Daily Archives: 15 April 2013

Hmmm. Foreign workers expelled from Hong Kong.

open quoteIn a landmark decision Hong Kong’s highest court on Monday ruled against granting residency to two Filipino maids, dashing the hopes of several hundred thousand other domestic helpers from ever gaining permanent residency in the city.

Five judges on the Court of Final Appeal ruled unanimously that Evangeline Banao Vallejos and Daniel Domingo would not be allowed to settle permanently in Hong Kong after residing here for over seven years, a period that would ordinarily qualify foreigners to become permanent residents under the constitution.

The court ruled that maids should not be treated as “ordinarily resident” in the financial hub given contracts that tied them to finite stints of temporary employment.close quote (Read more)

workshop at Brown Univ. set to help queer minorities overcome attraction to queer whites

open quoteA group of Brown University students appear to be preparing an on-campus workshop in which “queer” participants will separate by race to work past their sexual attraction to Caucasians.

We “find ourselves falling always for the white queers… wishing we could have more agency in the process, be more intentional about who we desire and how,” reads the official Facebook description of the event.

“We are invested in generating a politics of sexuality that compels us to interrogate beauty as privilege and constructed by systems of white supremacy, ableism, capitalism, and heteronormativity,” it continues.close quote (Read more) (Read more)

Twitter sued £32m for refusing to reveal anti-semites

open quoteIn January, a French court ruled that Twitter must hand over the details of people who had tweeted racist and anti-semitic remarks, and set up a system that would alert the police to any further such posts as they happen. Twitter has ignored that ruling, and now the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF) is suing it for €38.5m (£32.8m) for its failure.

The case revolves around a hashtag — #unbonjuif (“a good Jew”) — which became the third-most popular on the site in October 2012. The UEJF took Twitter to court, demanding that those who had tweeted anti-semitic remarks using the hashtag be named by Twitter so the police could prosecute them for hate speech.close quote (Read more)