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China Bans Letter N From Internet as Xi Jinping Extends Grip on Power (theguardian.com)
Speaking of things the Chinese government has been censoring in the country, The Guardian reports: It is the 14th letter in the English alphabet and, in Scrabble, the springboard for more than 600 8-letter words. But for the Communist party of China it is also a subversive and intolerable character that was this week banished from the internet as Chinese censors battled to silence criticism of Xi Jinping's bid to set himself up as ruler for life. The contravening consonant was perhaps the most unusual victim of a crackdown targeting words, phrases and even solitary letters censors feared might be used to attack Beijing's controversial decision to abolish constitutional term limits for China's president. The Communist party has painted the move -- which experts say paves the way for Xi to become a dictator for life -- as an expression of overwhelming popular support for China's strongman leader. However, there has been widespread online push-back in China since it was announced on Sunday on the eve of an annual political congress in Beijing.
Get your news somewhere better.
It was funny when US right-wingers started freaking out over what is literally nothing more than free prenatal screenings for pregnant women (for a wide range of diseases), as part of extensive prenatal (and postnatal) healthcare coverage. Literally nothing more than that. That many (no, not 100%) choose to terminate their pregnancy if they find out the fetus has Down's shouldn't be surprising, but there's in no way a policy to encourage (let alone mandate) it. Plenty of people with special needs are carried to term, and they're treated a heck of a lot better here than they are in the US. There's even a theatre troupe of actors with Down's Syndrome (Leikhópurinn Perlan), garnering the most attention for their acting in the Sigur Rós music video "Svefn g Englar" (a play on words between "Sleepwalkers" and "Sleeping Angels"). From statistics, we have 334k people and a birth rate of 13,7 per 1000 per year, or 4576 children per year, of which 5-6 have Down's - 1 in every 832. The rate of Down's Syndrome in the US is 1 in 700 children.
Iceland is actually has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe - more restrictive than the US. We don't have "abortion on request" here. There have to be specific reasons (confirmed by two unrelated parties) among a list of valid reasons; is only legal in the first 16 weeks excepting in the event of deformity or a threat to the mother's life; and requires both pre- and post-abortion counseling, including a course on birth control. The word for abortion in Icelandic literally translates as "fetus destruction"; it's hardly glossed over.
I'll repeat: get your news from better sources.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
They didn't ban the use of the letter "n" inside words. Only the use of "n" as a standalone character.
It is not clear why it was banned, but sometimes characters and phrases will be used symbolically to get around censorship. For instance the number 64 is often censored because it is used to mean "June 4th" the date of the Tiananmen Square "incident". 54 is also sometimes censored because it is used as a symbol for corruption and betrayal, since the terms of the Versailles Treaty were published in Chinese newspapers on May 4th of 1919. The treaty was seen as a betrayal of China, and a sellout to the Japanese by the Western Allies, resulting in riots and unrest.
One conjecture is that "n" was being used in the sense of "an arbitrary number" to mean the new term limit for the leader of China, replacing the old limit of two terms of five years each.
Liberals restricted the govt's ability to hold people with mental issues.
And by "liberals", you are no doubt referring to Ronald Reagan. As governor of California, he signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, which ended the practice of holding mental patients against their will. Then, as president in 1981, Reagan signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, largely un-doing Carter's work at improving the federal mental health care system, which itself built upon ideas outlined by Kennedy before his assassination.
Liberals indeed.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.