Category Archives: Transhuman News

Its no longer just Vladimir Putin.

As he settles into office, President Trumps affection for totalitarian leaders has grown beyond Russias president to include strongmen around the globe.

Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has had his opponents gunned down, but Trump praised him for doing a fantastic job. Thailands prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha, is a junta chief whose military jailed dissidents after taking power in a coup, yet Trump offered to meet with him at the White House. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has eroded basic freedoms, but after a recent political victory, he got a congratulatory call from Trump.

Then theres the case of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. He is accused of presiding over the extrajudicial killing of thousands of drug dealers and users. And in response to U.S. criticism of his human rights record last year, he said President Barack Obama can go to hell.

Yet on Sunday, in what the White House characterized as a very friendly conversation, Trump invited Duterte to Washington for an official visit.

(Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

In an undeniable shift in American foreign policy, Trump is cultivating authoritarian leaders, one after another, in an effort to reset relations following an era of ostracism and public shaming by Obama and his predecessors.

For instance, it has become an almost daily occurrence for Trump to gush about Chinese President Xi Jinping since their Mar-a-Lago summit last month. Trump has called Xi a very good man, highly respected and a gentleman, as he tries to persuade Xi to convince North Korea that it should scale back or give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Trumps praise is not limited to potential U.S. allies. Even as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ratchets up his provocations, Trump called Kim a smart cookie in a CBS News interview over the weekend. On Monday, Trump told Bloomberg News he would be honored to personally meet with Kim under the right circumstances.

[Trump takes a selective approach to the promotion of human rights]

Every American president since at least the 1970s has used his office at least occasionally to champion human rights and democratic values around the world. Yet, so far at least, Trump has willingly turned a blind eye to dictators records of brutality and oppression in hopes that those leaders might become his partners in isolating North Korea or fighting terrorism.

Indeed, in his first 102 days in office, Trump has neither delivered substantive remarks nor taken action supporting democracy movements or condemning human rights abuses, other than the missile strike he authorized on Syria after President Bashar al-Assad allegedly used chemical weapons against his own people.

He doesnt even pretend to utter the words, said Michael McFaul, a U.S. ambassador to Russia under Obama. Small-d democrats all over the world are incredibly despondent right now about Donald Trump and thats true in China, in Iran, in Egypt, in Russia. They feel like the leader of the free world is absent.

A tipping point for many Trump critics was his invitation to Duterte to visit the White House. Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was deeply disturbed by Trumps cavalier invitation and called on him to rescind it.

This is a man who has boasted publicly about killing his own citizens, Cardin said of Duterte in a statement. The United States is unique in the world because our values respect for human rights, respect for the rule of law are our interests. Ignoring human rights will not advance U.S. interests in the Philippines or any place else. Just the opposite.

Yet Trumps advisers said the presidents silence on human rights matters is purposeful, part of a grand strategy to rebuild alliances or create new ones. Trumps outreach is designed to isolate North Korea in the Asia-Pacific region and to build coalitions to defeat the Islamic State in the Middle East and North Africa, senior administration officials said.

Inside the Trump White House, the thinking goes that if mending bridges with a country such as the Philippines historically a treaty ally whose relationship with the United States deteriorated as Duterte gravitated toward China means covering up or even ignoring concerns like human rights, then so be it.

The United States has a limited ability to direct things, said Michael Anton, the National Security Councils director of strategic communications. We cant force these countries to behave certain ways. We can apply pressure, but if the alternative is not talking, how effective would it be if we had no relationships? If you walk away from relationships, you cant make any progress.

Anton explained that Trump is trying to balance interests. He said the decision to invite Duterte to the White House a symbolic gesture that gives credibility to the autocrats rule was agreed to by most of Trumps advisers.

Its not binary, he said. Its not that you care about human rights so you cant have a relationship with the Philippines, or if you have a relationship with the Philippines you dont care about human rights.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) described the Trump strategy as establishing commonality with offending nations before publicly chastising them for offenses.

Their approach is to obviously continue to hold up the values that we have here in America, Corker said in a recent interview. But their approach is to build some commonality never let go of that as an American cause, but to work on it in ways where they achieve a result, and to not go in on the front end.

White House officials cite the release last month of Aya Hijazi an Egyptian American charity worker who had been imprisoned in Cairo for three years amid Sissis brutal crackdown on civil society as evidence that their strategy is paying dividends.

Trump and his aides worked for several weeks with Sissi and his government to secure Hijazis freedom. The Obama administration had pressed unsuccessfully for her release, but once Trump moved to reset U.S. relations with Egypt by embracing Sissi at the White House, Egypts posture changed.

[Freed Egyptian American prisoner returns home following Trumps intervention]

Tom Malinowski, assistant secretary of state for human rights and democracy under Obama, said Trump appears to be living up to his campaign promise.

The whole idea of America First is that were not trying to make the world better, Malinowski said. Were trying to protect the homeland and the domestic economy, and the rest is all cutting deals with whoever is willing to cut deals with us. Theres not much room in that equation for standing up for the rights, freedoms and well-being of other people.

Human rights activists are concerned that Trump is condoning the actions of dictators when he is warm to them or extends invitations to visit.

Inviting these men to the White House in effect places the United States seal of approval on their heinous actions, said Rob Berschinski, senior vice president at Human Rights First. He went on to say, Nothing excuses President Trumps clear inclination to reward mass murderers and torturers with undeserved honors.

Asked at the daily White House press briefing whether Trump had a thing for totalitarian leaders, press secretary Sean Spicer suggested he was cultivating such leaders with the explicit aim of weakening North Korea.

The president clearly, as I said, understands the threat that North Korea poses, Spicer said. Having someone with the potential nuclear capability to strike another country and potentially our country at some point in the future is something that the president takes very seriously.

But McFaul posited that the Trump administration may be naive in calculating that personal outreach and warm praise will persuade authoritarian leaders to support U.S. interests.

The converse of that is that these leaders are taking him for a ride, McFaul said. He tends to over-personalize relationships between states. He says Chinas raping us, then he meets President Xi and suddenly hes this wise man with whom he has a good chemistry. I hope this will produce outcomes that are good for us, but right now its producing outcomes that are good for China.

Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

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Trump keeps praising international strongmen, alarming human rights advocates - Washington Post

Wavebreakmedia/DreamstimeAs part of its special issue on the so-called alt-right, New York Magazine has published an especially dim-witted article attacking transhumanism entitled, "Techno-Libertarians Praying for Dystopia." The author Mark O'Connell begins by going after Silicon Valley venture capitalist and wrong-headed Trump-supporter Peter Thiel who also happens to have some interest in how the technological Singularity may unfold. Thiel has made no secret about the fact that he has long had "this really strong sense that death was a terrible, terrible thing." Thus he finances researchers who hope to develop anti-aging technologies and think tanks that try to foresee the consequences of succeeding at that goal. Fine.

To illustrate Thiel's evil intentions, O'Connell points to his 2009 assertion, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." As further evidence of political depravity, he cites Thiel's 2011 observation, "Probably the most extreme form of inequality is between people who are alive and people who are dead." Based on these statements, O'Connell accuses Thiel of "ethical simple-mindedness." Really? Is it not more ethically simple-minded to believe that democratic authoritarianism cannot run roughshod over minority rights or that ensuring that everybody is equally diseased, disabled, and dead is somehow the height of moral probity.

O'Connell then notes that other Silicon Valley "libertarians" share Thiel's interest in human enhancement (and not only those who reside in purlieus of Palo Alto do too). Apparently, for O'Connell, the desire for ageless bodies and enhanced minds necessarily amounts to a rightwing conspiracy. As evidence for his claim that transhumanism is a manifestation of the alt-right, O'Connell digs up a couple of oddballs who've hung around the fringes of transhumanism who now call themselves neo-reactionaries. Of course, anybody can apply the labels libertarian and transhumanist to themselves with malice aforethought. Remember how progressives stole the term "liberal" back in the day. Once O'Connell has made the old guilt-by-association rhetorical move, he does admit that one of his two exemplars of supposedly alt-right transhumanism is "these days something of a pariah from the transhumanist movement." Indeed.

Transhumanism is a big tent. For example, my sometime intellectual sparring partner James Hughes, who is former executive director of the World Transhumanist Association, is a fierce social democrat and author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future (2005). In his Transhumanist Values manifesto, Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom argues for wide access to enhancement technologies:

The full realization of the core transhumanist value requires that, ideally, everybody should have the opportunity to become posthuman. It would be sub-optimal if the opportunity to become posthuman were restricted to a tiny elite.

There are many reasons for supporting wide access: to reduce inequality; because it would be a fairer arrangement; to express solidarity and respect for fellow humans; to help gain support for the transhumanist project; to increase the chances that you will get the opportunity to become posthuman; to increase the chances that those you care about can become posthuman; because it might increase the range of the posthuman realm that gets explored; and to alleviate human suffering on as wide a scale as possible.

The wide access requirement underlies the moral urgency of the transhumanist vision. Wide access does not argue for holding back. On the contrary, other things being equal, it is an argument for moving forward as quickly as possible. 150,000 human beings on our planet die every day, without having had any access to the anticipated enhancement technologies that will make it possible to become posthuman. The sooner this technology develops, the fewer people will have died without access.

Is transhumanism some kind of ultimate threat to humanity? Not all. Last year I explained in the Washington Post:

One crowning achievement of Enlightenment humanism is the principle of tolerance, of putting up with people who look different, talk differently, worship differently and live differently than we do. In the future, our descendants may not all be unenhanced Homo sapiens, but they will still be moral beings who can be held accountable for their actions. There is no a priori reason to think that the same liberal political and moral principles that apply to diverse human beings today would not apply to relations among future humans and transhumans.

The highest expression of human nature and dignity is to strive to overcome the limitations imposed on us by our genes, our evolution and our environment. Future generations will look back at the beginning of the 21st century and be astonished that some well-meaning and intelligent people actually wanted to stop bio-nano-infotech research and deployment just to protect their cramped and limited vision of human nature. If transhumanism is allowed to progress, I predict that our descendants will look back and thank us for making their world of longer, healthier and abler lives possible.

Does that sound like anyone is praying for a dystopia?

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Transhumanism Is Not an Alt-Right Conspiracy! - Reason (blog)

James Scully did not intend to become the public scold of a global fashion industry one that views models as interchangeable widgets, that strong-arms them into unhealthy weight-loss regimens and insists on referring to them as girls. Nonetheless the veteran casting director has emerged as one of the most vocal agitators for change. He wants the fashion industry to treat models like human beings rather than commodities.

In February, several models came to him complaining about their treatment at an audition for the fall 2017 Balenciaga runway show the kind of prestigious booking that could pave a young models way in the business. Not only had some 150 hopefuls waited hours for the chance to be one of 47 chosen to walk in the show, they also had been left languishing for hours in an unlit stairwell while the casting directors went out for lunch.

Incensed, Scully took to Instagram to call out the Balenciaga team. But he wasnt done yet. In that same post, Scully claimed that representatives of the French fashion house Lanvin told model agencies not to send black women to its auditions. Finally, he voiced his suspicions that underage models were being booked in Paris, where 16 is the standard minimum.

I made the post out of personal outrage, Scully says a month later.

His alert led to apologies from Balenciaga, as well as denials and explanations from Lanvin and the casting directors accused of wrongdoing. But more than anything, Scullys words a rather modest call to arms, on the face of it managed to add fuel to an ongoing conversation about the often unprofessional, disorganized and offensive treatment of models by their own industry.

The frock trade has always been far grittier and seamier than its glossy trappings would suggest. There have been dramatic examples of drug abuse, deaths from eating disorders and sexual misconduct. But there are far more stories of mistreatment by omission or disregard. Models are expected to wait hours at an audition. They have fittings that last until the wee hours of the morning for which they receive no overtime pay. Sometimes they are paid for their services in clothes, not currency. They can wind up as nearly indentured servants working to pay off debts to their agencies.

And often designers and their staffs even fail to recognize that models need water as became clear during Kanye Wests presentation on Roosevelt Island last summer, when unpaid models collapsed in the September heat.

Im trying to make people realize the human cost of this behavior, Scully says. We have normalized it and become desensitized to it.

The Council of Fashion Designers of America offers some guidance all of it optional about providing food and water backstage and at long fittings, about not booking unhealthily thin models, about striving for diversity. The New York legislature passed a law in 2013 giving models younger than 18 protections similar to those that govern child actors, such as limits on work hours and regulations regarding pay.

But there are loopholes. And models 18 and older are essentially on their own, says Sara Ziff, who in 2012 founded the Model Alliance, an advocacy organization for models working in the United States.

I make sure parents understand that their child might be pressured to miss school, says Ziff, a former model. There are a lot of adult pressures that come with working in the industry at a young age.

In the past, models were typically in their 20s, with a sense of how the industry worked, by the time their careers gained traction. Now its all accelerated, Scully says. Todays models are being asked to do a womans job, and theyre kids.

The potential for abuse has grown with practices such as street casting, in which designers invite everyone from friends to their favorite bartender to participate in a show. The philosophy suggests that almost anyone can be a model at least for a few hours. The churn of fast fashion means that not just clothes are disposable; people are, too.

Girls are seeing this big dream world through social media. They think they can be a model and dont realize what theyre getting into. The turnaround now is so fast; its almost like trafficking, says Scully, who sits on the Model Alliance advisory board. Theyre pulled in and traumatized and then spit back out.

Scully, 52, is tall and slim with neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper hair, a jutting jaw, and a resting expression that is pleasantly somber supporting-actor handsome. His Manhattan apartment is filled with calming earth tones and nubby textures. He is the picture of earthy serenity by way of Architectural Digest.

But when he speaks, its at full gallop, his voice filled with the agita of someone whose childhood fantasy-come-true has gone bad.

One of 10 children in a working-class family, he spent his early childhood in South Amboy, N.J., a small city about an hour outside Manhattan that was almost all white and largely Catholic. It was the smallest town with the most bars, he says. Id never been around an Asian person. I didnt know what a Jewish person was.

He was transfixed by acting after an aunt took him to see Pippin on Broadway, but he loved fashion, too, thanks to an older sister with a stash of Cosmopolitan magazines. He enrolled at the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (LIM), where he took a class taught by Audrey Smaltz, a former host of Ebony Fashion Fair and founder of the team of backstage dressers and assistants called the Ground Crew. Scully became her intern.

His freelance work with her helped pay his way through school until he was distracted by jobs in retail and nightlife. His grades fell, he lost his scholarship and dropped out. He got a job at the influential fashion boutique Charivari, later worked for the production company Kevin Krier & Associates, and then Harpers Bazaar. Scullys career helped him see the fashion industry from virtually every angle.

Hes been a part of fashion shows since the early 90s, and hes seen a lot in that time, Smaltz says. Hes seen all thats happened and how its changed. Its not nice.

Smaltz recalls when a runway show featured 10 to 15 professional models, and each would make three or four changes in a single show. Today, a show hires 50 women. Mostly, anonymous. No clothing changes.

How can you pay all those models? They try to pay the models in clothes. Smaltz says. You dont need anyone with experience. Theyre like robots. ... Some directors tell the girls: Do not smile. Do not clap. Its one model after another. Its a human conveyor belt.

Scullys foray into activism began in the mid-2000s, but the seeds had been planted earlier. As a teenager, his vision of fashion was shaped by images of the multicultural aesthetic of Saint Laurent and Halston in the 1970s an ideal he continued to carry into his career.

He went on to work on some of the most influential runway shows of the late 1990s, including those mounted by Tom Ford for Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, whose casting was particularly diverse. Fords shows helped turn the Ethiopian-born model Liya Kebede into a star. In 2003, she became one of the faces of Estee Lauder the first black model to represent the beauty brand.

But the prejudices Kebede faced along the way exasperated Scully. A few years later, after taking time away from the industry, he joined activist Bethann Hardison and models Naomi Campbell and Iman in industry town halls, panel discussions and a media blitz to highlight the lack of black and brown models on the runway. Hardison, a former model and agent, worked to mentor more women of color, and men. Scully pushed to cast more of them in shows.

[Once Again, White Is the New White]

He speaks his mind. Thats who he is, Smaltz says. I just thought, Good for you, Scully. Take care of these young girls.

In May, he will be honored by the Black Alumni of Pratt Institute for his efforts.

In the winter of 2016, Scully delivered an impassioned talk at a Business of Fashion conference in Europe about labor practices that include bullying young women and treating puberty like a career-killer.

His February Instagram post, with more than 9,700 likes, received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Change is on the way thanks to you, wrote model Karolina Wallace.

It gives me a lot of hope to know that there is someone like you fighting for better treatment of models, wrote Gwen Van Meir, a young model. I once [was] in Milan, waited at a casting for almost four hours in the hot sun, with no water available. ... It seemed like a lot of the models were afraid to say anything.

Over the years, the very nature of what it means to be a model has shifted, from one of performer and experienced professional to that of an anonymous, prepubescent-looking mannequin. Only a few savvy young women of this era Gigi Hadid, Karlie Kloss, Kendall Jenner have successfully positioned themselves as full-fledged personalities with the potential for professional longevity. Thats largely thanks to their diligent off-the-clock efforts on social media.

But models have few work protections. Theyre not unionized. Financial agreements with agencies can be opaque. Pressure to lose weight is not just a medical concern but also a labor issue, says Ziff of the Model Alliance.

I think that many of the problems James called out models waiting an inordinate amount of time, working through the night, not having breaks all of that is a symptom of a bigger problem, Ziff says. And thats a power imbalance.

Modeling has always been unregulated. And a models career was always relatively short and reliant on a certain amount of good timing and genetics. But there was a code of ethics and on some human level, you did care about models, Scully says.

I sit and I have to do massive castings with 600 girls a season, Scully says. Im bleary-eyed. I have no idea who I saw.

Now its really about being clothes hangers, he says. Theyre disposable and replaceable.

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James Scully's radical idea for the fashion industry: Treat models like human beings - Washington Post