What A Day - China's Detainment Camps and Bloomberg's First Week

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

New leaked documents detail how far the Chinese government has gone to detain ethnic minorities and muslims. We discuss what the documents reveal. More on that, here: https://apnews.com/4ab0b341a4ec4e648423f2ec47ea5c47 Michael Bloomberg is gearing up to spend the combined net worth of every person you will ever meet on his presidential campaign. We discuss how he plans to win. And in headlines: Iran gets back online, Nunes is in the hot seat, and Frozen 2 snows money at the box office.

It's the most wonderful time of the year when you have to go and navigate our insane health insurance industry. Woo! But it's also the perfect moment to reassess your life insurance needs because you could, at some point, become the ghost of Christmas present. That's where PolicyGenius can help. Yes, PolicyGenius is the easy way to shop for a life insurance plan that's not tied to your job. So in minutes, you can compare quotes from top insurers to find your best price. Once you apply, the Policy Genius team will handle all the paperwork and red tape. Yeah. And the life insurance you buy through Policy Genius stays with you, even if you leave your job. Not if you die, but if you leave your job, you will have that insurance.

Yes. Important clause there. So when you're looking at your workplace benefits this month, make sure to double check your life insurance options. Yeah. And then go to PolicyGenius.com to get quotes and apply in minutes. Policy Genius, the easy way to compare and buy life insurance. It's Monday, November 25th. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, the mid-2000s Sean William Scott of Daily News Podcast. Name a movie from the mid-2000s that that man was not in. I simply cannot.

On today's show, billionaire Mike Bloomberg purchases a presidential campaign and, as always, some headlines. But first, leaked documents reveal disturbing details about the mass detainment of Uyghurs and Kazakhs in China. Findings from leaked documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 17 partner news organizations were published this weekend and detail the lengths the Chinese government has gone to detain ethnic minorities and Muslims in re-education and correctional camps, many of whom have never committed a crime but were identified by sophisticated technology as a threat.

The docs consist of a notice with guidelines for the camps, four bulletins on how to use technology to target people, and a court case sentencing a Uyghur Communist Party member to 10 years in prison for telling colleagues not to say dirty words, watch porn, or eat without praying, which are just basic tenets of Islam. Researchers estimate that up to 1.8 million people have been detained by China at one point or another. The majority of detentions have taken place in the last three years in the northwest Xinjiang region. Yeah, the set of documents is the most significant piece of information we've gotten about the high-tech

mass detentions by the Chinese government. Gideon, do you want to run through the big takeaways? Yeah, so there were a couple of things, two big things that have been confirmed by this specific leak. First, we knew that mass numbers of Uyghurs and ethnic minorities were being detained in these camps in China. But what's now confirmed is the way that China is actually targeting them with this technology. The documents reveal the use of a technology platform to screen entire populations to identify and track down, quote, suspicious people for detention. And the criteria for detention is just unbelievably broad. I mean, for instance, here's a few things that can get you picked up.

Traveling abroad, asking others to pray, or using cell phone apps that can't be monitored by the government. Nearly 40,000 users of an app called Quia, which is similar to AirDrop on iPhones, were identified for investigation and potential detention simply because it was a private messaging app. Secondly, for the entire leaks, we now have more details on how the camps are operated. Round the clock video surveillance, something called, quote, manner education, which entails being forced to cut your hair, to shave your beard, forced bathing. There were also Mandarin lessons that resulted in punishment if progress goals weren't hit on schedule and a point system to determine when detainees would get released. Yeah, and to give you a sense of what detention was like, the AP spoke with a former detainee, a young Kazakh man,

who was detained while on a trip to visit his mother in China. He protested, identifying himself as a simple herder who had no intention of doing anything wrong. But a simple act of arriving from Kazakhstan was enough reason for detention. He said, quote, I was treated like an animal and described the punishments he had to endure, including being forced to sit on plastic stools and rigid postures for hours at a time, not being able to talk at all, being forced to squat for hours. And all of this happened while

he was being watched by guards 24 hours a day. He went on to say it wasn't education, it was just punishment. And in response to this reporting, China called these leaked documents, quote, fabrication and fake news. I wonder where they got that. Yeah. Overall, China has rejected criticism of the camps and described them as job training centers. They say the methods are humane and a way to fight the spread of Islamic extremism. The Chinese embassy in the UK, though, said of the detention centers, quote, since the measures have been taken, there's no single terrorist incident in the past three years, which feels just like a really insane and justify the means type of argument.

Yeah. Well, in October, the U.S. blacklisted 28 Chinese organizations for their alleged involvement in abuses against ethnic Uyghurs. The Commerce Department said that the 28 entities, which mostly specialize in surveillance equipment, were implicated in, quote, China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention and high technology surveillance. Rights groups are calling for the U.S. to go further to address this humanitarian crisis. Yeah, and one way to make your voice heard is to call or write to your member of Congress to let them know that this is an issue that you care about and want to see political action on. There is currently a bill being considered in Congress that would pave the way for sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the camps. And if you want to learn more, we've posted a link to reporting by the Associated Press on this particular story in our show notes. Go check that out.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg formally announced that he's entering the presidential contest on Sunday with an ad and an obscene ad by Gideon. You know how like sometimes you wait too long to buy your ticket home for Thanksgiving and it's like $100 more and you feel really stupid? Yes, because I'm a dumbass. Great. Well, Bloomberg's doing that, but it's like truly a million times worse. So he's entering the race now and spending an unruly amount of money to try to catch up with everyone else. The former Republicans first ad branded him as a middle class kid who achieved success, focus on his mayoral record as well as his advocacy on guns and climate, and positioned him as a moderate in this historically crowded presidential field.

This comes after Bloomberg recently filed to run in a couple of states, and in a major reversal, apologized for the stop-and-frisk policy that became a hallmark of his tenure as mayor. But now he sees a different kind of menace coming from Washington, so there's no stopping here. Because there's an America waiting to be rebuilt, where everyone without health insurance is guaranteed to get it, and everyone who likes theirs can go ahead and keep it, where the wealthy will pay more in taxes, and the struggling middle class will get their fair share. Wow. Movie trailer voice.

Yeah. When he said menace, I was like, phantom menace? Okay, so Bloomberg's entering extremely late when there are already tons of people running. He plans to spend his own money. He spent $250 million on his three mayoral campaigns in New York City, and he's ready to spend whatever it takes on this. But like, what is the actual game here? Like, what's the game plan? What's he trying to do? I mean, what they're saying right now is that Bloomberg plans to skip the early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire and focus pretty exclusively on bigger states like Texas and California that have more delegates on Super Tuesday.

And that's why with this ad buy, they're going in bigger cities, bigger population states to, you know, sort of like gin that up for now, I guess, like get that support. But of course, the funny thing about it is like that's a luxury that's only afforded to somebody who is worth the estimated 50 billion plus that he is, where he doesn't have to, you know, freeze his ass off in Iowa to go talk to people. He can just show them an ad on TV and sit in his penthouse. Wow. So you're saying he's not going to move to Iowa and start like the next dance craze? I don't know. You know, honestly, it would be cool if he had a competitive one to the high hopes dance, but you know, I don't see it happening. And look, I want to say the last time that we talked about Bloomberg on here, I was skeptical that he was actually going to get in. And, you know, now, like I said, I should never make predictions. But I do have two sort of immediate takeaways from this

announcement. I mean, the one is that the obvious thing that a lot of people have talked about is there are at least two candidates in the race, if not more, but specifically these two that have built their candidacies around being anti-billionaire, that have introduced wealth tax proposals, that have looked for this kind of foil the entire time and have found it. And that's obviously, you know, Senator Warren and Senator Sanders. I could see it sort of being a very easy thing that they hit on, you know, every single day. Like this guy is literally trying to buy an election. The other, though, is that like we've just never seen this amount of money come into a race like this so swiftly.

Yeah. And the thing that is concerning about that in some respects is that, you know, the TV ads still do wield some amount of power. We'll get into that a little bit later. And this could be something where, you know, maybe he does have some sort of impact. And to get a sense of like the sheer amount that is going to be on TV, basically any day this week when these start running, there's a possibility that if we stop the show and just turn the TV on,

flip channels, TNT, ABC, NBC, whatever, like we would probably catch a Bloomberg ad. For example, in LA, he's going to run four 60 second ads on The Voice, which I've come to understand is a Delaware LLC that funds other people's Sexiest Man Alive contest. Yeah, I've heard of this. I've heard of this. And yeah, I mean, to compare another billionaire person who is already in the Democratic presidential primary, Tom Steyer, he has spent about $50 million in the span of three, four months that he was in the race between July and September. And Bloomberg is nearly matching that in just a week.

Wild. That is really wild. I mean, that's a lot of ads. Let's put this into even further context. Is this historically crazy in terms of a spend? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, in terms of a primary spend, it's the largest that has ever happened. Ever. Wild. And so the amount that, I don't know if we already said, but he's reserved at least $37 million in the next two weeks of TV ads alone. And so if you compare that previously, Hillary Clinton in the general election in 2016, she's spending $33.7 million in that last week.

Obama had done $ 30 million before that. But nothing like this has ever happened in a primary where you really do have the chance to potentially influence how people are viewing you compared to the other candidates. And so the other thing about Bloomberg, too, is like if you extrapolate this out, he also has spent 100 million on a digital campaign on facebook that targets trump but also doesn't feature bloomberg space the same way that the tv ad didn't feature his voice wow wait isn't that the plot of head of state starring chris rock is it yeah i mean different circumstances for him getting into the race but it's like yeah we're just gonna put out

these ads and never show your face because you're a black guy. I mean, honestly, that could be part of the rationale here. He rewatched it recently and was like, maybe something like this. Yeah, Chris Rock has some good ideas. And he also is going to or has planned to pay or has already paid 15 million at least. It could go up to 20 million on voter registration in five different states. So this is going to be, you know, a crazy, crazy, crazy amount of money. I don't think it's hyperbole to say a person is trying to buy this from other people. And all of this is having ramifications for his news organization. I saw this really strange statement about their plans

of coverage going forward. Can we talk about that a little bit? And first, should we like explain what it was? Yeah. So the editor in chief on Sunday was saying that they're going to coverage going forward. Can we talk about that a little bit? And first, should we like explain what it was? Yeah. So the editor in chief on Sunday was saying that they're going to sort of continue a longstanding practice that Bloomberg has had that they don't investigate Bloomberg. And so don't look over here. Right. What that does for the reporters that are there is, according to this memo, they've been told that told that okay if you're not going to investigate bloomberg and his financial assets and his company then we're going to also uh afford that same courtesy to the other democratic primary candidates uh so as not to you know tip the scales at all and then they're going to take uh investigative

pieces that other people publish okay and put them on their site. Got it. So they're going to license journalism in lieu of doing their own. Yeah, but it's kind of a shitty thing to have to say to reporters who were kind of gassed up to be covering a Democratic primary at Bloomberg News in 2020. Yeah, it's a very strange thing. And then at least two of the editorial staff are also going to go to the campaign itself which is also a little bit odd but they but they they do say that they're

going to have one candidate or one reporter still cover michael bloomberg yeah that's probably michael bloomberg he's like i got it guys i'm killing it yeah i'm great don't look at me takes over the site uh you know, just editorial section. He's doing like layout, like new things. The backdrop of the website is not like white anymore. It's just actually like his face. It's like his own personal MySpace page. Yeah, that would be that would be fascinating.

But in all seriousness, I think that Bloomberg's candidacy is going to be sort of a weird test for how democracy works in a number of ways. I think one for the journalists at this company trying to figure out how they can effectively cover him while he controls their livelihoods at the same time. I don't think there's been something like that with the size and scope of his media enterprise having to reckon with something like that before. And also whether a presidency can really be bought by a billionaire. I mean, people have warned about this for as long as money has been in politics. And now, you know, they're going to get a real test of it if some guy who wants to play nine ads during the Masked Singer finale can actually take the presidency

just by doing that. And now to some ads. Obviously, we here at WOD aren't keen on big, scary overlord surveillance from, you know, government regimes, but you still might want to make sure no one's messing with your stuff in your house, right? Seems only fair, yeah. Yeah. So anyway, if you've been thinking about your home security, there's no better time to get it than right now, because right now, SimpliSafe Home Security is giving What A Day listeners an amazing exclusive Black Friday offer. So this week, SimpliSafe is offering our listeners a huge exclusive deal for Black Friday, 25% off any new system, plus free HD security camera.

Oh, that's fascinating. SimpliSafe has everything you need to keep your home safe. Entry sensors, motion sensors, a smart lock that locks your door when you forget, video doorbells, a 007 agent that snipes the bad guys from your rooftop. Keychains with a flashlight on it. Plus 24-7

professional monitoring that will dispatch police 3.5 times faster than if you just had to call them yourself. Okay, so don't wait. Go to simplisafe.com slash whataday to get 25% off your system. Plus that free security camera. This is the best home security deal you'll see. Don't miss this amazing Black Friday deal.

That's 25% off at simplisafe.com slash whataday. simplisafe.com slash whataday. Drop app is the easiest way to earn money as you spend money. If you're not using this free rewards app yet, stop at the end of the show, go to the app store or the Google Play store and use code what a day when you sign up to earn your first reward credit on us. When you sign up for drop, you will link your debit and or credit cards to the app to begin earning points back when you shop at any of their partnered brands. These are places like Walmart, Lyft, Trader Joe's, Sephora, Glossier, a bunch more. And before you know it, you can redeem your points for gift cards directly in the app at places like the ones we mentioned and Starbucks, where I rack up points when I get venti cold brews that I chug when I'm doing this show. I hope you guys also get your coffee when you're listening to this so you can competently tell your friends at work what you just heard.

And honestly, there's no better time to try Drop than now with Black Friday and holiday shopping season in full swing. And for a limited time, if you head to the App Store, Google Play, and use What A Day when you sign up for Drop, you'll receive a $5 gift card right away. Make sure to link a debit or credit card to the app when you sign up to redeem your reward. Dang, you said that all fast, like you're all caffeinated. Anyway, drop app, get it. And now back to the show. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. out their pro-Beijing opponents. The council has a limited power over the city, but this win and the major turnout represent how Hong Kongers are turning their backs on the region's Beijing-backed leaders. Iran has restored access to the internet in large parts of the country. The internet

blackout was just one of the drastic efforts made by the government to crack down on protests over high fuel prices. According to Amnesty International, the government's use of deadly force has left more than 100 people dead in five days during the blackout. The internet is back on, but the government is still threatening to arrest demonstrators. A top official in the Navy has been fired for how he handled the case of Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was demoted for posing for a picture with a corpse. Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, not that one, was ousted for working on a deal with the White House that Secretary Richard Spencer, not that one, was ousted for working on a deal with the White House that would have allowed the SEAL to retire without losing his status or rank. President Trump has been championing Gallagher as a hero on Twitter

and demanding that the Navy reverse his demotion. Republican Congressman Devin Nunes might soon be the subject of an ethics investigation, according to House Democrats. The House could look into allegations that Congressman Nunes met with a Ukrainian official to get information on the Bidens. Never heard of that strategy before. Nunes has responded calmly by threatening to sue every media outlet that reports on this story. In order to avoid liability, our legal counsel has recommended only referring to him as Mr. Chungus. That's a good idea. Disney's Frozen 2 made $350 million at the box office this weekend, thanks in part to the wickedly talented Adele Dazeem. It was the biggest opening of an animated movie of all time, and with all that money, it's basically inevitable that the next Democratic primary candidate is going to be Olaf the Snowman. I'm voting against him. I don't want to build a snowman.

Yeah, me too. He needs to. I need a candidate that can survive heat. Damn it. The world is getting hot. The world's largest luxury goods company with the world's largest name, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SC is set to acquire legacy jewelry brand Tiffany and Company for $16.7 billion.

This would be the biggest acquisition ever in the luxury brand sector. Tiffany & Co. has more than 300 stores globally and specializes in high-end jewelry, diamonds, and cut gems, which is great. But for me, I prefer my gems to be uncut. Now, this next message is just for industry professionals affiliated with A24. Please give Akilah and me tickets to an uncut gem screening. We want to see the movie so bad.

So bad. I'm a lifelong softy stan. Got it tattooed on my chest. My favorite Del Dazeem. Co-stars. And I don't want to wait until December 13th

to see the movie with, no offense, plebes. LVMH is controlled by the richest man in Europe. And those are the headlines. That's all for today.

If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, give us a rating, leave us some extra cranberry sauce, and tell your friends to listen. By the way, if you're into reading and not just Highlights Magazine like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash newsletters. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's why any resemblance between

Mr. Chungus and actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. What A Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.