia, with complicated and sometimes dangerous results.

Asia is now Facebook's biggest user base. That has given the company unprecedented political sway across the continent, where it inadvertently shapes the media consumption of hundreds of millions of people.

The impacts are amplified in the region because vast swathes of relatively new internet users turn to Facebook first as their primary gateway to the rest of the web. Meanwhile, it's become clear that the attitudes and policies the Menlo Park-based company adopted when it was primarily a U.S. social network are inadequate, or even perilous, when applied in authoritarian states, fragile democracies, or nations with deep ethnic divisions.

After months of public outcry in the U.S., Facebook has finally agreed to take seriously charges that the social network played a substantive role in shaping the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

On an earnings call earlier last week, Zuckerberg told investors and reporters "how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust," adding that he was "dead serious" about findings ways to tackle the problem. That would be a positive step — but it must also extend to examining Facebook's tricky impacts in the rest of the world.

I'm writing now from Thailand, and I've recently reported in both Cambodia and Myanmar.

In each of these countries, Facebook has become an accidental political juggernaut — providing public evidence used by authoritarian governments to imprison liberals and journalists for expressing dissent, and amplifying the reach of racist demagogues whose dangerous and false diatribes happen to collect a lot of rabid clicks.

In the early, idealistic days of the internet, "the platforms used to maintain they were paper mills rather than newspapers," says Scott Malcomson, author of Splinternet: How Geopolitics and Commerce Are Fragmenting the World Wide Web and director of special projects at Texas-based Strategic Insight Group. But it's no longer possible to think of the internet as a utopian great leveler, a world-flattener that empowers only the virtuous masses.

The reality is that the effects of the digital revolution are complex and varied around the globe.

And in many parts of the world the stakes include life, liberty, and free speech — the most basic of all political rights. Facebook can no longer deny its moral responsibility to try to understand how cyberspace, law, and politics collide in each of the countries where it operates, nor its responsibility to do something about it.

In Myanmar today, Facebook is the internet.

When you buy a smartphone from a sidewalk vendor in Yangon, the seller will activate a Facebook account for novice users on the spot. Many people don't bother with email if they have Facebook — and many people in Myanmar have multiple Facebook accounts.

This is all a staggeringly recent development. The junta that controlled the country until 2011 kept the price of SIM cards artificially very high to put them out of the reach of most people in Myanmar, and thus control the flow of information.

REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun

When I first visited Yangon in spring 2014, only about 1 percent of the population of 52 million had access to the internet. A government official who attempted to defend the ethnic categories listed on Myanmar's controversial census — there was no "Rohingya" category, but only "Bengali" — afterward gave me an informational DVD about the census. Today, 46 million people, or 89 percent of the population, access the internet, mostly through smartphones and mostly through Facebook — and there are far fewer stalls hawking bootleg DVDs on the streets of Yangon.

The rush online has given rise to entrepreneurial dreams and a nascent startup sector, but the internet has also given a megaphone to strident political voices formerly on the margins and made them mainstream.

Ashin Wirathu, a monk known as "the Burmese bin Laden" who has called for the expulsion of the Rohingya population, told BuzzFeed News reporter Sheera Frenkel in 2016 that his anti-Muslim Ma Ba Tha movement had gained national momentum due to Facebook. "If the internet had not come to [Myanmar], not many people would know my opinion and messages like now," he said. "The internet and Facebook are very useful and important to spread my messages," such as his call for boycotting Muslim businesses. Earlier this year, Wirathu was banned from making public sermons, but he continues to operate dozens of inflammatory Facebook pages.

The human-rights crisis in Rakhine state has escalated to what the United Nations' top human rights official declared in September was "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing" — citing the Myanmar military's extrajudicial killings, rapes, and other atrocities committed against the Rohingya population. More than 600,000 refugees are estimated to have crossed over the border into Bangladesh, where they must try to survive in muddy refugee camps with little support from any government.

The roots of ethnic hatreds in Myanmar run deep, but a recent flurry of fake news posts — including doctored photos of Rohingya supposedly burning their own homes or attacking Burmese Buddhists — has stoked popular support, or at least tolerance, for the army's hardline approach. Debunked rumors even appear on the Facebook pages of government officials.

"Facebook has become a bit like an absentee landlord in Southeast Asia," says Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division. "When Buddhist extremists start instigating action against Muslims [in Myanmar], looking around for the local Facebook representative is hopeless — there isn't one. Instead, it's sort of, complain into the void and hope some relief arrives before it's too late — and that's assuming you know a language that relevant Facebook staff are conversant in."

A spokesperson for Facebook confirmed that the company has no office in Myanmar or Cambodia, although it has consultants in each country and a regional office in Thailand. In an emailed statement to Foreign Policy, the spokesperson wrote, "We have clear rules on what can and cannot be shared on Facebook, technology that helps prevent abusive behavior, and we work with safety experts and civil society to educate people about our services."

The spokesperson said that a Facebook "product and integrity research team" would be visiting Southeast Asia this month to assess regional challenges. Internally, Facebook has also begun to grapple with how to identify and define "hate speech" in different countries.

In Myanmar, the word "kalar," or "kala," can be used as a simple prefix to refer to things of South Indian origin, like kala beans — or it can be used as a nasty ethnic slur. Richard Allen, a Facebook vice president for public policy, wrote in a blog post this summer about the tricky case of context-dependent words: "The term can be used as an inflammatory slur, including as an attack by Buddhist nationalists against Muslims. We looked at the way the word's use was evolving, and decided our policy should be to remove it as hate speech when used to attack a person or group, but not in the other harmless use cases."

Implementing the guideline was not so easy. "We've had trouble enforcing this policy correctly recently, mainly due to the challenges of understanding the context," Allen wrote. "After further examination, we've been able to get it right. But we expect this to be a long-term challenge."

It's a positive sign that Facebook is studying the way hate speech spreads online in Myanmar, and elsewhere, but that won't undo the damage that's already happened — or give 600,000 refugees a safe place to call home.

What's different about tech as opposed to other global industries — say, automobiles or pharmaceuticals — is that only after the products are released into the world do the developers gain any real understanding of what the existential problems will be. And then it may be too late.

Jatupat Boonpattaraksa, a Thai student activist who joined several peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in 2014, is in jail right now for content he posted Facebook.

Last December, the BBC Thai published a new documentary about the Thai royal family, which contained unflattering information about the then-Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, now King Rama X. Jatupat, a 25-year-old member of Thailand's New Democracy Movement, shared the link on Facebook and quoted some of its content. The next day he was arrested by plainclothes police officers for violating the country's antiquated lèse-majesté law — which outlaws insulting or defaming the monarchy, and which is selectively deployed by the junta that seized power in 2014 to suppress its critics with a veneer of legality. Thousands of people shared the BBC documentary; most of them were not arrested — but Jatupat's prosecution was used to send a chilling message to others.

The day after his arrest, he was released on a 400,000 baht ($12,000) bail. Jatupat turned to Facebook to joke: "The [Thai] economy is poor so they took my bail money." The court ordered him back to prison for the comment, and his subsequent six requests for bail were denied. In August 2017, he was sentenced to five years in prison for the initial Facebook post; after he pleaded guilty, his sentence was commuted to 2.5 years.

Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

Jatupat's case is hardly unique. Before the 2014 coup, six people were in prison on lèse-majesté charges. The junta dramatically stepped up convictions to silence its critics. Between May 2014 and March 2017, at least 90 people were arrested and 45 of them sentenced, according to research by iLaw, a Bangkok-based nongovernmental organization that tracks legislation. What's more, the majority of these recent cases have involved social media — Facebook posts and tweets — turning offhand remarks into prosecutable offenses. In these recent cases, only 17 percent of those arrested were released on bail before their trial dates. Many cases were tried in military courts.

Why is Facebook so useful to the junta? First, its insistence on a "real name-only" policy makes for easy tracking of dissidents. Even in cases where people successfully mask their names, their web of social connections makes them potentially easy to identify. (In the U.S., sex workers have already found themselves inadvertently exposed by Facebook's data-aggregation and friend suggestions.) Hard-to-navigate privacy settings can mean that what people mistakenly think of as private speech, limited to a small group of friends, is often anything but. "If you make a certain kind of comment online, you can quickly be sent to prison in Thailand," says iLaw researcher Anon Chawalawan.

The news isn't all bad. Over the past five years, Facebook helped enable a groundswell of citizen journalism and activism in Cambodia — but a recent experimental tweak to the timeline function pulled the rug out from under regular news posters, at a time when the political tolerance for free speech was already shrinking.

In January 2014, I met Cambodian monk But Buntenh in a small room on the third floor of a ramshackle office building in Phnom Penh. The founder of the Independent Monk Network for Social Justice, he was seated on an embroidered cushion on the floor and surrounded by electric cords charging his various devices: a laptop, tablet computer, and smartphone.

Buntenh had recently begun to organize what he called "monk reporters" to use their smartphone cameras to document peaceful human rights demonstrations in Cambodia's capital — including garment workers marching to raise the minimum wage and families evicted for development projects marching to demand compensation or adequate rehousing. (Many were living in shantytowns, with blue tarp roofs pulled between tent poles.)

"I am trying to encourage monks to become more political," he told me at the time. "We cannot wait for our political parties to change; we must do it ourselves." Buntenh had by then recruited about 5,000 monks to his watchdog army. Their cause took a grave turn on Jan. 3, when military police opened fireon striking garment workers in Phnom Penh, and at least seven people were killed. Photos, videos, and firsthand reports — from the monk's group and from other witnesses — quickly circulated on social media, especially Facebook and Line. That put pressure on Cambodian politicians and caught the attention of domestic and international news media and the foreign brands — Nike, Adidas, Puma, Gap — that were some of the factories' biggest customers. The minimum wage was eventually raised, although the widows and families of the deceased workers were never compensated for their loss in any significant way.

I visited Cambodia a half dozen more times between 2014 and 2016 to report on the evolution of the country's intertwined social justice movements, collectively referred to as the "Cambodian Spring." The internet was absolutely essential to the minimum-wage and land-rights campaigns, and the sharpest knife in the toolbox was Facebook. Activists turned to Facebook for news reports from the Cambodia Daily and Radio Free Asia, for updates from human rights groups like LICADHO, and for messages from march organizers and journalists. A 2016 survey conducted by the Asia Foundation found that more Cambodians said they got their news from Facebook and the internet than from watching TV. "Facebook became the country's most important source of news, giving the government some headaches as its old information monopoly has been circumvented," says Sebastian Strangio, author of Hun Sen's Cambodia.

Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters

These are darker times now in Cambodia, as earlier this year the government arrested the leader of the main opposition party, expelled the staff of the U.S. State Department-funded National Democratic Institute, and forced the independent Cambodia Daily to shut down because of an unpaid tax bill. Facebook didn't change the political winds, but it did inadvertently squeeze remaining channels of dissent.

It's unlikely that anyone in Silicon Valley was thinking of strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen's political repression when Cambodia was selected in October as one of six pilot countries to test out a new timeline feature, which separates news items from personal posts. A Facebook blog post by Head of News Feed Adam Mosseri explained that the goal was "to understand if people prefer to have separate places for personal and public content."

But the BBC has reported that one unintended impact was dramatically shrinking the number of people who would see published items. "Out of all the countries in the world, why Cambodia? This couldn't have come at a worse time," a Cambodian blogger told the BBC, explaining that the number of people who saw her public video had dropped by more than 80 percent. "Suddenly I realized, wow, they actually hold so much power.… [Facebook] can crush us just like that if they want to."

Because Cambodia is a small market of 16 million people, testing a new feature there may have seemed like a perfectly reasonable choice to an engineering product team.

But when your product is not sneakers or toasters, but the single most important way that people in that country receive news and information, it bears a different kind of consideration.

The Cambodia Daily is now attempting a comeback, and this too will depend on Facebook. The journal has recently started publishing Khmer-language essays and voice pieces through its Facebook page, bearing a new motto, "Second Life: A Life Online." It remains to be seen how successful or long-lived the effort will be, but one hopes that its fate won't be determined by Menlo Park suddenly switching algorithms without notice or consultation. As a former Daily staffer told me — via Facebook, naturally — "I really like the idea, but it's a big risk," adding that the publisher "might get arrested for this … maybe."

These three cases are very different. But they all speak to the need for Facebook to localize, diversify its policies, and decide what kind of values and culture it's trying to promote.

In theory, the fourth-most valuable internet company in the United States — worth more than half a trillion dollars — knows this. In a statement emailed to FP, a Facebook spokesperson wrote, "There is no ‘one size fits all' approach that works everywhere, and we are committed to working closely with local organizations to develop education programs, policies and products that meet people's needs in different parts of the world."

But so far, the social network hasn't lived up to its ideals, says Human Rights Watch's Robertson. "They are going to need to build up their capacity to get further into the game, talking with all the stakeholders from civil society, business and government to ensure they know the political and social context and are prepared to respond in a substantive, rights respecting way." He adds: "People entrust their private and public lives to this platform — so decisions need to have customer buy-in, and communications need to reflect two-way dialogue."

For a long time, Silicon Valley espoused a dogma of information neutrality — claiming, falsely, that search engines and social networks were only impartial tools. But, at a time when algorithms can determine whether an entire country sees genuine news or hate-filled propaganda, this idea can't be sustained. "Move fast and break things" was Facebook's mantra for developers until 2014, signaling the twin totems of speed and aggression that animate many programmers and venture capitalists in the U.S. tech industry. Yet it's a lot less appealing when the things being broken are people.

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