Unemployment kills. The longer lockdowns last, the worse it will get. By Ryan McMakin. An audio-mesis wire narrated by Million Quinteros. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday announced the economic data now coming out is worse than any data we have seen for the economy. This is due in part to 20 years of stimulus-driven economic growth based on blowing up and sustaining bubbles through easy money. But it is now made much worse by the fact that many governments have frozen their states and nations economies, shutdown businesses and prevented markets from adapting to the new realities of consumers and workers in a world with heightened risk of disease. The result has been catastrophic unemployment, with 30 million Americans filing for unemployment over the past six weeks. One survey puts it at 50 million. In states that insist on continuing with widespread coercive economic shutdowns, the numbers will only keep getting worse. Many policymakers unfortunately continue to pretend that the costs associated with these shutdowns are minimal or insignificant. Those who speak up against the shutdowns, whether from the perspective of protecting human rights or simply on pragmatic grounds, are often shouted down as choosing filthy looker over public health. The reality, however, is that when unemployment leads to impoverishment or loss of social status, it is itself a major health problem. This has been evident in research for many years. But since this narrative does not support the myopic and single-minded drive toward fighting COVID-19 at all costs, many politicians and experts simply wave these facts aside. The policymakers continue to pretend that everything will be fine once the politicians unilaterally decide that there has been enough testing or that things are under control or whatever arbitrary goal has been set to justify recording people's basic human rights to seek employment and run their own businesses. The Cost of Unemployment, a Survey of the Research According to a 2014 piece in Harvard Public Health Magazine, unemployment due to business closures increased by 83% the odds of new health conditions likely triggered by job loss. Stress-related conditions such as stroke, hypertension, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes and emotional and psychiatric problems. The Risk of Death Increased, a 2011 meta-analysis of international research published in Social Science and Medicine by David Rolfs, Aaron Schor, Karina Davidson and Joseph Schwartz found that the risk of death was 63% higher during the study periods among those who experienced unemployment than among those who did not after adjusting for age and other variables. And for men, the impacts are often worse. A 2009 study on the impact of the 1980s oil crisis and subsequent recession in Pennsylvania published by economists Daniel Sullivan and Tilvan Wachter in the Quarterly Journal of Economics found that in the year after men lost their jobs in mass layoffs, their chances of dying doubled. In a study of the effect of economic growth and morbidity in the 20th century, M. Harvey Brenner writes in the International Journal of Epidemiology that the large and growing literature on unemployment and health is highly consistent in demonstrating elevated morbidity and mortality associated with unemployment and withdrawal from the labor force. The literature on the long-term unemployed also shows increased exposure to alcoholism and use of other psychotropic substances, such as tobacco and less expensive or nutritious foods. Equally important, the long-term unemployed are especially at risk for damaged family and friendship relations, quite apart from the social isolation induced by the loss of employment itself. In this 2003 study on unemployment in the Journal of Health Economics, the authors concluded, unemployment increases the risk of being dead from 5.36 to 7.83%, i.e. an increased risk of 46%. For mortality from non-cancer and cardiovascular causes, unemployment leads to more than a doubling of the risk and this effect is significant. Also for suicides, the estimated effect of unemployment is significant and the point estimate implies that unemployment increases the risk of suicides by 145%. The health effects of unemployment also become worse the earlier in the cycle one becomes unemployed. In a finished study on unemployment, Peca Martikainen found that men unemployed for the first time in 1990, 1991 or 1992 had respectively 111, 72 and 35% higher standardized mortality than did men who remain employed. In other words, those who became unemployed first, i.e. in 1990, had higher mortality than those who became jobless in later years. But the general conclusion was familiar. Mortality increased sizeability for those who became unemployed. Excess mortality of 47% was observed among men unemployed or working part-time for reasons other than illness after adjustment for age, geographic region, social class, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, weight and known pre-existing disease. Moreover, the long-term effects can be significant. In a Swedish study on the long-term effect of unemployment, the researchers found that alcohol-related mortality was significantly raised among both men and women who had experienced unemployment. For men, the risk of alcohol-related death was more than double what it was for the employed. The risk was nearly double for women. The same study also showed that for men who had suffered unemployment, long-term risk of death from suicide was more than 40% higher than the employed. Even the risk of death from transport accidents became higher following bouts of unemployment. The authors conclude, at the very least, unemployment has taken its mortality toll among a vulnerable segment of the population, particularly among young men, unmarried men and men of low education or income. Even worse, the effects of unemployment tend to be magnified by previous periods of unemployment, since the risk of becoming unemployed is higher among people who have previous experience of unemployment. This has been referred to as scarring, path dependency or state dependency. This increases the health effects of unemployment among the most economically disadvantaged groups. Not surprisingly, increased unemployment also increases the risk of death from drug-related causes as well. In this 2017 study, the researchers find that a 1 percentage point increase in the county unemployment rate is associated with an additional 0.2 opioid-involved drug-related deaths per 100,000 county residents. A 3.6% increase relative to the average rate of 5.4 deaths per 100,000. Similarly, there is a 3.3% increase in the rate of all drug-related deaths. For ED or emergency department visits, a 1 percentage point rise in the county unemployment rate is linked to an additional 0.95 opioid overdose ED visits per 100,000 residents. A 7.0% increase. Studies have now started to be published on our current recession, although not directly studying unemployment, a new study of Swiss data on the mental health related consequences of COVID-19 mitigation, i.e. economic lockdowns. The authors concluded, the study projects that the average person would suffer 0.205 YLL or years of life lost due to psychosocial consequence of COVID-19 mitigation measures. However, this loss would be entirely borne by 2.1% of the population, who will suffer an average 9.79 YLL. The results presented here are likely to underestimate the true impact of the mitigation strategies on YLL. In other words, the mitigation strategies that allegedly save lives are really just shifting the burden from some people onto others. In some cases, the lockdowns amount to nearly a decade of lost years thanks to the toll on mental health. Confronted with the likely costs of their lockdown policies, many will fall back on claiming basic arithmetic can give us the answer. How many deaths are caused by unemployment versus by COVID-19? This claim is premised on the idea that it's up to the defenders of freedom to prove that the number of deaths caused by economic destruction will outnumber the total COVID-19 deaths. In the minds of the lockdown advocates, if the net number of lives saved by continued lockdown is even a single person, then their policies throwing freedom and the rule of law under the bus are totally justified. They get it wrong, of course. The burden of proof is on them. After all, they are the ones advocating for violence. That is, they are the ones who want to impose fines on non-violent people who just want to open their shops or go to work or sell their labor for wages. If those people don't comply, the pro-lockdown position is that these disobedient people must then be locked in cages or ruined financially through fines, lawsuits and criminal charges. The opponents of the lockdowns, on the other hand, only wish to allow people to exercise their freedom. The burden of proof lies on those who wish to use police powers to coerce others. Moreover, the truth is that the experts have no idea how much the lockdowns are even preventing the spread of disease or how employment and economic growth would be affected in the absence of coerced lockdowns. The lockdown proponents simply don't have enough data to make the case for their position. They only know they desire to force people to abandon their jobs, abandon their shops and indefinitely embrace a life on the dole. As a result, many will kill themselves. Many will overdose on drugs. For more content like this, visit Mises.org.


By now, you should have an overview of all the parameters that can impact noise. So you know that there are a number of parameters involved, and on top of that, the way these parameters interact with each other can be a little bit complex as well. So this can be quite difficult to reason about. So in order to understand noise, what would be helpful is to be able to pick a few parameters, see how impactful noise is with these parameters, then change these parameters and see how noise ratios have changed. And what I've really just described here is a simulation process. And well, this is exactly what NozLab is. NozLab is a simple simulation tool. Here's what your workflow with NozLab may look like. Step one, you would input some data and parameters, and by data I mean dummy data, data that would look roughly like real measurement data. Step two, you would run a simulation, which means that you would ask NozLab to generate summary reports based on your data and your parameters. That would look roughly like summary reports you may get from the aggregation service. Step three, you would observe the noise ratio for these summary reports. Now, what's really important to note is that in reality, if you're using the API and the real aggregation service, you don't know how much noise you have. But with NozLab, because we're simulating, we're actually giving you a peek under the hood and we're letting you know what your noise ratios would look like. With this data and these parameters, so for your assimilation. So with this, you've completed a first situation. And let's say in this example that the noise ratios look a little bit high for your use case. So you may want to repeat the whole process. So then you would tweak the parameters, run another simulation to see how those ratios have changed with your new parameters and so on. With this workflow, you can see that NozLab can help you achieve two things. The first one is to build up your understanding of the parameters that impact noise and sort of develop an intuition for these parameters. And the second thing is to quickly test out strategies to reduce noise ratios. And you can also use NozLab as a way to demonstrate these strategies quickly to others in your organization. Now, this is quite handy, but I would like to call out a few strengths and also limitations of NozLab just so you can make the best use of it. First, a few strengths. NozLab is modeled based on the real API. What this means is that the simulation uses the same mathematics, the aggregate service uses to add noise. So for a given set of measurement data and parameters, the noise analysis you get in NozLab should be similar to the results you would get with the real API. Second, NozLab doesn't require any technical setup. You really just need to open your browser. And it also gives you access to kind of a direct feedback loop where you can access some in-line help and in-line definition for each of the parameters and then you can tweak those parameters and see if the noise analysis you get as a result actually matches your understanding of that parameter. So much for the strength of NozLab. Now, I would like to call out a few of its limitations. So first of all, NozLab doesn't capture to the full extent of possible ad-tech distributions and scenario. It's a simulation tool. And one example of these limitations is that we have limited flexibility on the input measurement data. A second important aspect is NozLab is not an end-to-end simulation tool. It does not integrate with ad-tech systems, but it only really captures the API functionality. Now, once testers have used NozLab to onboard and are comfortable with key noise concepts, at some point they're going to reach a stage where they are going to need fine-tuning and a lot more flexibility in simulating their measurement data. And in that case, they can switch over to another tool we've made available for them and that's the Simulation Library, which is more powerful, but also requires some engineering know-how. So the Simulation Library is out of scope for this presentation, but I wanted to bring it up just to give you a glimpse of the tooling landscape here. Back to NozLab, a few other things you should know. NozLab is completely open-source. You can check out the source code over here on GitHub on that link. The tool is also experimental. The code and algorithms have been verified, but this is important to keep in mind as you're using the tool. And we've really evolved NozLab based on tester feedback. So we're always very much open to feedback on NozLab and how we could enhance the tool to make it as useful as possible for testers. If you find an issue with NozLab or if you have an idea or a feature request, we'd be happy to know about that, so please share with us. And one last note, we have a companion doc or user guide for NozLab, which is publicly available on our developer website. You can check it out at this URL.


I fell in love with this topic so it's so funny that you would ask me this because I did my capstone on the misrepresentation of African American men in the community, in society, not even community, in society. You know the work that I do is primarily with adults and it's with communication, specifically for black people and some of what I've been talking about is how our childhoods affect our ability to communicate and our ability to empathize, our ability to change even. So you know there was something I saw that said like 92% of who we become as an adult is dictated between ages of zero and seven. So the question I have for you as somebody who works with kids, black kids specifically in that age range, how true is that? Oh gosh that is, I don't want to say 100%, you just know nothing is 100%, you have to hold nature versus nurture, debate and all that good stuff but I would say at least, at least 90% only because the developmental stages, during that time you know you're going through the oral stage, the anal stage and those are really, really important stages because that's when you know the children, they are depending on their parents for everything you know. And if they miss one of those needs on Maslow's hierarchy of needs you know you don't, you're not getting that support, you're not getting the loving, the nurturing, you know just being comfortable and knowing that if I'm hungry my parents are going to feed me, if I'm upset about something they're going to you know provide their comfort, they're going to reassure me. If you miss that during that time you know as adults the way that you react to even if it's just you know someone giving you that constructive criticism you're going to take it a completely different way or you may become more fixated on things and specifically for African Americans you know we're already marginalized in society as it is you know. So when we're not given what we need at home and from society that kind of stunts where the child is at and so as your, yes your age increases but you know your emotional ability to handle and to process things it stays at that point and let's not even get started on if your family has you know some mental diagnosis you know there are certain ones that are strictly genetic so and you have your time I think it's 18 or 21 but if you have you know if it's schizophrenic or bipolar disorders those will manifest at those ages so when you don't when you haven't gotten all of the assistance that you need or gotten that love from your family or and it doesn't necessarily have to be bio family members you know it can be we call them kinship family members so for another family a church member you know either a teacher if you don't get that extra loving from them as you're growing up and you're going through these different developmental stages and you're trying to find your independence and things of that nature it definitely definitely can cause an issue and I have seen that in a lot of our kids and if you don't get the help the therapy that you need then you're just going to keep going back to well you know my mom never did this or you know my mom would yell at me whenever I did such and such and so now that's our response so people don't understand that if you don't even if you feel like your childhood was great there are still certain elements that you know you may have missed and if you don't work through those as an adult it will definitely cause issues you know not only internally but in your relationships with others and you know on jobs in your professional lives as well so with somebody who works in this profession are there some I guess nuggets of wisdom that you have learned and that you can pass on to others on how to interact with deal with help heal or not even help heal but empathize with provide space for a partner for instance who has a less than ideal childhood especially black part yes oh my gosh I is the main thing that I have realized and I feel like has helped me is you got to put your bias aside when you're working with other people regardless of the age and for me because I am so involved with you know the kids that I work with so I'm always doing clinical staffings and I feel like for me and I can't generalize for social workers but for me as a social worker my mind is always before I say something I'm always like okay if someone is let's say you're going through a crisis right now you're you're reacting one way and I wouldn't react that way I had to think about my words before I say them I don't want to just say oh that's how you know that's that's not how you should be reacting let's let's take a step back and think about it because not everybody when they're they're up here you know some people want you to be up there with them that's how they respond and then some people you know you come at them from this level and it brings them down as well so just putting aside your your own bias when you're talking to people when you're working with them and just realizing that the way my thinking as a social worker is not going to be your thinking and I had a bad habit initially in relationships of assuming that you know because I'm going through these processes whether it be you know biopsychosocial or just breaking it out to just the the psychological issues you're not doing that and you can't just assume that they are you know and you can't just assume that they're understanding where you're coming from because they don't and when it comes to like actually being in the field of social work you have to think about the person first you know social work is a vast field and you can do so much with it from you know being working at the Department of Social Services to you know being in hospital being in the schools as a counselor you know as a therapist as a school social worker but it's not your behaviors are not just subjected to that one okay I'm a social worker so that means I have to give them all the resources it's not always gonna happen like that you know you can give them resources that doesn't mean that they're gonna use it so just keeping in mind that you're here for the client or you know certain settings they don't like for you to call them clients but overall you're here for the client and you can't project what you want them to do on to them because they may not be ready for that they may not be at that stage of okay you know you were just in pre contemplation yesterday where you're like I know what I need to do and now you're actually putting the action in it doesn't always happen like that so just realizing that you're here for them and the same goes for relationships you know I am here for you where you need me to be and what you need me to be as long as it's not damaging to both of us then I will keep showing up like you need me to show up so I think that's that's what I've learned um even though I've only been in this field this is my fifth year um but I feel like my initial position was so just raw to the point where when I started my first day I was they were like oh you've only been in our college for a year this is what you chose to do with your first day out of college I was like so be concerned but yeah you know yeah um but you do learn a lot and you get exposed to a lot in this profession so something that comes up a lot during some of the conversations that I have is that black men don't properly empathize with the struggles of black women black women don't properly empathize with the struggles of black men so as a black woman who works in social work who works around children specifically black boys who've been traumatized what have you learned about black men oh wow um their voices are not heard enough um that's that's the biggest thing um and I I fell in love with this topic so it's so funny that you would ask me this because I did my capstone on um the misrepresentation of African American men in the community um in society not even community in society but I had to of course narrow it back down so I narrowed it um to the PD region but um I don't know how I guess as I got more into social work um and I just I will read the RDSM vibe that has all of our diagnosis and it um symptoms and all of that I will just read that just so that I could get more information because it's really interesting to me so as I was learning more about different diagnosis um and how they can manifest themselves I started thinking back to men in my family or you know my male friends and I realized that there are a lot of they may not be able to be diagnosed they may be unspecified but there are subtle hints of you know PTSD among black men and you know even some men um I had a friend and he was schizophrenic um all the symptoms were that he knew something wasn't right but you know he was going to the psychologist and the psychiatrist and they would not prescribe him anything and I just realized like and then just seeing on social media how you know it was I can't remember what month it was but it was like every post that I scrolled past was a black man saying that they were going through a lot but they didn't feel like they could talk about it that or you know I'm telling you know people that I'm feeling this way and they're like oh just suck it up you know because that's what as boys they're told oh you're crying you hurt suck it up you know just move on stop acting like a little girl you be all right so I have seen that black men really cannot express how they're feeling you know they can't have these mental check-ins are these emotional check-ins um and sadly it's even when there are relationships with people that you know they don't feel comfortable telling them how they feel because you know the person's just like oh you're a man you're supposed to be strong you know you're you're not supposed to feel anything you know but do they get that from women too really okay yeah and I feel like for for women um the stigma around what it goes for men like women and men the stigma around mental health um and I did a paper on that as well and I interviewed you know a few people and everyone they were in different regions but they all pretty much said the same thing that because you know if you say that you know you're feeling this kind of way um or if you get like the official diagnosis you don't want that label slapped on you and because then you feel like you become you're just bipolar or you know you're just um you just have even ADHD which is so crazy to me like you know just as a black person being oh you know yeah you may have ADHD then it's okay now everybody's looking at me crazy or them just feeling like people are looking at them and judging them or um if you react a certain way um you know like if you have a manic episode where you're just you're out buying a lot of things or you know more commonly known people when they think about manic episodes you know when it comes to bipolar think about people throwing things all over the place but that's not always the case or borderline if you just express you know any instance of a heightened emotion if you are if you've made it known to people that you know you have this um mental illness then they're automatically oh it's because of her bipolar it's because of this you know it's because of that and that was the deterring factor for a lot of the african-american men and women that I talked to as to why they didn't feel comfortable you know um speaking on anything that was bothering them in their relationships or um just to mental health professionals at all because they didn't want to be viewed differently um and they didn't want to basically feel like their value as a person to their significant other went down as well which was just so sad to me because you should feel safe with the person that you're with like um get a little personal here but I um last year it was just a lot with school um I had just stepped into my new program director position um working as a full-time intern as well and I wasn't just doing like oh I'm just show up as my you know at my internship I was looking for groups to do with the girls some were autistic some were borderline you know have borderline personality disorder um some just had they were like unspecified disorders as well so I was actually putting in that extra work to find groups for them because I wanted them to feel like they were seeing you know to feel like they had that support but at the same time I was battling depression and anxiety and I was smiling on the outside but it took so much to get up just to go to work um just to you know go there to the group home with them um I just cut out my whole gym routine I had been going you know Monday through Friday and I just didn't feel like it and on certain days I would just be sad and I just didn't want to talk I didn't want to be bothered but in my position I had to so I was just pushing through it and it wasn't until I had a really really bad panic attack um and I said you know what I need I need a therapist I need to find you know I need to find a therapist and now in my current relationship you know I I feel comfortable talking to him about you know okay this I feel like this is going to be a bad day for me I it was really hard for me to get out of the bed and I just I know my triggers and he's taking the time to learn my triggers as well and knowing okay you know if the weather is this way let me see what I can do to try to you know get her parked up so that this is not a bad day for her um so I just really appreciate that and he's entire you know becoming more open to me because I'm showing up that way to him so you know a lot of times when you show up one way to someone not all the time but because you know humans we mirror each other they're going to show up to you in that same way so I just think that that's great and I wish that more African-American men and women felt that comfort in their relationships


for the Uyghurs here on Global Connections with Henrik Sadsuski. Did I get that right, Henrik? I've been very close. You should just be. It wasn't all that close.  OK, that's a Polish name. But actually, Henrik was educated in the UK. And he's here in Hilo at the UH, just finished his PhD. And we are happy to have him on the show to talk about his experience with and his perceptions about China and the Uyghurs, you know, and other human rights violations, I think. Henrik, welcome to the show. So nice to have you here. Jay, it's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me on. So let's talk about you first a little bit. You've completed your PhD at UH in Hilo. What subject? What was your dissertation about? Well, so I was actually I was in Manoa, but we we have a family home on the Big Island.  So I completed my my PhD here. And my my work for the for UH Manoa was focused on Chinese migrants and Chinese presence in Fiji. Of course, Fiji. But what you know, what that opens up to me is that you have Chinese migrants and Chinese presence everywhere in the world. So I suggest, Henrik, that you have a lot of additional PhDs to write. Well, absolutely. And that's just even focused on the Pacific. So my my next my next idea is to expand the work out of Fiji into other other parts of Oceania. That will totally justify your PhD. And that's only chapter one. The world is your oyster proverbially. So we will talk about the Uighurs. But before we do that, I want to talk about an article that you're collaborating with involving a missing student. Can you talk about that? Yeah, so I mean, this this was published as as an op ed in the Star Advertiser in conjunction with two other UH Manoa employees and faculty. This was an individual who was his name. He graduated out of the sociology department at UH Manoa and returned to China and particularly to Xinjiang, the northwestern part of of China, where where Uighurs reside. He went with the idea of using his PhD to further, you know, though to educate the next generation of Uighurs. Anyway, in the in the most recent intensification of the repression, he's since disappeared and the last known whereabouts, you know, we're talking sort of 2017, 18 and it's it's thought that he went into one of the camps that were created at that time. The retraining camps. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of ways that that people have called these camps. I think they're most people outside of China would call these concentration camps and in China themselves, the state and the government refer to it as vocational and training centres. They're complete with torture. Am I right? Yeah, I mean, these centres are really I mean, they've they've swept up vast numbers of Uighurs. Scholarly peer reviewed work has put the number between one point one and one point five million Uighurs. They put that into context. There are roughly about ten million Uighurs in the entire region. And I think that a lot of the Uighurs who were put into these camps were for such minor infractions as religious expressions or having some sort of overseas connection. That's chilling. Now, in the case of this student, you think he's in a camp or could he be completely disappeared? And when I say completely disappeared, I mean, killed. Well, the range of options are out there. I mean, as you say, there's a chilling aspect to these camps and intellectuals who have gone into these camps have disappeared. And particularly, I can think of a couple of religious scholars who, I mean, of course, they were elderly. And so they were much more vulnerable to the conditions of the camps died in those facilities into in, you know, in Zulpecata's case, we don't really know is quite possible. He's been released is quite possible. He's been moved out of the camp system and imprisoned or maybe one of the maybe remaining within the camp system itself, perhaps also working within forced labor, too. So what that tells us mostly is that we're dealing with a real dearth of information to the extent that even relatives outside of China have little to no idea of what's happening to their relatives. So they don't know where he is. They don't know what he's doing in whatever facility he's in. And they have no idea when he's going to get out again. That's very troubling. Well, absolutely. I mean, of course, you know, this has all kinds of due process implications and China's obligations to international standards, not only just in the jurisprudence, but I think that what we have here is a situation that it's an individual from Hawaii, but we can magnify this out to many Uyghurs out there, particularly in the diaspora who have no idea where their family members are. Or if they do have some sort of contact, it's under conditions of coercion, meaning that authorities are overlooking the sort of shoulders of their relatives whilst they have these communications. Well, he has contact with people in Hawaii, including you. And I'm a rather he had contact with people in a way. But question, what can you do about it? How what steps can you take to try to get them out of there and to bring them back here? Well, yeah, this again is an ongoing campaign that particularly since the repression of 2017 that intensified. I mean, this has been a culmination of several years of pressure. And personally, of course, what we do as scholars is try to assemble the scholarly community and to try to advocate for his case. And but at the end of the day, the the discretion is with the Chinese state, pressure, shaming. These are the ways that we use as individuals and as collective groups. But there are broader, structurally legislative things that we can put in place, which are not always directly related to the persecution of intellectuals, but some of the other issues that are out there, for example, forced labor has been an issue that the United States has taken up quite enthusiastically in trying to limit import and exports from particularly Xinjiang imposing sanctions on officials complicit in the in the repression. So at the end of the day, it's it's the more the action is more about systemic advocacy rather than on these individual cases. We can do when you say advocate, you're talking about advocating with the Chinese government rather than the U.S. government, or is it both? Well, I mean, I think directly, if you if you're talking to the Chinese government, it falls on deaf ears. The Chinese government's narrative is completely different as as you could well expect. The the idea of the vocational and training centres is actually a what what the Chinese government calls a de-extremification move. They're they're making Uyghurs less radical. So a lot of what can be done has to be done overseas in terms of looking at China's global connections, how those those are vulnerable places of vulnerability. But it needs to be done through either multilateral organisations or sovereign governments. Shaming included. So you live there in in Xinjiang, you live there. And you've had a personal experience with the way this works. Yeah, I mean, so I lived there from 1994 to 1997. I lived in the city called Kashgar, which is in the very southwest of the region. Xinjiang is vast. I mean, it's the size of Alaska and it takes up about one sixth of the Chinese territory. So I was in the very, very southwest quite near the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan. Kashgar is a real cultural hub for Uyghurs. It has a very significant spiritual and emotional meaning for Uyghurs as a sort of centre of Uyghurness. I was there from 1994 to 97. And I think that most scholars would say that 97 is when you start seeing the real intensification of of the repression. So I was there in a period where I could see discrimination on the ground, but also some of the government systemic ways that impacts Uyghurs too. So those were those were my three years they're working at Kashgar Teachers College. Henry, can you go back? I can't. No, I mean, I am assuming I can't. I'll put it that way. I haven't actually applied for a visa and my name is attached to enough research that's critical of the policies in Xinjiang that I doubt the likes of critical researchers and scholars are wanted anymore in Xinjiang. It's a shame, of course. I think that we need to have a lot more of those boots on the ground taking a look. And in fact, I think the Chinese government's policies would be better informed by a number of people who have expertise and who have different perspectives, but certainly the other aspect of going back, though, is that my my fear is, is that, let's say everything happened and the planets aligned. I was allowed to go. Anybody I talked to, I think would would have some sort of consequence once I left the area. So I think that there's a personal and ethical reason not to go back. So let's talk for a minute about the Uighurs. The Uighurs are Muslim, but they're Chinese. How did how did Islam get into an area the size of Alaska in China? Did they did these people come from the Middle East? You know, the seat of Islam or did Islam come to them? And when? Yeah, I mean, Islam came came to the Uighurs around about the 10th century. Prior to that, Uighurs were either Nestorian Christians or Manicheans or Buddhists and a lot of the fame of the historical fame of of Xinjiang comes from the Silk Road cities that were trading posts. So Islam came to them. They I think that most Uighurs would probably not agree with the idea that they're Chinese. I think that they would say that they're Chinese citizens, you know, informally on their on their passports. However, I think that their most their identity lies within the Turkic world. So looking across the borders to places like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan as well and Turkey as well, being another sort of cultural cousin. So there it's a really uniquely placed region in that it has this sort of conduit over to into Eurasia, South Asia, Central Asia, and and as a result is strategically key. But their their influence is a manifold and currently that they are Muslims and and have been and I think that a vast number of Uighurs would equate their ethnic identity with being Muslims. But that's not to say there aren't there are numbers of Uighurs who are secular or believe in other religions. I wonder if that helps them in dealing with the Chinese government that they can say, wait, stop stop surveilling me. Don't take me away to a training camp. I am secular. Does that help? Not really. No, I think, you know, in the early days of this and I'm calling this the sort of real intensification of the repression in 2017, prior to that, there was this, you know, perhaps campaign influenced assaults on on Islam. But after 2000, 17, it was quite widespread.  However, particularly in a study that I did and with other members of my organization on Uighur intellectuals, I mean, at the last count, we were able to document 312 of those intellectuals who have been detained or imprisoned. There are many of those individuals were almost models of the state, secular in mind and and praised prior to 2017. Since that time, that hasn't saved them from the camps. It it almost amounts to a criminalization of from of ethnicity.  This sounds to me like this was on the Silk Road. It sounds to me like plenty of traffic to and from China over a thousand years. So so query whether these people are, you know, Chinese in the full racial racial sense or whether they're a mixed bag in terms of, you know, their origins on the Silk Road. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's there's being mountains of books written about how did the Uighurs get to be Uighurs? And a lot of the recent scholarship talks about how Soviet national policy influenced the Chinese to group the Turkic Muslims of of this part. I mean, many Uighurs would call this Eastern Turkestan and Western Turkestan being places in the Soviet Union, like Kazakhstan and so on. I think that, yes, there has been a vast number of influences and their language is a real gateway into understanding that if you look at if you look at Uighur has influences from from Persian, from Arabic, from obviously the Turkic languages and more recently from Chinese, too. However, I think that if you were to talk to a Uighur about self identifying, I think that they would distance themselves from the dominant hand culture quite clearly, and it's very much an aspect of the current assimilation policy in that the the Chinese government would like to hannify or signify Uighurs, making sure that Mandarin is their first language, and and I think that there's plenty of resistance to that. So so I think that they're there at this point, I think that there is this sort of identity conflict going on internally and also on the ground. It all reminds me of Falangang, although it's an imperfect comparison. Can you compare, contrast the experience of members of the Falangang in China with the Uighurs? Yeah, I mean, I think that that's there have been number of points where Falangang have had a similar experience in terms of being their their religious expressions being being closed down. And for Uighurs, as I said, there are two very core aspects of their identity that that are asserted as difference from the Han Chinese. One is language and one is religion and and religion has been heavily suppressed, and that has happened prior to 2017. And so I think that the Falangang experience, too, is is similar in that way, that there's this belief system separate from the state. And and what I what I see, and I think many other scholars see, is that these external affinities outside of the state or outside of the Communist Party are a threat to the to the control that the state likes to exert over its citizens. You know, that was a movie three or four years ago, around the same time as a 2017 intensification, you mentioned, where this fellow was was Falangang and he was taken to training camp. The movie was a real movie. It was a documentary called Letters from Massangia. It was popular because he wrote little letters and put them in the Christmas toys that were being sent to the US. And women received the Christmas toy. She published it in the newspaper in Seattle, I think. And then she wound up feeling badly that she had undermined his position in the camp there, and she went to try to help him. In the in the end, the Chinese intelligence caught him and killed him. Bottom line, though, is that there is a haunting comparison between the rendition of the punishment in Massangia as the training camps you're talking about in your Xinjiang. And by the way, are the camps these facilities in or near Xinjiang or are they somewhere else in China? They are there predominantly in the predominant they are in Xinjiang. And the it's interesting you bring up this link of forced labor. There is a very clear pathway between camp and forced labor. Forced labor is also a way of transferring Uyghurs to other parts of China. And there have been incredible reports of Uyghurs transferred to places in northeastern China and as cheap labor pools. So, yeah, there are some of the ways to think about this is that China's competitive competitiveness on the world market is being somewhat undermined, mainly because labor is becoming more expensive. And and I think that Uyghurs are being used in a way to provide a cheaper labor pool, making Chinese manufactured products much more competitive, right? However, I mean, I think that the those movements of Uyghurs I mean, it amounts to a pool that sometimes are advertised even online. Yeah, we have 200 Uyghurs does your factory need these people? You can purchase this and transfer them to to your facility. So I think that they're it's bound up with also the economics and and also the challenges that China is facing in terms of a slowing economy, but also the way it's thinking globally as well.  I don't I appreciate the family, the religion would have you the community here, but I want to go to Shanghai. I can make more money in Shanghai. My options are much greater in the business community there. Why can't I just stand up and walk out and go to Shanghai? Will will there be some obstacle? Yeah, I mean, I think, first of all, the Chinese Hukou system, meaning that you have to register and have a formal residency in a you have to transfer your residency from one part of the China, the world of where you're living now into into the new place that you want to go. That is extraordinarily difficult, particularly for Uyghurs. It has a racialized element and even travel itself without the desire to relocate is difficult enough. Hotels are either forbidding Uyghurs to stay there. Or if they do, then everything has to be registered. Your movements have to be monitored. And places in China themselves have dedicated Xinjiang offices, which are designed to monitor that kind of movement. So no, I mean, in some getting up, moving and going to other city. I mean, I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility. It's it certainly is very difficult. You know, in 2017, the intensification, let's call it at this discussion, Xi Jinping was the president. And the question is, is he carrying a certain part of the burden here? Is he responsible for the intensification? And then my next question to you, Henry, is going to be why? What's the problem? Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it has to go all the way to the top without a shadow of a doubt in my in my in my opinion. I think that Xi Jinping in recently leaked documents has talked about how the the Uyghur problem needs to be dealt with. Yeah. And and I think that officials have, of course, as you go lower down the chain, I think intent that gets intensified. So in meaning that the lower officials need to please the hierarchy, so it gets a lot more intense as you go down. So, you know, Uyghurs being called enemies, Islam being referred to as a contagion. And and I think Xi Jinping is also his signature policy of the of the Belt Road Initiative is one where he sees Xinjiang as a pivot as important and that has to be cleansed so that that policy, his legacy, in fact, is not impeded by by these by these people. So I would say that, yes, I think that we we have to look to the top. Also, there's an entire system that is that looks upward in order to please and meet those expectations. This is a problem in an autocracy. You know, one thing that strikes me is this is tantamount to see if you agree, tantamount to cultural genocide. In other words, over the years, it would appear that the ultimate goal of this initiative to, you know, change the the way they they they live is a tantamount to cultural genocide.  You want to make them into Han Chinese. You want to bring them into the fold and have the next generation not know anything about it, which you disagree with my characterization. Well, you know, I think that in my opinion, whatever there's nothing I disagree with with what you're saying, I think that the the cultural dimensions are are in play and have been for several years. I think that the you know, the erosion of Islam and the erosion, particularly of the language in the education system is well documented. I think where a lot of people's minds are now is on a broader definition of genocide in December 2021 and independent Uyghur tribunal found China to be committing genocide through its coercive birth control policies. And a number of governments, too, have made genocide determinations, including the United States. Now, some might argue that those are, you know, embedded in the political relationships that go on with China. However, I think that the scholarly research that backs up that the the poll that the Uyghur population is being targeted for for family planning policies in with the aim of reducing the population, which is one of the one of the articles in the genocide convention is in play. Oh, where is this going? I mean, I mean, none of this is a surprise in the sense that we have known for several years, you know, that there was this horrible repression of Uyghurs and everything Uyghur in China. But where is it going? Are they succeeding in this effort? That is the government. And where is it going to wind up? Will will they succeed in stamping out Uyghur Uyghurs and Uyghurisms and the cultural and, in fact, population of Uyghurs? Is that where it's going? And and the second part of my question is what, if anything, is is is being done to stop this?  Absolutely. I mean, I think that to address the first question, we're at a very critical point, right? And it sort of leads into the second question about what can be done, because now is the time to do it, right? And and I think that the first aspect to this is that in the Chinese disinformation and the propaganda that we see, Uyghurs have been re-tooled, right? They have been remade as productive citizens, de-extremified in their in their words. And we have this new, clean Xinjiang ready for investment. Of course, you have the diaspora who are interpreting their own identity in different ways and also being very vibrant in particularly cultural ways. What can be done? States, multilateral organizations are working hard on this. I think that we see in the US key legislation that's been put in place that, as I said, imposes sanctions, but also incorporates the State Department to report on the on the situation. Civil society is also a key aspect to this. You and I can do things. There are many, many, many options. I would encourage people to go to the Uyghur human rights project page that is called What You Can Do. And there are eight very key things right there that just you and I can do today. I would be remiss if I didn't ask you for the common denominator, common to what the Chinese are doing with the Uyghurs and Falangang, for that matter, and their position on Ukraine. There's a common government, political, maybe cultural denominator here that we should discuss. Can you address that? Yeah, China is obviously has made this a very important strategic alliance with Russia. And then the next thing we know is that, of course, after the Olympics and it seems like Putin and Xi may have had an agreement that the invasion go ahead after the Olympics so that China could have its moment. But I think that where the key here is that there's an issue of sovereignty. China's main foreign policy thrust is about sovereignty. And the fact that they have not come out forcefully to say Ukrainians deserve a right to their sovereignty and puts them in quite a difficult situation. If that is the case, I think that with Uyghurs, Tibetans, Southern Mongolians, other captured nations within China may also see, well, we have our rights to self-determination too, particularly under the UN Charters. So it would be interesting to see where China goes at this point. I think that at this present moment, they are somewhat sitting in the fence, but still putting out the disinformation that is coming out of Russia. Yeah, one thing you mentioned I'd like to follow up on and that's the Olympics. Something outrageous happened with respect to the Olympics. Can you talk about it? Yeah, well, I mean, the fact that the Olympics went ahead in February of this year when there is an ongoing genocide in that country really puts the IOC in a position of complicity. Thomas Bach and other senior members of the IOC who denied, I mean, there's one member of that committee, Dick Pound, who actually said, I don't know anything about it. I think about Uyghurs, which I find alarming that a senior member of the International Olympic Committee could not know anything about what's going on in a country where the Olympics is being hosted. So, of course, the parallels with Berlin are right there. History, I think he's going to be the main determinant, but what drove that Olympics obviously was money and also a China that is now projecting itself on a global stage. And Rick, you mentioned InterAlea, an organization that you were involved with that deals with these issues. What's the name of the organization and how can I read up on it? Yeah, that's the Uyghur Human Rights Project. I've actually worked there since 2008. So I feel like a veteran of working there and it's an organization that does research-based advocacy. Website is uhuhrp.org and there's lots of information on our research and the kinds of information that I've shared today, particularly about what you can do and what's happening across the globe in terms of advocacy and just how we can get involved with people and citizens. And that organization just is doing that sort of hard work of trying to document all of these incidents that we've discussed today.  Hawaii needs to be aware of these things and you're part of the intellectual structure that makes us aware. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much for helping us understand these things and I hope we can circle back at a later time because I know there will be further events and issues along the same lines and it's important from an international point of view, especially now. Let me try one more time Sir Jeff Ski. It's been an absolute pleasure and thank you for opening this forum up to Hawaiians to be able to learn about Uyghurs and engage with the issue. It's important to us and it's important to us on so many reasons in that China is targeting US citizens who are Uyghurs. Also, their surveillance technologies are beginning to become a globalized issue. And I think that we can certainly engage as Hawaiians. It's been my honor and pleasure to talk to you today. Thank you, Henrik. Henrik Sajewski. I think I got it now. It certainly did. Aloha, Henrik. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.