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15 Year-old Student Takes Abuse for Fighting Thailand’s Haircut Rule

Students, Thailand, Haircuts, prostration

It all started with a compulsory haircut and a 15-year-old high school student Benjamaporn Nivas, was have none of it and she has made no secret of it either.

In recent days the outspoken teen Student who goes to school in Bangkok, has become the popular face of a burgeoning campaign by Thai students. To have compulsory haircuts abolished in all schools.

Because they see haircuts as insidious forms of control over their lives.

Teachers at schools around Thailand require boys to sport crew haircuts while girls need to have shoulder-length haircuts. Yet more and more students feel that these old haircut rules stifle their individualism. Even more robbing them of their freedom to be themselves.

Students protest school haircuts

 

In her recent one-person protest, Benjamaporn, dressed in her school uniform, sat on a chair on a busy street in central Bangkok. With her hands tied behind her back and duct tape covering her mouth. The schoolgirl had a pair of scissors in her lap and a handwritten sign hanging from her neck.

“This student is violating a school rule by wearing her hair long with bangs. You may punish her,” the sign said, ostensibly in invitation to passersby to cut the girl’s hair.

The stunt has gone viral on social media, with numerous young Thais expressing support for the cause of abolishing obligatory haircuts and school uniforms. Others, however, have accused the schoolgirl of seeking to undermine traditional norms and mores in society.

Student abused online for protesting Haircuts

Some people have gone further still, calling the girl names and insinuating that she led an immoral lifestyle. Benjamaporn has even been accused of staging her protest with lascivious intent. Despite the fact that she is only 15.

The student has shrugged off the insults. “I do read and see all the comments, and I don’t feel anything for these people. Also I don’t need to value their comments,” she explained in an interview. “I listen and take all the feedback, both negative and positive ones. But some aren’t constructive, and I just don’t have to pay attention to them.”

Her cause is resonating with many of her peers, many of whom similarly dislike being forced to conform to strict dress and hairstyle codes in school.

Haircuts violate student human rights

“We students are forced to cut our hair against our will, violating our rights, and this has to stop,” Benjamaporn explains. “[My] hair is part of my body and no one else should have the power to decide what I do with it, but me.”

Yet it isn’t just uniformly enforced dress codes and hairdos that are rubbing up many young Thais the wrong way. So is the tradition whereby students are required on certain occasions to prostrate themselves at the feet of their teachers in an overt sign of submission to their authority.

“I used to think this kind of practice was a normal part of Thai culture and I didn’t think much of it,” Tanawat, a university student who is advocating for school reform online, told UCA News. “But then it started to dawn on me that from early childhood we are taught to be submissive. You cannot become a free and independent person if you are required to crawl on the ground in front of ‘senior’ people.”

“In the past, lords and ladies would demand prostration from their peasants, serfs or [inferiors],” says Voranai Vanijaka. Voranai is a social commentator and newspaper columnist. “At present, the ‘social superior’ would expect it from the ‘social inferior.’ Teachers would demand it from students.”

Yet the practice, which is widely touted by its supporters as a sign of respect, is pernicious in its effects on society, Voranai argues.

“It is ingrained into our psyche since we were young,” he says. “The repetition of doing it constantly makes it normal. Prostration becomes a part of our identity. It’s coded in our cultural DNA. From years of repetition, eventually in mind and in spirit. We submit, giving the person whom we prostrate before absolute power over us.”

Student Expecting to grovel at teachers feet

 

More and more young Thais, inspired by ideas of individualism and personal choice. They do not want to take the old practice of prostration lying down.

“It’s humiliating and it’s a kind of brainwashing. I want to see it stopped,” Tanawat says.

“In many classes in school we barely learn anything. We only learn to respect our teachers, not to ask questions and the like. Instead of expecting us to grovel at their feet, our teachers should put more effort into teaching us useful knowledge.”

Some students have even openly defied traditions by refusing to prostrate themselves during school ceremonies. In 2016 Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, made headlines nationwide. He refused to join his peers in prostrating themselves during an initiation ceremony.

Ever since, Netiwit, a personable 24-year-old who has been at the forefront of a student movement demanding the reform of Thailand’s ossified educational system. Including the abolition of mandatory dress codes and haircuts.

Thailand’s Military deems attempts at reform subversive

 

“In Thailand, the [ruling regime] wants everyone to think in the same way, to think inside the box,” he said. “The further down the hierarchy you are. Also the worse you are treated. [Most common] people don’t ask questions because they believe that they are lower[-status] people with no dignity who have to obey.”

Not surprisingly, Thailand’s military-allied conservative elite deems any attempt at reform subversive.

“It is to the benefit of the military government and conservative members of the ruling class that young Thais learn a rigid system from an early age,” an unnamed senior official at the Ministry of Education told UCA News.

“While we can debate the merits of rigid traditionalism and hierarchy, the end result is that we produce citizens who do not question. Citizens who do not inquire and who accept the system. These do not make good scientists, inventors or entrepreneurs.”

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

google

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

trump

Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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