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The Four Pests campaign (Chinese: 除四害; pinyin: Chú Sì Hài), was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962. Authorities targeted four pests for elimination: rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The extermination of sparrows - also known as the smash sparrows campaign[1] (Chinese: 打麻雀运动; pinyin: dǎ máquè yùndòng) or the eliminate sparrows campaign (Chinese: 消灭麻雀运动; pinyin: xiāomiè máquè yùndòng) - resulted in severe ecological imbalance, being one of the causes of the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1961. In 1960 the campaign against sparrows ended and bed bugs became an official target.
Words mean things.
One of the most persistent myths about China is that its system works with great efficiency, enabling concerted action and long-term planning
But such rosy assessments overlook key costs – not least to the rights and protection of citizens.
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At one point, Randers writes in his report: “I think we will see 40 years down the line that it was the Chinese who did, in the end, solve the climate problem for us – through collective action. They will produce the electric cars and the technologies we will need, and they will implement them in China through centralised decisions.”
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But there are two crucial questions we should think seriously about before we reach conclusions about the Chinese experience and extend it to possible lessons for the world. First, where does all of this money come from? And second, why does the government enjoy such powers of enforcement.
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It is a fundamental tenet of neoliberal mindfulness, that the source of people’s problems is found in their heads. This has been accentuated by the pathologising and medicalisation of stress, which then requires a remedy and expert treatment – in the form of mindfulness interventions. The ideological message is that if you cannot alter the circumstances causing distress, you can change your reactions to your circumstances. In some ways, this can be helpful, since many things are not in our control. But to abandon all efforts to fix them seems excessive. Mindfulness practices do not permit critique or debate of what might be unjust, culturally toxic or environmentally destructive. Rather, the mindful imperative to “accept things as they are” while practising “nonjudgmental, present moment awareness” acts as a social anesthesia, preserving the status quo.
Daniel Sarewitz on why scientists must come out of the lab and into the real world