What the Heck?! Thread (Closed)

[siegecrossbow]

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, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Washington State, has an M.B.A. from Georgetown, a long list of policy ideas and a catchy campaign slogan (“Yin It to Win It”). But it is four letters on Mr. Yin’s résumé that have people talking.

Mr. Yin, 41, was until last year a news anchor for

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, the Chinese state television broadcaster. Two weeks into his campaign, some online commenters have suggested that he is a mouthpiece for the Chinese government, while the news media in mainland China has cheered him on.

Mr. Yin, the son of immigrants from Hong Kong, said he saw his experience at CCTV, where he was an anchor based in Washington, D.C., as a strength that would allow him to build ties with leaders in Chinese business and government.

“You want somebody who’s going to understand which buttons to push,” Mr. Yin said in a telephone interview on Friday.

In online forums and interviews, some commentators have raised questions about Mr. Yin’s ties to the network. Mr. Yin, a former journalist for Bloomberg and CNBC, helped CCTV expand its global reach in 2012 by joining CCTV America, an English-language channel based in Washington, D.C., that began broadcasting in 2012.

On Twitter, Bill Bishop, a media entrepreneur and prominent American commentator on China,

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, “Wonder how Washington voters feel about an ex employee of China’s ministry of propaganda.”

In response,

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, “I’m proud to have shared the importance of free speech with journalists I worked with.”

CCTV has come under criticism recently for having broadcast a string of

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accused of violating Chinese law. Rights campaigners and scholars in the West have dismissed the broadcasts as part of a propaganda campaign aimed at silencing dissent.

On Friday, Mr. Yin, who left CCTV in December, distanced himself from the videos, saying, “You’d have to be a fool to not be a little concerned.” Still, he emphasized that he did not know all the facts, and he was reluctant to criticize the crackdown on civil society under President Xi Jinping.

Mr. Yin said he had not experienced censorship at CCTV, though he said that he sometimes had to make compromises, like when the network delayed its coverage of

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in Hong Kong in 2014 by a few hours.

Mr. Yin’s campaign has received little coverage in the United States, aside from

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article in the Yakima Herald-Republic, a newspaper in Washington State. But state news media in China

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his candidacy.

Many online commenters here have been supportive.

“Hope he will actively speak on behalf of ethnic Chinese!” one user wrote on Weibo, a Twitter-like service.

“It’s in the interest of tens of millions of Chinese,” another wrote.

 

[AssassinsMace]

In liberal San Francisco opponents to Asian political office candidates always charged possible organized crime connections to get people not to vote for them.

 

[Blackstone]

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Bill Bishop is the publisher of Sinocism news site, a kind of Drudge for China-related news. It's a very good resource for PRC-related news you don't always see in mainstream Western media. Sinocism site is linked below for those interested, and I highly recommend it. China fanbois be warned, Sinocism is unabashedly pro democracy and anti authoriterian rule.

Bishop is wrong about Philip Yin being a mouthpiece of CCTV (read CCP), because if Yin was that, then he would have joined the Democrat Party and run on its ticket. I say that because Democrat Party is aligned with the victimization industry, and Yin could cry racism, sexism, gender identity-ism, and every other -ism under the sun, with the full backing of the Democrat machine. Instead, he's running on the Republican ticket and doesn't have the protection of the lame stream media and the victimization industry. However, if Yin did turn out to be a Manchurian candidate, then he screwed up and chose the more difficult road to hoe.

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[AssassinsMace]

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It's funny the media criticizing Trump when you don't see the media telling Trump the facts when they're interviewing him when it comes up. This is not the only time the media fails with follow-up questions. The majority of the time they don't ask follow-up questions because they know very well if hardball questions are asked, they don't get an interview in the future. It's pretty hat-in-hand policy of journalists these days.

 

[delft]

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It's funny the media criticizing Trump when you don't see the media telling Trump the facts when they're interviewing him when it comes up. This is not the only time the media fails with follow-up questions. The majority of the time they don't ask follow-up questions because they know very well if hardball questions are asked, they don't get an interview in the future. It's pretty hat-in-hand policy of journalists these days.

Not just these days. The problem is nearly as old as journalism.

 

[delft]

From WaPo:

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Chicago officer sues estate of teen he shot, claiming trauma

By Michael Tarm and Jason Keyser | AP February 6 at 5:59 PM
CHICAGO — A white Chicago police officer who fatally shot a black 19-year-old college student and accidentally killed a neighbor has filed a lawsuit against the teenager’s estate, arguing the shooting left him traumatized.

The highly unusual suit was filed Friday in the middle of the city’s effort to grapple with serious questions about the future of its police force. Those questions include the adequacy of its system for investigating police shootings and how to win back public trust after several cases of alleged misconduct. The U.S. Justice Department is conducting a wide-ranging civil rights investigation, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel has promised a major overhaul of the Police Department and steps to heal its fraught relationship with black residents.

The timing and unusual nature of the suit by officer Robert Rialmo, who is seeking $10 million in damages, could complicate the department’s efforts to demonstrate more sensitivity toward the community in how police shootings are handled. His attorney, Joel Brodsky, said it was important in the charged atmosphere to send a message that police are “not targets for assaults” and “suffer damage like anybody else.”

The teen’s father, Antonio LeGrier, filed a wrongful death lawsuit days after the Dec. 26 shooting, saying his son, Quintonio, was not armed with a weapon and was not a threat. His attorney, Basileios Foutris, was incredulous at what he called the officer’s “temerity” in suing the grieving family of the person he shot.

“That’s a new low even for the Chicago Police Department,” he said. “First you shoot them, then you sue them.”

The lawsuit provides the officer’s first public account of how he says the shooting happened, offering details that differ with the family’s version. It says Rialmo, who was responding to a domestic disturbance call with another officer, opened fire after Quintonio LeGrier swung a bat at the officer’s head at close range. A downstairs neighbor, 55-year-old Bettie Jones, was standing nearby and was shot and killed by accident. She was not part of the domestic dispute.

“The fact that LeGrier’s actions had forced Officer Rialmo to end LeGrier’s life and to accidentally take the innocent life of Bettie Jones has caused, and will continue to cause, Officer Rialmo to suffer extreme emotional trauma,” the filing says.

When arriving at the scene around 4:30 a.m. on Dec. 26, Rialmo rang the doorbell of the two-story apartment building. Jones answered and directed them to the upstairs apartment. As Rialmo stepped through the doorway, he heard someone “charging down the stairway,” the suit says.

It describes the teen coming down the stairs with a baseball bat in hand and says LeGrier “cocked” the bat “and took a full sing at Officer Rialmo’s head, missing it by inches” when the two were around 4 feet apart.

The officer then backed away with his weapon still holstered, according to the suit, while repeatedly shouting at LeGrier to drop the bat.

But the suit says LeGrier kept advancing and swung the bat again. Only when LeGrier cocked the bat again from 3 or 4 feet away, did the officer pull out his 9 mm handgun and open fire, the filing says.

As he began firing, Rialmo did not see or hear Jones behind LeGrier, the suit says. It says one of the bullets went through LeGrier’s body and struck Jones, killing her.

An autopsy determined that LeGrier suffered six bullet wounds.

Lawyers for Antonio LeGrier and for Jones have provided accounts that differ from Rialmo’s. They say the evidence indicates the officer was 20 or 30 feet away when he fired, calling into question Rialmo’s contention that he feared for his life.

Foutris also questions why the teen would attack the officer since he was the one who called 911. The father of the Northern Illinois University student also made a 911 call.

“If you’re calling multiple times for help are you going to charge a police officer and try to hit him with a bat? That’s ridiculous,” Foutris said.

County prosecutors have asked the FBI to investigate the shooting.

A Police Department spokesman refused to comment on the officer’s lawsuit.

Such a lawsuit by an officer is extraordinarily unusual, said Phil Turner, a former federal prosecutor and current defense attorney who is not connected to the case.

He questioned whether a judge would give it any merit and said it appeared intended to intimidate LeGrier’s family. He said he had never heard of an officer blaming his shooting victim for causing trauma.

“That is a known part of the job,” Turner said of policing’s emotional toll.

 

[plawolf]

From WaPo:

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Shocking and disgusting, not to mention stupid. That officer just turned the world against himself.

While police and state prosecutors would normally close ranks in such instances, they are far less likely to do so now because of the negative views this will cause.

It's far easier to brand him as a one-off bad apple now.

And if the shooting does go to trial, the officer can expect a hostile jury pool.

Stupid.

 

[siegecrossbow]

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Questions about the structural integrity of a toppled 17-storey building have been raised, after it crumbled in a

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Saturday morning in southern Taiwan that is known to have killed 18 people and injured 484 so far.

Images have been circulating online of cooking oil cans

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in pillars of the collapsed Wei Guan Golden Dragon Building in Tainan City, which was built in 1989. Some are questioning whether the oil cans were used as shoddy filler material in the building's construction, and if this had a part to play in the building coming down in the quake.

Interior minister, Chen Wei-zen, said an investigation has been launched into whether the building's developer had cut corners, but noted the building had not been listed as a dangerous structure before the quake.

Albeit an alarming sight, the cooking oil cans may not have been that much of a structural liability, a building technician told Taiwanese paper, Apple Daily. Tai Yun Fa said the metal oil cans are

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that aren't weight-bearing, and the light barrels can help reduce the overall weight of the building and benefit its structure.

About 171 people have been rescued from Wei Guan, according to Tainan's emergency center. By Sunday morning, rescuers continued to search for about 132 people still trapped inside.

Wei Guan isn't the only building that came down Saturday; nine others in the city collapsed and five are tilted at an angle.

Earthquakes frequently rattle Taiwan, but most are minor and cause little or no damage. One of the largest quakes in recent history, a 7.6-magnitude event in central Taiwan in 1999, killed more than 2,300 people.

 

[delft]

Shocking and disgusting, not to mention stupid. That officer just turned the world against himself.

While police and state prosecutors would normally close ranks in such instances, they are far less likely to do so now because of the negative views this will cause.

It's far easier to brand him as a one-off bad apple now.

And if the shooting does go to trial, the officer can expect a hostile jury pool.

Stupid.

I'd think to talk of a one-off bad apple in the Chicago police force would be ridiculous. The whole force has been corrupt at least over the last half century.

 

[solarz]

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If this had happened in mainland China, the article would have concluded by saying how many Chinese construction are shoddy and led to collapses.

But since it's Taiwan, it concludes by saying Taiwan frequently experiences earthquakes.