Wednesday, January 12, 2022



China Locks Down World’s Third-Busiest Port City, Potentially Disrupting Global Supply Chain

China’s industrial city of Ningbo and home to the third-largest container port in the world, has been under lockdown due to a recent COVID-19 outbreak. Analysts suggest that the lockdown measures could cause more disruption to the global supply chain.

According to Chinese state-run media Global Times, Ningbo City in Zhejiang Province is under lockdown after detecting at least 23 cases of the CCP virus. The outbreak was reportedly concentrated in Beilun District, the core area of the Ningbo port, putting many local truck drivers and essential port personnel under quarantine.

China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy has put the Beilun District under a level I emergency lockdown since 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 1, immediately after several CCP virus cases were confirmed.

According to China’s National Health Commission, the areas where the outbreak occurred were separated into closed zones, controlled zones, and prevention zones based on the transmission risk level, putting them under different management protocols.

Presently, the closed and controlled zones of Beilun District cover 4.66 square kilometers (1.8 square miles) and contain 37,000 people. Those in the closed zone are under full quarantine, leaving home is strictly prohibited, all commercial outlets are closed, and basic daily necessities are delivered to the door. The controlled zones allow only essential personnel to enter, not exit, following the “do not leave unless necessary” protocol.

Ningbo-Zhoushan Port is the second-largest container port in China and the third-largest in the world. It had a 1.1-billion-ton cargo throughput for three consecutive years. Beilun District is the core area of ​​Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, and its closed and controlled zones are near the cargo terminals.

Ningbo Marine, a Chinese freight transportation company, said the lockdown is having a considerable impact on short-term imports and exports in the Beilun port area and the Ningbo-Zhoushan Port as a whole, primarily because the port’s essential personnel and truck drivers are quarantined. In addition, the closed zones have temporarily blocked the main roads entering and leading out of the port city, as well as many highways and terminal entry channels.

According to Ningbo’s local news network, there are more than 20,000 trucks in Beilun District, while only around 7,600 were given special passes to enter and leave the port.

The report said that locking down Beilun District’s trucking industry will affect not only its foreign trade and freight forwarding but also impact the shipping and logistics of the entire Zhejiang Province.

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Hollywood will barely dare whisper it but the woke revolution that has driven out white men and ensures that every production is ideologically sound will kill the entertainment industry

A few years ago, the editor-in-chief of The Hollywood Reporter pitched a story to the newsroom.

He had just come back from lunch with a well-known agent, who had suggested the paper take a look at the unintended consequences of Hollywood's efforts to diversify.

Those white men who had spent decades writing scripts—which had been turned into blockbuster movies and hit television shows—were no longer getting hired.

The newsroom blew up.

The reporters, especially the younger ones, mocked the idea that white men were on the outs. The editor-in-chief, normally self-assured, immediately backtracked. He looked rattled.

It was a missed opportunity.

The story wasn't just about white guys not getting jobs. Nor was it really about the economics of Hollywood.

It was about the stories Hollywood told and distributed and streamed on screens around the globe every day.

It was about this massively lucrative industry that had been birthed by outsiders and emerged, out of lemon groves, into a glamorous, glitzy mosh pit teeming with chutzpah and broken hearts and unbelievable success stories that had made the American Dream a real, pulsating thing—for Americans and billions of other people who thought that if you could imagine something, anything, you could will it into being.

It was a story about who we aspired to be.

After the meeting, a reporter approached another editor about pursuing it. The editor told the reporter to drop it.

No one, he said, at The Hollywood Reporter—one of a handful of trade publications that covers the ins and outs of the entertainment industry—was going to risk blowing up their career over this.

The 'explosion of woke,' as one longtime producer put it, didn't come out of nowhere.

Hollywood had always pushed boundaries—from the 1947 'Gentleman's Agreement,' which confronted antisemitism, to 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' (1967), which tackled interracial marriage, to 'All in the Family' (1971-1979), which grappled with race and women's liberation.

The original run of 'Will and Grace' (1998-2006), did more to advance the cause of gay marriage than anything else pre-Obergefell.

And then there were the villains: The vast majority—from the Terminator to Hannibal Lecter to Gordon Gekko—were uber-white: an Austrian (robot), a Lithuanian, a WASPy, pinstriped capitalist. (For the insider's list, see this from The Hollywood Reporter.)

But it wasn't until 2015—when the #OscarsSoWhite controversy engulfed the 87th Academy Awards—that studio chiefs and producers really started to rethink how they did business.

This gained momentum in 2016, and even more in late 2017, with #MeToo.

Then came George Floyd, and, in the summer of 2020, everything that had been happening in slow motion started to happen much faster.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences—the industry's central nervous system—had been founded in 1927, and now it had 8,469 voting members. It had tried over the years, and especially since Donald Trump's election, to catch up with the zeitgeist, inviting into its ranks a record number of new members who were black, Latino, women or foreign-born.

But that wasn't going to cut it any longer.

So, in September 2020, the Academy launched its Representation and Inclusion Standards Entry platform (or RAISE).

For a movie to qualify for Best Picture, producers not only had to register detailed personal information about everyone involved in the making of that movie, but the movie had to meet two of the Academy's four diversity standards—touching on everything from on-screen representation to creative leadership. (An Academy spokesperson said 'only select staff' would have access to data collected on the platform.)

The Academy explained that movies failing to meet these standards would not be barred from qualifying for Best Picture until 2024.

But producers are already complying: In 2020, data from 366 productions were submitted to the platform.

Meanwhile, CBS mandated that writers' rooms be at least 40 percent black, indigenous and people of color (or BIPOC) for the 2021-2022 broadcast season and 50 percent for the 2022-2023 season.

ABC Entertainment issued a detailed series of 'inclusion standards.' ('I guarantee you every studio has something like that,' a longtime writer and director said.)

To help producers meet the new standards, the filmmaker Ava DuVernay—who was recently added to Forbes' list of 'The Most Powerful Women in Entertainment' along with Oprah Winfrey and Taylor Swift—last year created ARRAY Crew, a database of women, people of color, and others from underrepresented groups who work on day-to-day production: line producers, camera operators, art directors, sound mixers and so on.

The Hollywood Reporter declared that ARRAY Crew has 'fundamentally changed how Hollywood productions will be staffed going forward.'

More than 900 productions, including 'Yellowstone' and 'Mare of Easttown,' have used ARRAY Crew, said Jeffrey Tobler, the chief marketing officer of ARRAY, DuVernay's production company.

Privately, directors and writers voiced irritation with DuVernay, who, they said, had exploited the 'post-George Floyd moment.' But no one dared to criticize her openly. 'I'm not crazy,' one screenwriter said.

Of course, Hollywood, like many industries, does have a clubiness about it. And pretty much everyone on the inside insists it should open up to those who had, for decades, been kept out.

But the heavy-handed mandates, the databases, the shifting culture—in which pretty much all white men were assumed to have gotten their jobs because they had the right tennis buddies or ZIP code or skin color—raised the possibility of a new kind of clubiness.

When asked whether ARRAY Crew was just replacing one kind of exclusion with another, Tobler sidestepped the question, saying the organization had sought to 'amplify underrepresented professionals.'

But the result has not just been a demographic change. It has been an ideological and cultural transformation.

We spoke to more than 25 writers, directors, and producers—all of whom identify as liberal, and all of whom described a pervasive fear of running afoul of the new dogma.

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Big Apple Mayor Affirms Plan to Allow Non-Citizens to Vote

There has long been a certain sort of pride that comes with being an American. We’re patriotic all on our own, sure, but we also hold a high regard for those who’ve come to this nation in order to seek the American Dream itself.

We’ve been regaled for decades with stories of rags-to-riches millionaires processed through Ellis Island. We’ve watched industrious people from all over the world work tirelessly to naturalize themselves, and we’ve been the first to applaud them as they reach their citizenship goals.

But there are concerns that immigration laws are relaxing to the point in which achieving citizenship is longer on the path toward participating in the American economy, and this has many conservatives concerned.

In New York City, these fears are manifesting themselves in a new way, with the recently-inaugurated mayor confirming his plans to uphold an allowance for non-citizens to vote.

Newly sworn in New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Saturday that he supports legislation passed by the city council allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections.

“I believe that New Yorkers should have a say in their government, which is why I have and will continue to support this important legislation,” Adams, a Democrat who took office at the start of 2022, said in a statement. “While I initially had some concerns about one aspect of the bill, I had a productive dialogue with my colleagues in government that put those concerns at ease. I believe allowing the legislation to be enacted is by far the best choice, and look forward to bringing millions more into the democratic process.”

Some have feared that a swelling of non-citizen rights will continue to dilute the value of naturalization, and thus create a situation in which other nations’ people will be coming to America simply to ride our economic momentum and then export some of that wealth out-of-country.

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Black Lady Goes on Racist Rant, Attacks White Christian Conservatives as ‘Selfish’

On Monday, MSNBC anchor Joy Reid claimed that “white so-called Christian conservatives” are “selfish” people who believe that America was built for them.

Reid declared, “They’re white so-called Christian conservatives who feel like this country was built by them for them, and so everyone but them needs to suck it up and let them have their way or else. Their party, the Republicans, have gone from pretending to be the party of personal responsibility to unmasking themselves as the party of selfish people that cannot play well with others. And they even have their own cable networks plus something called GETTR, which kind of sounds like porn. Moving on.”

She continued, “So the special citizen says, ‘I don’t want to wear a mask, and if you try to attack me, I’ll attack the low-waged clerks at the store or at the Burger King. I don’t want to get the vaccine either. If people get sick from me, oh well, not my problem. Joe Rogan said it’s fine. My kids aren’t going to mask up to protect those other kids. F those other kids, their parents are probably commies anyway.’ Which usually means people who want rights for other people and who give a damn what happens to them.”

Reid added, “So this midterm election year, we’re going to find out which brand of citizenship is stronger, and the answer will tell us whether our democracy is strong enough to survive.”

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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