Emile Dirks
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emiledirks.bsky.social
Emile Dirks
@emiledirks.bsky.social
280 followers 300 following 24 posts
Senior Research Associate at The Citizen Lab. Researching policing & authoritarianism in China and beyond.
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Reposted by Emile Dirks
There's something very telling about Brown's actions--we suddenly have an influx of China experts who want to get in on Taiwan since it's a sexy topic, but disregard the existing Taiwan experts, and want to bury those existing experts because they are competition
In case you missed it, Kerry Brown wrote a book that plagiarized Shelley Rigger’s classic book title.

I, along with others who were asked to review Kerry’s manuscript, said verbatim to change the title.

In the most tacky and unprofessional fashion, he stole her title anyway.
Reposted by Emile Dirks
Reposted by Emile Dirks
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.
Emmer: "Pro-terrorist, Marxist radicals are now the left's mainstream."
Reposted by Emile Dirks
Canada 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
Reposted by Emile Dirks
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
Reposted by Emile Dirks
Amid many a silly “free speech” panic, here is a genuinely chilling case …

Sheffield Hallam professor accuses the institution of negotiating “directly with a foreign intelligence service to trade my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market”

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
China intimidated UK university to ditch human rights research, documents show
Sheffield Hallam University apologises to Professor Laura Murphy for restricting her academic freedom.
www.bbc.co.uk
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.
Under Trump, the draconian future of homelessness policy is coming into focus: mass internment. Utah is building a 16-acre site to detain up to 1,300 homeless people inside locked "accountability centers." This is profoundly alarming.

Vital reporting from @ellenbarry.bsky.social and Jason DeParle:
In Utah, Trump’s Vision for Homelessness Begins to Take Shape
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by Emile Dirks
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.
Reposted by Emile Dirks
Ford 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.
In particular, they want leases to no longer necessarily remain in effect indefinitely, so that landlords have more options for creating tenant turnover.

Current situation in left-hand column, proposal on the right:
Reposted by Emile Dirks
Trump has functionally killed America's international broadcasting apparatus.

Russia and China are making up the difference.

if we still care about democracy and liberalism abroad, countries like Canada need to step up. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
Justin Ling: Canada needs to make its voice heard around the world. Here’s one clear way to do that.
To create stronger connections internationally, Canada can’t rely on the United States. We need to use our own soft diplomacy tools
www.thestar.com
Reposted by Emile Dirks
Good lord, this is beyond the worst thing I could have imagined. If you'd told me "Trump will seek to have refugee eligibility explicitly limited to AfD voters, white South African farmers and organized racists -- " even I would have thought it hyperbole.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u...
Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by Emile Dirks
“The proposals would transform a program aimed at helping the most vulnerable people in the world into one that gives preference to mostly white people who say they are being persecuted.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u...
Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by Emile Dirks
Yeah this is my drum that I bang but I have to keep saying it: counter-TNR policies that leave out migration policy are ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that most TNR entails host state cooperation, and “harder” migration systems make cooperation more likely
Reposted by Emile Dirks
The lesson of the Trump era is to stick with your principles. He’s coming for you anyway, whether you do or not, so you might as well stick to your principles so people don’t laugh at you afterward and you can look yourself in the mirror.
Pity the ADL. It went out of its way to defend Elon Musk's definitely-not-a-sieg-heil, and in return gets this.
For the 100th time: Republicans who were China's loudest critics are now cheerleaders for an American surveillance state. These people have no principled concern for human rights. They are happy for the state to silence, detain & disappear its foes, so long as the state in question is their own.