From our Western perspective it feels so wrong that they're essentially trying to extinguish an entire culture and 'fitting' it into China.
But we also can't say anything because China makes all our stuff.
Plus, China isn't going to be impressed when the old Imperial continent with 140 ex-colonies and the current imperial top-dog with 800 foreign military bases are going to lecture them about occupying a territory.
For China Tibet is a buffer between India and them and it is where most of their water comes from, so they're never going to let any foreign entity control it. Seems out of the question.
I live in a European area that was 'assimilated' into a bigger country and forced to use their language and customs. This was over 150 years ago for my area now. And most people don't remember it and just go with the flow of the country they are born in.
I hope for all Tibetans that there will be some sense of regional pride remaining (and allowed) as they find a way to live as part of China.
But we also can't say anything because China makes all our stuff.
I happily pay more for things not made in China, when I can.
When I can buy an iPhone that's not made in China, I'll buy it. Even if it means a downgrade.
Several of my family members buy as many vintage and second-hand goods as they can. Not to be hipsters (are hipsters still a thing anymore?), but because they do not want to support China.
AFAIK Samsung makes most of their phones in Vietnam. The batteries are mostly made in China though.
Still, it doesn't have to be 100% or 0% made in China. 5% is better than 95%. Shades of grey exist, and that is ok. But earnestly trying to do better is what matters.
I too go to great lengths to avoid purchasing Chinese made products. It seems that manufacturers and sellers are now trying to hide country of origin labeling, which is absolutely infuriating.
It feels wrong but it’s also how pretty much every culture got to be the way it is. Why do I have an Arabic last name even though I was born 3,000 miles away from the Middle East? Because 800 years ago an Islamic empire conquered India and Bangladesh. Why do Bangladeshis wear powdered wigs in court? Because the British conquered them 500 years after that. The British themselves are the product of numerous waves of conquest: Angles conquering the Pictish, Saxons conquering the Angles, Normans conquering who by now were Anglo-Saxons.
It is not wrong for individuals to choose to assimilate. The deliberate and systematic destruction of other cultures - which China is engaged in on multiple fronts - is wrong.
I see this a lot. There's a loss of confidence in the West, where people feel like you can't call out immoral behavior unless it's committed by another westerner or a western nation. This serves absolutely no one well.
The fact that a country or civilization has past sins should not be a disqualification from taking a moral stand in the present. Some form of mild hypocrisy is vastly preferable to sitting silent while a country destroys another culture or puts it's Muslim population in concentration camps.
Those should be fixed and I would support them. but do I feel guilty about what my ancestors did to my ancestors? No, I don't. I feel we should right the wrongs, but I refuse to fold to the "woke" culture that I should feel like a POS for what my ancestors did.
So present day americans need to pay for the sins of our fathers so to speak? Or to put it another way, we present day americans had no say in the decision but we must pay for the past americans decisions?
No the concept is not valid and we have laws in place to protect against this very thing. Should all debts be transferred upon death? Do you want to pay for your parents loans they didn’t finish?
Okay, but in this case I'm not saying there's whataboutism in your argument. The point I'm trying to make is that if you're powerful enough, you can make human rights abuses and then get away with it scot-free and that America helped set this precedent.
Not defending human rights abuses or China's behavior, but the idea that America set the precedent is myopic. The US isn't even 300 years old. History is much longer, darker, and more violent.
Human rights are themselves a fairly recent idea. I can't think of a single powerful country/empire that hasn't committed them to some degree. And things were much worse in the past.
I think the point here is, what are you going to do about it? This is unfortunately how humanity operates. It disgusts me but history shows that it is nigh inevitable.
The international community banding together to impose extremely strong economic sanctions on countries with human rights abuses commensurate with the severity and magnitude of the offenses?
I was reading an account from the Roman Empire about parents begrudgingly using the imperial language while their kids grew up completely “Roman”. Then I reflected that if you go back far enough we all have a great^N parent who was in this situation.
Someone else in their reply mentioned Hawaii and the US but even Hawaii was unified by force by King Kamehameha. I’ve come to an uneasy acceptance of the fact that we’re all the conquerors and the conquered.
"I’ve come to an uneasy acceptance of the fact that we’re all the conquerors and the conquered."
We all have to accept the past. We don't need to accept that the future will be the same.
There are many ways that different areas and cultures can share an assimilate. Trade, travel, multilingualism, federations, mutually-agreed democratic annexation, shared constitutions, diplomacy, immigration, intermarriage, etc.
True, I see the future as being coercion through soft power: e.g. people want to come to America because it has attractive political freedom, economic strength, and cultural capital.
In this world, cultures built around immigration end up changing themselves to better compete for people. e.g. the US had to undergo civil rights reforms in the 60s and expand access to all as the USSR looked increasingly attractive to those traditionally left out.
It's interesting that you mention immigration and intermarriage because if your press Tibetan and Uighur activists, or look at their more private communications rather than their press releases, miscegenation is frequently at the forefront of their concerns (as tends to be the case when a predominantly male group perceives itself to be losing status, e.g. poorer white men in the west). Outside of the wealthy cosmopolitan west, views toward intermarriage tend to be extremely illiberal.
>> if you go back far enough we all have a great^N parent who was in this situation.
'Everyone is a victim' is a cop out. The fact that some ancestor of mine was probably conquered by vikings doesn't mean that I shouldn't criticize china for doing the same thing today. Nor do I feel like a conqueror because some other ancestor was one of those vikings. Look to the deep past for lessons. Don't point to the deep past as justification for horrible actions today.
The fact that you criticise someone doesn’t make you right though.
It’s just a fact that every single empire in history ended up with a society which hated the conquests only to be conquered by another, less ethically-concerned nation.
It’s easy to judge when you are in a privileged position, however the reason you do that is because you already made someone else pay the price of the externalities of your champagne pacifism.
Basically you have this ethical idea that war is bad, but you provide no solution as to how to make today’s poor people reach the same level of education and plenty without giving them the means to conquer you politically, economically or by the means of warfare.
Conquest is necessary because if you take a conservative opinion that you should expect from the world what it currently gives you; and what it currently gives you is that a small minority of the world’s population lives semi-happily in the western countries; then the only way for the poorer countries to get on the same level of salaries is to take away those salaries from the west and make west the third world instead.
Every other argument you make is akin to a “what if”. I am speaking about how it _currently_ is.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, there is some evidence to suggest this, such as reports of them sending Han men to replace Uighur men in their homes after they've been sent to prison camps.
Sure, we can criticize, but just keep in mind cycles of criticism and acceptance are the norm in the past. That many of us have forgotten the outrage and moved to acceptance is only further demonstration of this pattern.
Will the future be different? Maybe.. technology (especially communications tech) might be the thing that lets us break the cycle.
It's similar to our reluctance to criticize Saudi Arabia even when there are links between their upper crust and the largest terror attack ever on American soil. Saudi Arabia is still one of the largest oil spigots with the easiest ability to turn that spigot on and off and therefore set global oil prices, so we don't dare offend them.
The US no longer requires any oil from Saudi Arabia, they're now almost entirely incapable of harming the US with that formerly potent resource weapon in terms of shutting off supply (mostly what they can do to harm US economic interests now instead of turning it off, is to flood the market and damage US producers).
For 2019 total US petroleum production (crude + petro products + biofuels) was 19.3m barrels per day (bpd), consumption was 20.5m bpd. Imports were 9.1m bpd, exports were 8.57m bpd.
Imports dropped from 13.7m bpd in 2005, to 9.1m bpd for 2019. Net imports (imports minus exports) dropped from 12.5m bpd in 2005, to 500k bpd for 2019 (the lowest figure since ~1952).
Imports from Canada have gone from 500k bpd in 1980, to 4.4m bpd in 2019. All of OPEC supplied 1.6m bpd to the US in 2019 for contrast. Imports from Saudi Arabia were down to just 530k bpd in 2019 (cut in half since 2015/2016). We could sneeze in West Texas and wipe that out at this point.
Sure it is now, but if OPEC started raising prices drastically the US government can take measures to control prices here since we are more or less independent as far as oil supplies/refineries go.
First, Ben Laden had ben persecuted by Saudi Arabia and had to flee the country. Long before the 9/11 attacks. Saudi Arabia was trying to get him.
Second, supporting current regime in Saudi Arabia sounds barbaric and morally reprehensible — as long as you don't find out who's their internal opposition is. Surprise: it's not freedom-loving democratic westernised students. It's even more radical and aggressive religious zealots. If US stops supporting House of Saud, it will be a new Iran or even ISIS there, but with much better economy and a pretty capable military.
Actually they don't and won't for a very long time to come. They are a source of stability in the ME that the US won't sacrifice for human rights abuses no matter how loud hacker news gets.
> What you say is conflating with something like "If USA took down NSDAP, Germans would still burn Jews, and even more of them."
But this is not true, whereas the facts I started about internal opposition Saudis face are.
> US must stop supporting Sauds, end of the story.
This would make the world a worse place and lead to a lot of death and suffering, compared to the future where US would still support them. How can you justify such a thing?
US policy has been moving towards energy independence from Bush, Obama, and through Trump. We're pretty much there now, OPEC can't drive up prices without US shale producers ramping up production, sharply limiting their control.
Our arrangements with the House of Saud include the extremely sensitive matter of reserve status of US Dollar. Control over Persian Gulf — a matter that includes other parties not included in the US-Saudi strategic agreements — is energy related: it is not USA who is dependent on Persian Gulf energy, but near peer challengers, such as China, Japan, and possibly EU.
Thanks for the context. I think the second one explains what you're trying to say better.
I think one can agree with the spirit of Carter's message while remaining skeptical of how practically it's stood the test of time. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, doesn't the last line of your second article seems to agree with GP's point? Can you describe what you're trying to say in more detail?
Those words would be that Carter was a leader who was looking for the American people. Regan reversed Carter's actions, got us more dependent on foreign oil, deepened our relationship with the Saudis. Rolled back efficiency standards and as a show of arrogant bravado, removed the solar panels that Carter had installed on the Whitehouse. Not sure what Bush the GP was referring to, but what kind of revisionism claims that either Bush moved us towards energy independence.
It is important to recognize how we got into this mess and who the literal and figurative actors are.
Ah, I guess I misread that. Some article talked about how we were able to coordinate on the reduction even though congress had some moratorium on negotiating with OPEC, and I thought it was through that technicality and that OPEC+ was created specifically to work around it.
The one silver lining is that Bhutan remains free and independent and intensely preserves its traditional culture. Its language, religion, and culture aren't exactly Tibetan, but they're fairly contiguous. About roughly equal to the difference between Spain and Portugal.
This vlogger had extensive travel in Tibet. Just one person's glimpse of what Han-Tibetan interaction looks like:
https://m.youtube.com/c/环华十年/videos?disable_polymer=true&itc...
The most recent episodes about Tibet were about a year ago so one has to really scroll down to get to it.
Language and customs are valued differently between Europe and East Asia, and one of the reason is poverty. I'll take Vietnam as an example as I grew there and now live in Europe.
We (the majority ethnics) do appreciate the cultures from minor ethics
In fact, the minor ethnics regions have been a popular destination for young generation to get away from the urban life.
On the other hands, we cannot have a blind eyes on the taboos that comes from isolation, illiteracy and poverty. We're talking about little women rights, child labor, child marriage.
I'm not saying the same problems are in Tibet, but it wouldn't surprise if there other things going than what you're seeing from an outsider/tourist eyes, because the context is the same: high illiteracy rate and isolation.
Education is one way out. China is clearly having a strong take on this approach, but let's hope they do know how to preserve the culture as well.
It's not education though or a strong approach. They are literally annihilating the Tibetan culture and ways of life and attempting to force them to supplant it with Chinese culture and ways trying to convince them it is far superior to Tibetan culture.
From our Western perspective? No. From the general perspective of any culture that values human life.
Your words are an empty restatement that mirrors what most officially sanctioned Chinese media reports tell us:
That we should not/legally cannot/morally cannot oppose or interfere with these atrocities.
I urge HN readers to very carefully judge empty statements such as the GP, because while it doesn't seem like it, it is actually attempting to persuade you to accept that absolutely nothing can be done.
>From our Western perspective it feels so wrong that they're essentially trying to extinguish an entire culture and 'fitting' it into China.
Yeah, kinda like Hawaii. (Not to mention Native Americans' lands, civilization, and culture). Or, well, Mexico.
Sure, it's, "whataboutism". Which is an improvement on the our-shit-doesn't-smell-besides-that-was-back-a-while-ago-so-we-get-to-keep-it-now "Western perspective". Or the "sure-we-can-get-to-our-shady-stuff-but-at-some-other-time-now-let's-talk-as-if-only-those-bad-countries-do-such-things".
>Plus, China isn't going to be impressed when the old Imperial continent with 140 ex-colonies and the current imperial top-dog with 800 foreign military bases are going to lecture them about occupying a territory.
Yeah, that's the problem I'm talking about.
>For China Tibet is a buffer between India and them and it is where most of their water comes from, so they're never going to let any foreign entity control it. Seems out of the question.
Yes. Plus they have old claims to the area (as valid as a claim can be). Populations whose countries have wars and bases and proxy states and/or colonies all over the world (where they have absolutely no place to be), are in a "glass house" place to throw stones at what China does in its immediate borders...
Dude have you been to hawaii? their culture is very much in tact and proud. Not only that but locals have special rights and privileges over mainlanders not the reverse.
I've lived there and I can tell you that many Hawaiians are not appreciative of being colonized, nor should they be. Having their own flag and extra labor laws does not ameliorate the injustices and negative consequences of colonization.
Nor am I qualified to talk, I just want to point out that many of my Hawaiian friends would not in any way agree with your statement, and it is worth factoring that in to the broader discussion.
Not my experience, they seem like proud Americans, but i'm an outsider. It was during the Obama era and they seemed quite chuffed to tell me Obama was born in hawaii.
I wonder what they'd say if you asked them if they'd like to leave the USA?
You can't vandalize HN threads like this, regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are. If you know more about a topic, that's great, but the thing to do is share some of what you know so that people can learn. Flaming aggression doesn't help anyone and only hurts the cause you're trying to stand up for. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24563326 also.
I don't mean to pick on you personally and I'm not commenting on your views—only that your comments stand out in this thread as particularly nasty, and from a moderation point of view that's not ok.
From a human point of view, I sympathize. Most of us would feel and act this way in your position. I know what it feels like to be the sole person (or a small minority) arguing against a majority view—it is extremely activating, and when people are speaking out of ignorance, it can be maddening. Nevertheless you can't post to HN like you've been doing in this thread. You have to manage the activation in yourself and post within the site guidelines.
In a way this is not fair, because others are also being nasty, but happen to have majority opinion on their side, which creates a false impression of reasonableness. But fair or not, it's the way that mass psychology works—there's a greater burden on the one who holds a contrarian position.
I would have just spray-painted the han supremacy equivalent of a swastika onto a few walls, but there's no such thing. No Chinese KKK to join either. We really are lagging behind the west!
I'm trying to help you use HN as intended. If you can't or don't want to do that, we're going to have to ban you. I'd rather not do that, so would you please help us out and follow HN's rules? It is in your interest to do so, because your current comments are unfortunately just reinforcing the very prejudice you're hurt and outraged by. That's an important reason why you shouldn't be commenting like this. It contributes to hurting what you mean to defend.
Hawaiian culture is not intact. The Hawaiian language has suffered enormous domain loss. Few are the shops or restaurants where one can get by entirely in Hawaiian, and forget about being able to speak your language with most of your elected officials and public servants.
CCP can give you millions of examples of "their culture is very much in tact and proud. Not only that but locals have special rights and privileges over mainlanders not the reverse."
Han Chinese are paid to move to Tibet and then "act" Tibetan, for the benefit of Western tourists. My friend's sister is employed in this manner. It's enough to fool people like you, but it doesn't fool the local Tibetans, who are being sidelined more and more.
Judging the past on the standards of the present isn't a productive line of reasoning. Using past mistakes to rationalize further atrocities is beyond regressive.
True. On the other hand, many of those past behaviors that we see as wrong for today were a big part of how we got to our present high standard of living. Doing those bad things was cheaper and faster than less bad methods.
If we are going to tell lower standard of living countries that they need to take the slower or more expensive routes to wealth instead of using the same bad ways we did, we should be using some of our wealth to subsidize those more expensive routes for them.
It's not that the US government suddenly decided to be nicer to Native Americans. Rather, they're no longer deemed to be a threat to the United States and barely have anything that can be forcibly taken. In an alternate universe where Native Americans had connections with Islamic extremists, Native American reservations would closely resemble Xinjiang. Buildings getting their windows smashed in is enough to call the National Guard, so I can't imagine what real domestic tension would do to the US.
100 years from now, Xinjiang will most likely be peaceful when the last traditional Uyghurs pass away, and China will no longer have to force assimilation. That doesn't absolve China of its wrongdoings today.
>Wait, you think Native Americans are confined in reservations? Like there's a big fence around the reservation, and they can't go out?
Good one, no.
I think that the lands they lived and had autonomy and their rule of law etc, have been taken from them as their ancestral places, and have been confined to the reservations.
The fact that they can move "freely" to New York or the greater South Dakota are irrelevant. It's like someone coming over, taking your house, handing you over the "right" to live and rule over the backyard, but also giving you the "freedom" to rent/buy/live in a room on their own old house if they want.
And that's with tons of shady behavior from the federal/state level even for them living there and their resources (e.g. when uranium was discovered in those places).
Because Britain and Spain colonized Hawaii in the 1500s nobody can criticize China for using forced labor in the 2020s? That takes some serious mental gymnastics.
It makes sense when viewed as: people only care about us vs them tribal crap. The modern era and access to information just puts a veneer of "reasoning" for justifying their own BS.
Only 5% of Puerto Ricans want independence, in recent years there has been a push towards statehood though (and now a majority support statehood over their current status of free association)
I responded to your other post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24558926. It's more important to valorize independence regardless of what's actually best for Puerto Rico. Any paternalism no matter how honestly felt will defeat the purpose of this gesture.
My proposal is "bleeding heart realpolitik", and bound to thus illicit confusion in the US.
Are people in Hawaii still getting held at gunpoint to assimilate to whatever American culture is? If yes, we should definitely complain about it now.
> Yes. Plus they have old claims to the area (as valid as a claim can be).
Yes, we all know about those claims like the comical nine dash line. Tibet has always been a historical buffer state between the Chinese and Indian civilizations, culturally influenced by both. Sure, some Chinese empires were able to defeat them to force them to be a part of the empire for some centuries but that's about it.
It must be fun to take out a map with some line that some loon drew in the past to lay claim over anything you wish. I guess we can even expect a map for Mars in future.
If you think the nine dash line is comical, you're going to LOVE the British drawn India-Pakistani border with the most important Sikh holy site in muslim majority Pakistan! After you have a chuckle at that, you can ask the native americans how much fun they had with map drawing lunatics during the colonization of the Americas.
> the British drawn India-Pakistani border with the most important Sikh holy site in muslim majority Pakistan
As far as I understand for that at least, the divisions/districts were divided based on religion, because that's what the demand of the leaders who wanted Pakistan was. So Pakistan got every Muslim majority district on the west of the current Indian state. Is it possible the Sikh holy site you are talking about was a Muslim majority division/district?
But your point does underscore my point, look at all the chaos that line drawing left in the world. That's all the more reason to call out the comical claims that are being enforced now.
I apologize about the structure of my last statement, it came out like that because of the tone of the parent comment and the constant whataboutism and general misinformation(like "valid old claims") we see in these threads. It gets tiring after a while.
I don't understand why my other comment down the thread was flagged by you though.
>so if a reformed mob boss sees other mobsters extorting people, he cannot step in and stop them because he did the same thing in the past?
Reformed? LOL.
>i really don't understand this kind of ethical reasoning, just sounds like pious excuses to sit on our hands
It's the ethical imperative of:
- not being a hypocrite,
- being the change you want to see in the world, and putting your house in order first
- the old-mob-boss not getting to keep his illegal riches (not to mention his old ways) and claim to be reformed,
- and not using the plights of "poor X" as an excuse to attack their opressor, when you don't really care about poor X, you have opressed and are still opressing others all over the world, and you have no problems with other opressors of third parties if they are allies...
Without self-reflection and equal corrective moves on the finger-pointing side, the finger-pointing at China is merely used as a political weapon to justify aggression and pressure against them in the ongoing trade/influence war.
As for the finger pointers, those higher-up cultivate this for this exact purpose (as popular support for their hawkish plans), and the masses just point at the "enemy of the day" as they are conditioned...
As for the "pious excuses to sit on our hands" that's what happens anyway, nobody is actually doing anything. The one's that do are those who control armies and policy - and those have their own agendas, could not give less fucks for justice for Tibet.
Puerto Rico does not want to be "given up". It wants, and deserves, statehood. A so-called "independent" Puerto Rico would be nothing more than an impoverished client of the United States.
> Taiwan deserves provincehood so it isn't a impoverished client of the PRC.
Now, Taiwan is quite rich, but still, optics matter. Better to give Puerto Rico tons of reparations if you are worried about it being impoverished and dependent.
so you are fine with allowing all the human atrocities by CCP because of what usa has done in the past? i cannot make heads or tails of this perspective
as one of jewish descent, i am glad usa denounced the holocaust during ww2, and didn't use its past injustices as an excuse to remain silent
>so you are fine with allowing all the human atrocities by CCP because of what usa has done in the past? i cannot make heads or tails of this perspective
Let me reverse the question: are you fine with selective-outrage against all the human atrocities by CCP be used as a tool for foreign policy to further interests/help in new attrocities?
At the same time when those using those (to help their policies) have commited themselves, and continue to commit similar attrocities?
I'd say condemn all attrocities, don't be selective.
Else I can't make heads or tails of this perspective. It's basically "my country right or wrong, plus, I will condemnt whatever country my country's foreign interests want to target this period and ignore what others that are allies do".
>as one of jewish descent, i am glad usa denounced the holocaust during ww2
Well, not that much. For one, its businesses gave the logistics assistance that helped it go through. And few batted an eye in such cases:
"The American public discovered the full extent of the Holocaust only when the Allied armies liberated the extermination and concentration camps at the end of World War II. And as historians struggled to understand what had happened, attention increasingly focused on the inadequate American response and what lay behind it. It remains today the subject of great debate."
‘Illegals’ are not in forced labor camps and that sort of equivalence is just gross. Immigrants to Europe and the US need a place to stay while their cases are processed, with the increases in immigration (especially in Europe) it is difficult to keep up with. Does the west need to do better? Absolutely but stating that these immigrant camps are like forced labor camps is deliberately misleading and just flat out wrong.
Additionally - it hasn’t been until recently that Puerto Rico has favored statehood (over free association).
What is the difference in real terms between the border camps and forced labour camps? The labour? Taking bets that these camps introduce forced labour like the Nazi camps did. Odds stop at the decade.
One is the result of excess immigration - where immigrants fleeing their countries come to hope for a better life in the EU or US. Immigrants are eventually granted asylum or are turned away.
Forced labor camps are created through force or threat of force and can detain people for decades with no recourse.
The difference is the reason to be in the camps. Breaking country's laws is generally viewed as legitimate reason to send someone to prison or camp, while being of a certain ethnicity is not.
Of course, there's an issue of laws that are by themselves are morally reprehensible, like the Nuremberg laws in Nazi Germany. However, immigration laws are clearly moral and expected to exist in some form or another in any modern country.
I have to say, this distinction is so obvious I'm very surprised that somebody asks this kind of question at all.
It's a question of civics - entering the country is illegal, migrants do that knowingly. FYI they can leave anytime they want, there is a 72 hour clearing process. They are detained due to a transgression of the law, much like anything else. Where we can disagree mostly is the nature of the incarceration etc. - but this is besides the point - China's detention of citizens, arbitrarily, due to their ethnicity or because they simply want to 'move them into another job' is not remotely comparable to the detention of citizens who have broken very clear and stated laws, and of course can leave said detention as they chose.
It's reasonable that some degree of moral relativism can be made WRT China, but on these threads, there is no such thing.
China's arbitrary incarceration of citizens based on their ethnicity is beyond pale, the President should be bringing it up at every occasion, and it should be a pillar of our relations with China, including trade.
You're not addressing the point about immigration laws not being universally recognized as moral and just.
What about child migrants? You're meaning to tell me that its morally just to intern preteens because they broke your immigration law? To force children to appear before a judge that are so young that they have to draw a cross as their signature? What's grosser here?
I addressed the issue, not only that, the concern about the 'moral universality' of the border laws isn't very relevant.
We put people in prison for 10 years for stealing cars, and there is no 'universal moral agreement' on the issue.
Migrants are not even being held against their will - they can leave in about 72 hours by filing paperwork. They have knowingly entered the country illegally, and are detained. They can go home essentially when they please.
If families were required to 'wait the Holiday Inn' until their hearing (which I think should be the case, no need to hold them in detention), I suggest few would be concerned, so what matters is not so much the issue of detention, but the conditions. I think that most people would probably agree that conditions should be reasonable but that's an operational issue.
But it's besides the point: the US has borders, and just like any for other nation, those borders have to be respected legally by some means.
But this is a giant distraction from the fact that:
China is arbitrarily putting it's own citizens in totalitarian concentration camp conditions due to their ethnicity.
The 'corollary' would be Trump putting 100 000 Latino American citizens in concentration camps purely due to their ethnicity, with no legal recourse, removed from any communication with their families, their every move, thought, action suppressed as they go through intense 'indoctrination training' daily, for years at a time.
It's unthinkable.
But it doesn't stop there:
China spies and censors each and every citizen, kidnapping students, academics - anyone - who speaks out too vociferously against the regime. They rigorously control all established media to enforce propagandistic measures, and censor or suppress anyone who acts against that system. China does not allow citizens to access information outside the country. They've created a giant, dystopian suppression machine.
The corollary would be Trump closing down CNN, NBC, CBS, then taking governmental control of Fox news, and legally requiring Fox to tout his agenda every day. Trump would then mandate Facebook to censor anyone who speaks out against Trump or the GOP / Government. Trump would insert a team of 'GOP agents' within Facebook to ensure absolute compliance. Any FB user who 'talks funny' would be flagged for future reference (i.e. maybe just a little visit from the local cops will suffice to get them to shut up).
Protests would be met with bullets, all media completely suppressed, no legal action or recourse would be possible. To merely mention the issue could land you in jail.
Of course in this scenario, Trump also has absolute power, does not need to be elected, directly controls the Fed/Monetary System, directly controls all major financial institutions, can amend the constitution essentially at will, has no need for any kind of judicial system which would of course be politically controlled, so he could put his enemies (or whoever) in jail whenever he wants, for whatever reason.
Of course he could direct Verizon, Google, AT&T, Stripe, Amazon to provide him with transactional data for anyone, anywhere on earth at anytime, for any reason.
And all of that is only scratching the surface!
So start justifying that list of transgressions, and when we get down to things like 'North Koreans fleeing to Chine held in less than optimal conditions' ... then we're having a discussion.
First of all, you're looking for the word 'equivalent', not corollary. Secondly, a talented lawyer could make a convincing legal argument for anything. The holocaust was legal. So really, the morality of the act is everything. Sure in practice, children are supposed to be held for 72 hours, but in reality it can be much longer. I'm not sure if I'm addressing your claims because you're using a bunch of big words, and I'm not sure if you're trying to say what they actually mean, so thats what I got.
> It's a question of civics - entering the country is illegal, migrants do that knowingly.
So was rescuing Jews from the Holocaust, and China's acts against Tibetans and Uighurs. Let's not mistake what's moral with what's legal; they often overlap in a decent society, but that's by no means guaranteed. You can make a case for "immigration laws are moral", but "they're moral because they're the law" isn't that case.
Conflating the fact that some people face basic detainment (which they can leave quickly at any time by merely choosing to return home) for breaking clear laws ... with 'Putting millions of Jews in Gas Chambers' is not helping the cause.
If we are so deeply concerned about 'legality vs. morality' then I'd imagine the very first issue coming to mind would be the issue of Uyghurs being put in concentration camps by the 100's of thousands, possibly millions, for no reason at all, other than the fact they are Uyghur.
Especially those dying, having their organs harvested and sent to Chinese elite. [1] [2] [3]
Their arbitrary detention due to ethnicity, and the conditions imposed upon them, I think make a very good corollary to the Nazi / Jewish holocaust, worthy of intellectual consideration.
> From our Western perspective it feels so wrong that they're essentially trying to extinguish an entire culture and 'fitting' it into China.
What China is doing is progressive system of genocide. They borrowed USSR's system of multiple nationalities, identified different ethnicities, and now are trying to wipe out the Uighurs by merging them into Han. It is only a matter of time till they start doing this with whole bunch of other groups. The Uighurs are seen as threats because of their resistance to adopting majority Chinese culture and because of their 1600 year old desire for self-rule.
> current imperial top-dog with 800 foreign military bases
You make it sound as if they were a part of aggressive expansion and colonisation, which is a bit misleading. Vast majority of US military bases are in NATO countries that were very enthusiastic about outsourcing protection from the soviet threat.
There are some bases that cause a lot of friction however. Behaving like they can do what they like is not in the US’s best interest.
The latest rape saga in the Philippines comes to mind and the damage done by the 1990s rape of a child in Okinawa and it’s aftermath have damaged the US image.
Also behaving like they are above the law, there was the appalling behaviour of the US military when a family member of a serviceman in the UK drove on the wrong side of the road, killing someone, then claiming diplomatic immunity to fly home.
The base in Saudi has been the justification for some horrendous acts too.
I’m not sure how you come up with a way of respecting people and their local laws whilst also having bases in places like Saudi, but the US can do better.
So because China is worse, the US is ok? How is that relevant? It’s also not dozens, not even in Japan alone (see links below).
The US military also didn’t punish for crimes against civilians on Okinawa much of the time and if it did, the punishment was relatively minor. This isn’t how assault, rape and murder are treated in the US.
the net good is that the USSR didn't overrun Europe after WW2 and they could have easily if the US hadn't set up camp. It may have even still happened without the atomic bomb as a deterrent.
The US government has exerted influence and control over Hollywood and pop culture for decades but it's so pervasive that you've just taken it for granted. Now you're seeing a foreign government to the same, at a much smaller scale and to a much smaller degree and you're hysterically suggesting that your freedom is being taken away by "the tremendous power of that machine". How do you think the rest of the world feels about having American culture shoved down their throats via every conceivable medium?
Call it "whataboutism" if you must, but I think it's strange and counterproductive to ignore the elephant in the room when it comes to influence and control over popular media.
Although I agree with the sentiment that US has a lot of soft power influence, I would argue that most of it is just US capitalism shining at its best. I think the best example of this is WW2 related content like movies. In France public perception of who won them World War 2 changed from Soviet Union in 1940s to US in 2000s. [1]
One major difference in US soft power is, they don't censor media critical of them to an extent even close to what CCP does. Look at the commentary on the pointless Vietnam War originating from US in their media, try to find something similar on PRC's pointless war in Vietnam which they lost.
How is it an example of "shining at its best" when the Soviets made far more sacrifices during WWII only to be robbed of the credit in pretty much all western popular accounts. Yes, they were more brutal to those they defeated in many instances, but that doesn't diminish their military contribution.
The US government doesn't engage in direct censorship like the Chinese government but it does have some power, in practice, to shape its portrayal in the media. The Pentagon pulled production assistance from The Hurt Locker because it didn't like certain aspects of how the military was portrayed[1], as is their right of course. Most films cannot afford this luxury. The relationship between the state and the press is also closer than many think, particularly when it comes to briefings from the intelligence community.
Social media companies like Twitter and Facebook admittedly do a pretty good job of allowing a wide range of views to be expressed, although this comes at the price of allowing massive amounts of disinformation as well.
>try to find something similar on PRC's pointless war in Vietnam which they lost.
Shining at its best, in terms of making a product that just sells well without the state taking much efforts at it. Like in case of WW2, they just made movies which glorify US's contribution at the expense of others, the product sold well because it was well made. So their role got pushed in the minds of people even outside US.
I read the synopsis, it doesn't seem like anything critical of their role in the war or need for it or their defeat. It talks about how they won bravery medals there and then it seems like a drama around love/work life.
Watch the Vietnam War documentary by Ken Burns/PBS, that's the sort of media I am talking about.
The film is absolutely critical of the pointlessness of the war. Its most famous scene is of the PLA getting slaughtered in an ambush. Not everything needs to hit you over the head with a hammer like a documentary film.
> The film is absolutely critical of the pointlessness of the war. Its most famous scene is of the PLA getting slaughtered in an ambush.
That description seems like description of any war movie in general. While you are right about not everything has to be a documentary, my example was related to critical content like that.
To give an example which would be possibly more clear is, look at the current protests in HK. Do media in PRC cover the HKers side fairly on what they are demanding, the magnitude of ground support for the movement in HK, the excesses committed by the HK police daily? Contrast this with BLM protests where most coverage is anti establishment.
I don't know what teachers you had, but all mine taught it was a two pronged effort from USSR and the USA (and allies). It's Russian propaganda to say that it was only Russia that beat the Germans and that D-day was just a minor incursion.
Short in span, but about 30k deaths in those 3 weeks and being humbled by a much smaller opponent. While I will agree that it might not have been a generational defining moment, but those numbers are massive enough to warrant institutional and popular culture memory as it happened just 41 years back.
We can say things against China. China shouldn't do this. Plenty of companies don't operate in China, regardless of the money. Google has struggled with this. Apple surrendered and makes phones there and sells them. Disney is trying to surrender with Mulan, but apparently even those they cow-towed to them in extreme ways (in Mulan the movie they 'thank' the help of the Chinese authorities in some of the places that have the Uighur camps! They literally thank them.
The enormous sums these companies believe they will earn in China, the all mighty growth, that overwhelms their ability to consider the implications.
LOL. Are you going to cry a river for all the Native Americans that got their lives and culture extinguished, to make way for the master white race to dominate the United States?
Did you know that the Sioux are actively protesting in South Dakota right now, for the very thing that you are preaching here?
Are you going to even lift a finger to support them? I doubt it. Hence, you’re just being a hypocrite
Publicly calling out the flaws of colonialism but privately enjoying the benefits of colonialism exactly convincing.
>additionally, our country was founded by people escaping religious persecution
I'm assuming this refers to the US. The US criticizes its treatment of natives and how they were decimated as the US expanded west. But at the same time, it enjoys all the benefits from not having a large indigenous population that occupies militarily strategic land, poses a military/separatist threat, and is too numerous to assimilate. I don't see the US deciding to return North America to its indigenous population so they can rebuild their historic societies because conveniently, all those lands are either settled or their previous inhabitants have no descendants. I can only conclude that words are cheap when it comes to foreign events, but when it comes to the cost of fixing domestic injustice suddenly no one wants to pay.
As an analogy, this is like the US racing to the top of a hill in a car, then telling everyone else they have to walk because driving is bad for the environment. And no, the US will not help pay for the extra time and water they'll have to take, nor will it drive back down and join them in a fair race.
so you agree colonialism is wrong, but will not denounce modern colonialism because the usa eliminated indigenous people in the past? colonialism is only wrong if done by the us?
and if we need a pristine past to denounce modern injustice, then that is a recipe to accomodate every injustice that comes our way
Welcome to the new left, where the only wrongs that can be discussed are those committed by Europeans or Americans. Ironic, because if you're truly committed to the idea that all people are created equal, you have to acknowledge that that means we all have a similar capacity for evil and brutality, regardless of race or culture.
Basically you're right. I'm extremely progressive on human rights, gender freedom, lgbqt rights, universal health care, etc but I refuse to bend to the whims of the current far left that teach we should hate ourselves (at least if you're a white cis male) and that we should shut up and let those outside that group decide everything and anything. Well I don't play that game and neither should others. Basically they think we should just walk around self flagellating in the public square.
If the Ba'ath Party and Taliban had taken back control after those 14 months in each respective country, are you under the impression the US would've gone "welp, we tried!" and left?
To be fair, if Puerto Rico wanted it's independence, the current administration would probably give it to them. Likewise, had they wanted to become the 51st state, I have no doubt that in 2009 President Obama and the Democratic super majority would have been happy to make that happen and grab up two extra Senate seats in the process.
The fact is, a lot Puerto Ricans like the current setup. The are natural born citizens who have full freedom of movement within the U.S. while Puerto Rico has fewer federal restrictions and obligations compared to a U.S. state.
> The fact is, a lot Puerto Ricans like the current setup. The are natural born citizens who have full freedom of movement within the U.S. while Puerto Rico has fewer federal restrictions and obligations compared to a U.S. state.
I think you have it reversed: Puerto Rico suffers from all of the federal obligations and has no states' rights to make up for it. No representative, no voting senator (and therefore no 'pork'). The burden of the federal restrictions were bared in the aftermath of the hurricane: the Jones Act meant relief could only be transported by American ships even as other countries stood ready to help.
> But we also can't say anything because China makes all our stuff.
Thinking of Lebron James who hypocritically spoke up about BLM and not about human rights abuses in China[1]. We cannot place our hopes in capitalism to deal with these human-rights atrocities, even though there is much the NBA could do to use their financial power to influence the region and demand change. MLK would use boycotts to force racist businesses to grapple with losing the black people's dollar if they did not stand up for justice. We can still learn from this; the Western gov'ts are not the only players in this game.
> Thinking of Lebron James who hypocritically spoke up about BLM and not about human rights abuses in China[1].
I don't understand this take.
Why does LeBron James have to address human rights in China before he, a Black American, can address human rights abuses against Black Americans in America?
> Why does LeBron James have to address human rights in China before he, a Black American, can address human rights abuses against Black Americans in America?
Because as bad as the human rights abuses against Black Americans in America are, they pale in comparison to what China is doing. But that's not the only issue. The bigger issue is that LeBron James chooses to make hundreds of millions of dollars by staying silent on the China issue. I think he could have a tremendous impact by rejecting that money and denouncing China...what are the Lakers going to do, fire him? He can do both things. With BLM he's just one of many, many, MANY celebrities saying the same thing. What people with his level of reach are saying anything about China?
This is the point exactly. China brings in 10% of the NBA's revenue[1]. I am arguing alongside you that we can really effect change if we use our economic leverage and not merely our political leverage. We cannot stand for these abuses. I also really do not want to distract from the race issue we are working through today; it seems our news cycle can only handle one thing at a time though.
I don't see it as an either or proposition. He can speak up for both, but he chose to take an apologist stance on HK. The NBA made fans remove or cover up their HK freedom t-shirts.
You're right that he shouldn't feel the same obligation to speak out in defense of Tibet. But the issue with James is his history of comments that support the PRC's regime in Uyghur land. He isn't neutral on the issue of China. See: his comments during the Houston fiasco.
That's a false choice, as James can do both things. He can choose to focus to a greater degree on matters in the US, and focus to a lesser degree on China, since his priorities are obviously in the US.
Why should he take an interest? Beyond the matter of being a world famous person with a giant bullhorn to speak from, he's also making an obscene sum of money from China and its people and stands to keep doing so. That's vulgar morally if you then simultaneously ignore what's going on there and refuse to say anything with your platform.
It is not difficult in terms of time or technically, for James to say something about China's human rights abuses on his prominent Twitter account (whether about Xinjiang or Hong Kong as two prominent examples). It would take a very small amount of effort and time. He doesn't do it because he's a hypocritical coward and knows China is a giant financial golden ticket and he doesn't dare upset them because he knows how they would react (the same reason so many are afraid of China and yet not afraid to say something against the US). The whole of the NBA is very terrified of China economically, the NBA hasn't been very subtle about their trembling post the Houston Rockets incident.
The BLM movement is important; I have no interest in distracting from this problem. Lebron was explicitly asked about the CCP and their human-rights abuses after an NBA manager unpopularly criticized the CCP. The NBA would rather not talk about the CCP and the manager was effectively shamed for doing so. Capitalism cannot look past the $$$. China makes up 10% of NBA revenue [1]
It's absolutely reasonable for NBA players to not want to comment on complicated issues that are outside of the scope of their political interests[1][2]. It would be nice to see the same humility in other aspects of our public discourse.
These news articles are fallacious appeals to ignorance. We are not ignorant of the very blatant oppression in China. The Hong Kong issue is just another example of communism seeking to squash autonomy and basic human rights. You say 'humility' and another says 'cowardice'. I side with the latter.
I hope they have the tenacity to survive and resist and NEVER get conformed to live as part of China.
"China" is a vicious inhumane enemy, nobody in this World is innocent but there are some more innocent that others and the rhetoric of others being "bad" is no excuse for anything.
From our Western perspective it feels so wrong that they're essentially trying to extinguish an entire culture and 'fitting' it into China.
But we also can't say anything because China makes all our stuff.
Plus, China isn't going to be impressed when the old Imperial continent with 140 ex-colonies and the current imperial top-dog with 800 foreign military bases are going to lecture them about occupying a territory.
For China Tibet is a buffer between India and them and it is where most of their water comes from, so they're never going to let any foreign entity control it. Seems out of the question.
I live in a European area that was 'assimilated' into a bigger country and forced to use their language and customs. This was over 150 years ago for my area now. And most people don't remember it and just go with the flow of the country they are born in.
I hope for all Tibetans that there will be some sense of regional pride remaining (and allowed) as they find a way to live as part of China.