@emiledirks.bsky.social
Senior Research Associate @citizenlab.ca. Researching policing & authoritarianism in China and beyond.
@hrichina.bsky.social
12.12.2025 15:44 โ ๐ 1 ๐ 0 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0
The Trump administration is threatening to deport a Chinese man who personally documented the Chinese government's massive detention system in Xinjiang. If forcibly returned to China, he faces the risk of state persecution for his invaluable & brave work.
open.substack.com/pub/hrichina...
๐ฃWeโre hiring! There are two exciting new job opportunities in our foreign relations and economy and industry programs:
๐Analyst/Senior Analyst/Senior Economist (m/f/d) - Economy and Industry
๐Senior/Lead Analyst (m/f/d) Foreign Relations
More info: merics.org/en/opportuni...
GOP: the Chinese Communist Party is evil because they harvest all your biometric and other data to empower social control.
Also GOP:
Eye scans, licence plate readers, spyware: technology used to catch criminals and terrorists is being repurposed to fulfil Trump's pledge to deport 1mn undocumented migrants this year. Critics fear itโs the thin end of the authoritarian wedge.
An #FTEdit thread on Americaโs new surveillance state ๐
The Trump administration that deported these Russians is the same government that this February condemned Thailand's forcible return of 40+ Uyghurs to China, where they would face the risk of "persecution, forced labor, and torture."
10.12.2025 16:53 โ ๐ 3 ๐ 6 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0This is the Tufts PhD student who seized by masked agents on the street and jailed for two months because she wrote an op-ed calling for the school to divest from Israel.
08.12.2025 22:52 โ ๐ 2870 ๐ 911 ๐ฌ 7 ๐ 6
A few thoughts on the new US national security strategy that was released today.
๐งต
www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
Itโs widely known (and, I think, pretty uncontroversial) that learning requires effort โ specifically, if you donโt have to work at getting the knowledge, it wonโt stick.
Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.
Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.
Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
Trump suggests Khashoggi had it coming: "You're mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it. You don't have to embarrass our guest."
18.11.2025 17:46 โ ๐ 7953 ๐ 2967 ๐ฌ 2300 ๐ 2644Excited for the launch of @drdavidtobin.bsky.socialโs International Network for Critical China Studies (INCCS)! Now more than ever thereโs a need for rigorous, reflective, critically-informed research on China. INCCSโs mission to avoid clunky, knee-jerk commentary is refreshing & desperately needed
18.11.2025 15:43 โ ๐ 5 ๐ 4 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 0worth applying to politics as well. when you're criticizing an action people take "taking the better action next time" is only one of the alternatives people will consider, and worth remembering that "not bothering at all" is another.
26.10.2025 12:55 โ ๐ 3480 ๐ 739 ๐ฌ 37 ๐ 33I legitimately think this article misses the mark, because Canadians are not avoiding travel out of some principled boycott of the USA over tariffs.
Canadians who are avoiding the USA are seeing images of masked government thugs kidnapping people and teargassing children.
In a 2005 interview, the actor said that in his twenties, he was carrying the load of "everyone's masterpieces." He worked closely with directors including Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi. n.pr/4o3J8Xm
13.11.2025 01:06 โ ๐ 343 ๐ 66 ๐ฌ 5 ๐ 4
RIP legendary Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai. Star of Kurosawa's Kagemusha, Ran, many other classics. He was 92. news.yahoo.co.jp/pickup/6558551
11.11.2025 02:30 โ ๐ 172 ๐ 77 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 20
Two things can be true: this signals impunity for TNR and that's bad and makes people less safe, and the existing levers of accountability punish on low-level folks instead of getting to the source of the problem
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Love poetry, human rights, & kitties? Check out Sharon Hom's Substack: substack.com/@talkingcat88
Sharon (fmr exec dir of Human Rights in China) is a brilliant mind & a wonderful soul. I've learned so much from her over the years.
Come for the poetry, stay for the updates about her cats!
Researchers at the Citizen Lab and director @rondeibert.bsky.social sign open letter to the Canadian Minister of AI and Minister of Industry rejecting the โNational Sprintโ on AI strategy.
Read it here: bccla.org/policy-submi...
So many harms have already emerged from reckless and oppressive uses of AI, with such wide-ranging & far-reaching consequences, to so many groups of people, that it seems almost impossible to document them all. But we tried, in this open letter to Minister Solomon: bccla.org/policy-submi... (1/x)
05.11.2025 17:25 โ ๐ 20 ๐ 22 ๐ฌ 1 ๐ 3
PEN Canada joins 43 organizations and 123 individuals in open letter opposing โNational Sprintโ consultation on AI strategy, which proposed a mere thirty-day window on short notice.
pencanada.ca/news/open-le...
Please take this for what it is. Rhetoric to delegitimize the political opposition as an existential threat to create the conditions for the Ruling Party to deny the opposition the ability to take control of Congress pursuant to genuine election outcomes in 2026.
05.11.2025 17:33 โ ๐ 0 ๐ 1 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 0Canada budget update: A $2.7bn cut to international assistance over 5 years, or about 10-12% of the budget. Particularly focusing on global health, which is worrying because it's a core Canadian priority
Not sure we need a resurgence of polio on top of everything, but what do I know
What I'm looking for in the Canadian federal budget: Development
- Canada's budget for international stuff is complex. There's the International Assistance Envelope, OECD-measured ODA, plus stuff that falls under Canada's own Act. Plus provincial spending. They all overlap
Amid many a silly โfree speechโ panic, here is a genuinely chilling case โฆ
Sheffield Hallam professor accuses the institution of negotiating โdirectly with a foreign intelligence service to trade my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student marketโ
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Along with 160+ civil society orgs & individuals, I signed this open letter that raises serious concerns about the Canadian government's proposed AI strategy. With all of the harms associated with AI-based technologies, greater public consultation is needed.
bccla.org/policy-submi...
This sounds like the Chinese model of drug detention, which combines compulsory treatment, social isolation, and forced labour. The fact that authoritarians in the US & China increasingly resemble one another no longer surprises me.
31.10.2025 01:16 โ ๐ 31 ๐ 14 ๐ฌ 0 ๐ 1
T H E W H I T E H OU S E W A S H I N G T O N S e p t e m b e r 3 0 , 2 0 2 5 P r e s i d e n t i a l D e t e r m i n a t i o n N o . _ _ _ _ _ _ 2 0 2 5 - 1 3 _ _ _ _ _ MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE THE SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY THE SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SUBJECT: Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2026 By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, in accordance with section 207 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1157), and after appropriate consultations with the Congress, I hereby make the following determinations and authorize the following actions: The admissions of up to 7,500 refugees to the United States during Fiscal Year 2026 is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest. The admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa pursuant to Executive Order 14204, and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands. Refugee admissions under this determination, which may reach but not exceed the numerical limit described herein, are in all respects subject to the requirements of other Presidential policies and actions, whether issued prior or subsequent to this determination. Those Presidential policies and actions include, but are not limited to: Executive Order 14161, which mandates that refugees receive the most stringent identification verification of any class of alien seeking admission or entry to the United States; Executive Order 14163, which suspends the entry into the United States of refugees other than when the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security jointly determine that an admission is in the national interest and does not threaten the security or welfare of the United States; Executive Order 14204, which provides for refugee resettlement of Afrikaners from South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination; and โฆ
NEW: Trump has announced that the US will admit the lowest level of refugees ever at 7,500 in FY 2026. The US will only be admitting as refugees White people from South Africa and "victims of illegal or unjust discrimination," which leaked memos suggest means far-right Europeans.
30.10.2025 17:11 โ ๐ 1717 ๐ 908 ๐ฌ 98 ๐ 203Ford just put every renter in Ontario into an even more precarious position. This is a clear and present danger to the 1.7 million renters in Ontario.
23.10.2025 21:12 โ ๐ 156 ๐ 91 ๐ฌ 12 ๐ 5
