> Zenz co-authored the book Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation which links modern trends, including gender equality, homosexuality and bans on corporal punishment, to the power of the Antichrist.
The more I look at it, history is one ethnic group against the other. The winners do what they want, the weak suffer as prisoners of war.
In reply to a flagged sibling: what's there to see in the edit history? There was an edit war (or maybe I should use the plural, didn't look too closely), which is common on controversial topics, and judging from the talk page it has been resolved with a compromise. Bottom line, dude did coauthor that book, and even the title is telling enough.
Also, unrelated, it's sad that any comment trying to discuss or question what's specifically in the article is quickly downvoted into oblivion -- except this one, curiously -- and only general threads suitable (or unsuitable) for any submission loosely on this topic remain. People are quick to post insinuations about astroturfing too, despite guidelines specifically banning that.
It seems the comments about iraq, yemen, afghanistan them have been downvoted / flagged. I guess this one too. There's a documentary on netflix showing the 13th amendment's relation to the labor camps, shocking to say the least.
I don't think there is anything new in the article. It's the standard rhetoric used by UK/US media. Also notice the conspicuous absence of Saudis, they too are involved in messy labor practices. Oddly enough not a single of these pointless articles will mention that its another country in some sense - Turkestan ... because if thats the context of the debate then US will have to give up puerto rico, california and indian territories and UK ireland and France guiana and so on .... Here's the irony of the whole situation, from their standpoint the chinese too are liberating the places from feudalism and they have made some progress in the regions as opposed to the reckless military interventions of other nations.
The fact of the matter is literally none of the allied powers cared for the genocides in WWII, they even welcomed it. The POWs were also completely ignored post war which is one of the unspoken tragedies. In democratically elected nations it seems the only way to go to war is to paint the other side as a dictator go to war with it. The lies are just tiring at this point.
It is very unfortunate that Saudi Arabia is mentioned by all the supporters of human rights abuses as a benchmark, I don’t see how the absence of mentioning Saudi Arabia is conspicuous at all. The absurdity of it is that normally the countries compared with Saudi are allies [1]
China did liberate the area from feudalism by killing the ppl living there in the first place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_genocide
China intentionally and resettled the uighurs there in first place after having killed 80% of the population that lived there.
How can you make an historical argument without mentioning this small detail?
And you failed to mention the small detail that what you linked to happened in 18th century, not post WWII, or anywhere close to 20th century. Not even led by the same ethnicity — Qing rulers were Manchus. Do we really need to bring up colonialist genocides?
My answer was to a post that brought up "...puerto rico, california and indian territories and UK ireland and France guiana and so on..." Those also were not post WWII.
But the parents argument was that from chinese perspective China has liberated the foreign state Turkestan and brought enlightenment to this region.
Considering the Genocide this interpretation seems somewhat dubious. And yes, i would expect such colonialist atrocities come up same as with other countries.
Look at the edit history for that article. It’s not useful as a reference for this discussion.
I mean, frankly, much of this discussion is probably not authentic either. These topics always attract people who will bend over backwards to defend genocide.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
I understand that China is extremely powerful both militarily and economically, but it just makes me so sad that such atrocities against humanity are occurring at the hands of a superpower, deep into the 21st century.
Forgive my naiveté, but aren't we supposed to be past this type of thing as a species already? Wasn't that the whole point of the 20th century - to show us all the things we shouldn't be doing?
As I've gotten older, I've come to really feel like humans just haven't been around that long and we really haven't progressed that much outside of technology. WW2 wasn't really that long ago and neither was the the American civil war, both wars based on race and atrocities. I think it's a bit of a fallacy to think that just because some country is technology and economically advanced it will have correct moral values. Germany in WW2 is an example of that and so is America now imo, it's just that in America we aren't as far gone (but there are people in America who probably wouldn't mind killing other groups).
> we really haven't progressed that much outside of technology
This would imply that the measure of progression / advancement is civility, and that we are going to progress and become more civil given more time. That seems to be a fallacy also, it may be that evolution does not optimise for civility at all, after all being civil is not going to help you to crush your enemies or attract a mate in this environment.
My understanding is that evolution optimizes for learning and adapting to the environment. We aren't 'programmed' to be either civil or violent, but to respond in the most advantageous way to the circumstances we find ourselves in. In a society full of dishonest people who are prone to violence, a person who tries to be honest, kind, and peaceful is at a huge disadvantage. But in a society where people are mostly honest, kind, and helpful, helping others altruistically is likely to pay off down the road, and violence or dishonesty are likely to get someone ostracized.
Mating choices will reflect and perpetuate this--in a violent, corrupt society, the physically strong, cunning, and ruthless will be the most sought after. In a more altruistic society, people who produce the most value for others (and therefore receive the most favors in kind) will have the highest status.
So evolution in this sense isn't really outside of our control. If we help each other and discourage violence, evolution will reinforce that, making society more peaceful and altruistic over time. On the other hand, if we make it so corruption and cruelty are the best ways to get ahead, people's behavior is likely get worse and worse.
This reminds me of Evolution of Trust (https://ncase.me/trust/). A little way through the game you can see this play out over time. It's a great demonstration of how the winning strategy changes (or evolves) over time with different pressures.
Evolution might promote civility in a similar way to peacock feathers through sexual selection. Civility implies that you have enough wealth and power to spare on luxuries even in a world of brutal competition. This allows you to attract more mates/immigrants which ultimately offsets the additional cost.
Genetic evolution is very slow. Societal evolution can be very rapid at times. But similar models regarding reproduction, mutation, and natural selection apply in both cases.
> WW2 wasn't really that long ago and neither was the the American civil war, both wars based on race and atrocities
I don't think the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was racially motivated.
> in America we aren't as far gone (but there are people in America who probably wouldn't mind killing other groups).
I agree. I think the definitely-not-fascist leftists in USA are dangerously close to lynching whites. Oddly, so many American whites are deluded into believing leftist activism mania is about making a cute incremental improvement rather than burning it all to the ground.
That national socialism (combined with 20th century eugenics) could become as popular as it did in Nazi Germany had been surprising to me. Given the state of the modern leftist cult, it's no longer surprising. People can actually be deluded to such an extent!
The current chinese regime under Xi is also essentially a coalition formed of nationalist and marxist factions where nationalists get their outward looking and military/defense spending and posturing while the marxists get their largely inward looking state owned and planned economy as well as social programs.
The discussion is really about the Chinese (and American) governments. The US government is really... Not great. See wars in the middle east, spying on its people, military industrial complex, bad environmental record, bad civil rights record and all of these are ongoing problems. I dont think the US government is any better than the Chinese government. They have been responsible for so much instability in the world in the middle east, Africa, south asia and south America even if we just want to focus on how they treat people.
Just for a moment reflect on this fact: for almost all human beings on this planet, the goal of life continues to revolve around gaining wealth, recognition and power. By the time one realizes the worthlessness of these goals, it's time for him to leave. But as long as these remain the primary goals of our lives, we can't truly be compassionate toward the needs/plight of others and at every opportune moment, we'll try to take advantage of others if it helps us in achieving our primary objectives. The greater the benefit, the more the ruthless/selfish one can become when it comes to fulfilling one's desires.
No matter of education/technology advancement can help unless what is important for our lives as a society is rebooted fundamentally.
Basing it on observation of primary motivators behind the actions of people wherever I see. money, status and power - these are the things our society has been obsessed with for long. Only few people are able to break out of these shackles but they may end up living fugitive life (though a contented one) - society won't celebrate them - won't consider them a truly worthy example to base one's life upon.
The original comment said this was true of "almost all human beings", the vast majority of whom are neither elites nor high-level government officials.
> "for almost all human beings on this planet, the goal of life continues to revolve around gaining wealth, recognition and power."
The opposite could be true as well: the goal of a minority is to gain wealth, recognition and power and in doing so they hurt everyone else around them.
Maybe it's living in the Valley for 20Y, and DC for 20+ before that, but I think the original statement is correct. If anything, the well-educated people in the valley are even more obsessed with recognition of status than the people i knew in DC (who were in _politics_).
> worthlessness of these goals, it's time for him to leave
That's why supporting SENS foundation, and any other research aiming to prolong human lifespan is the most important investment now.
But i can't agree that the desire to gain wealth, recognition and power is a bad thing by itself, it only becomes a problem if someone doesn't understand that free and independent people living their and lives discovering new science will eventually give orders of magnitude more wealth and power to everyone than a conquerer ever can take by force.
Believe it or not we as a species are still stuck in a oral history despite the advent of the written word. What global communication has done, is kind of open the window of oral history to everyone.
This kind of communication is based on narrative. The ultimate problem is that when you have a conflict of evidence and narrative, you have people that want to keep theirs. So instead of changing the narrative, they change the evidence.
Find a way to be able to change your own narrative, and survive, given conflicting evidence, and you may be able to help change the world.
Are we? A survery in The Lancet estimated that the Iraq invasion caused an excess of 650k deaths by October 2006. A simple extrapolation would surely put the excess deaths in the middle east into millions.
I’m not saying the Iraq war should have happened, but war as a concept has been around since civilization started. What’s described here isn’t the same thing... there was no formal declaration or ability for them to fight back, and it’s happening largely in secret with denial to erase an entire culture from the earth.
Oh yes all those units of Iraqi children were sure ready to battle. What kind of disingenuous take is this. The cold reality is: I will justify anything my group does no matter the cost and I will condemn what the other group does. I will consider myself just and good.There, I described 90% of humanity, and that will be our downfall. All the rest is posturing and window-dressing.
This seems like justification. If war wasn’t a concept since civilization started, I have a hard time believing there wouldn’t be another excuse. I don’t think the reasoning is sound regardless.
> war as a concept has been around since civilization started
So has genocide...
> there was no formal declaration or ability for them to fight back
The last formally declared war by the US was WWII, and the second Iraq war was absurdly asymmetrical, they effectively had no "ability for them to fight back", we murdered countless civilians. And go ahead and try to find actual numbers regarding those deaths. There are wide discrepancies between US official numbers, US approved media numbers and numbers from other watch groups. If you think our use of force in the middle east is anything like 'officially declared war between nations' you need to spend more time researching.
That's just Iraq, there's a plenty of campaigns right now all through out the middle east. And let's not forget the massive funding of Israel and their perpetual work to drive the Palestinians from their homes. Read up on that and tell me that's not genocide. But if you critique that publicly you'll face immense political backlash.
And don't get me started on the way our governments still actively work to destabilize first nations communities and cultures in the US. We unquestionably committed genocide against native populations in our history as a country but you're naive if you think we still aren't working to actively destroy what culture remains (Canada is equally if not no more so guilty of this).
> and it’s happening largely in secret
The US and China have very different forms of propaganda, but the fact that you think that the US is largely innocent of crimes like these should give anyone reading a sense of how powerful US propaganda and media control really is.
Not to defend the invasion, but the difference between say Japan post WWII and Iraq is almost entirely internal. Blaming the invasion for those deaths is not unreasonable, but it’s glossing over a lot of context.
That's true in part. But if you gloss over (or understand & accept) those internal differences when planning the invasion, then really the consequences are largely also on you. Every middle-east expert would've predicted the region would be destabilised leading to high-odds of (civil) wars for many years.
I think a Middle East expert with have said the invasion would very likely incite significant violence and economic harm. However, they would have also said a civil war in the next 20 years even without an invasion was also a significant probability. So, plotting out the number of excess deaths assuming a completely stable Iraq is overly optimistic thinking.
As external observers it’s easy to think of Iraq as a horrific civil war. Yet, it maintained positive population growth so that’s not what happened. It’s more accurate to consider things in terms of Mexican gangs and lack of social order than civil unrest.
Yes good sir, they only did it in Guantanamo, and the other black sites. More Iraqis were killed by Americans than Uyghurs by China. Both are MONSTERS and fuck the people who justify it.
Biologically speaking you realise that we as a species haven’t evolved perceptibly in all recorded human history?
If you were to somehow take a caveman’s baby, bring it back to the current time and raise it to full adulthood you would not be able to tell the difference it and “us”.
Any progress we’ve made with regard to human rights is purely cultural and not innate ...and it can disappear in the blink of an eye.
You can bet that any horrible thing you can imagine happening some vile cnut somewhere has done to some other poor sap.
I don't think we really learned any lessons. Stalin and Mao were at least as bad as Hitler in terms of body count. Hitler just lost the war, while the other two were able to continue to invest in propaganda to whitewash their histories. If Nazi Germany had emerged from the war intact, they too would have been able to whitewash their history for decades after. I'm sure in time they would have "moderated" a bit, and that little episode would be a regrettable footnote the way the Cultural Revolution is for the Chinese or Stalin's purges were/are for the USSR/Russia.
We have also never fully acknowledged what the Spanish, British, and later USA did to the native populations of North and South America in the preceding centuries. Yes it's true that disease did much of the work without anyone lifting a finger, but that's only true in the early days. Later on there was plenty of intentional slaughter including bounties to encourage it.
When I look at the way Twitter erupts into ideological witch hunts or things like the Qanon cult, I realize that we have not changed. If any of those mobs got actual power we'd see the same things repeated against whatever groups (real or imaginary) they hate. Civilization is a thin veneer.
Fundamentally, civilization is about control. The control is codified and accepted only because there is a certain amount of inhumanity that is required for it. I would argue that killing comes naturally to humans, and other acts of similar cruelty.
Morality and ethics are learned behaviors that are distilled from societal mores. If "thou shall not kill" or some equivalent in another religion didn't exist, for example, I'd argue killing would be natural in society, and nobody would question it. That is why certain tribal and indigenous peoples performed human sacrifices and had various rituals involving bloodsport. To those tribesmen, killing is not something abnormal within the tribe. Why would killing someone from another tribe matter to them?
Is/ought... I agree that humans are entirely capable of it. Is it the best thing for us to do?
My biggest problem with secular thought and especially the "pop atheist" variety is that it seems to often lead to is=ought. Regardless of the reality behind any form of theism, theistic thought never accepted that equality. It's always posited that there must be a "better than the way things are now." Some secularists dismiss that as wishful thinking and a coping mechanism, but if so why bother building or doing much of anything beyond the simple core of eat, shit, fight, and fuck?
I agree but in order to have a “better society” governed by the “better angels of our nature”, you essentially need a bully. You need an entity that does all of the morally “bad” things.
I think you need an entity capable of doing the bad things, if only to stand up to others who do, but I'm not convinced there is some conservation of badness that prohibits the net amount of it from decreasing over time.
If USA, EU, Canada, Australia, Japan, SK and a few other countries agree, they can make China pay. But they are too fractured and each country might be looking to get a better deal out of China.
The sad truth is that the world would most likely not have done anything about the holocaust if Nazi Germany hadn't also invaded their neighboring countries. Killing people at home is just frowned upon, but killing people next door is where you get in trouble. The world is a quite a ways from actually being the civilized place that we like to pretend it is.
What could the West have done beyond doing what they were already doing - fighting a war with Germany?
Blown up rail lines leading to the camps? Would the Germans have said “oh, well let them go then.” No, they would have found other ways to murder them.
It’s not that different than China. You want to stop the genocide? Well, prepare for a major war with millions of deaths on both sides.
You seem to misunderstand my comment. My point was that the West only fought a war with Germany because they invaded Poland and other neighboring countries. Had the Nazis not done that, the West would most likely not have fought them, even if the concentration camps had come to light.
I had a professor (a historian who studied Auschwitz) who used to argue the opposite. Germany was a modern, industrialized nation, with an educated population - and yet the majority of the population either actively committed genocide, or were complicit in some fashion. My professor thus argued that the conditions for the Holocaust are not unique, and there could easily be another one.
I believe this was what the Milgram Experiment[1] was designed to investigate.
Sadly it seems to be backed up by Elliott’s famous experiment. [2] Where you tell one group of kids that they are superior to another group with different eye colour.
Most people prefer the great men version of history vs more structural takes, and even more like to think that since nazis are evil and they don't see themselves or their friends as evil then such a thing could never happen here.
> yet the majority of the population either actively committed genocide, or were complicit in some fashion
after they were plunged into poverty by the reparations demanded by the Treaty of Versailles. Plunder any first world country like that and expect the same.
If contraception worked 100%, or if we were able to disable the libido whenever we want and prevent all rape from happening, maybe i would agree with that.
Since we're not, until someone convince me the violinist argument is not receivable[0], i would continue to support women wanting early abortion.
I don’t understand how you can say something like that with a clear conscience. But then again I don’t understand how China can treat the Uighurs the way they are and sleep at night either. I suppose people just rationalize other people in collective societal delusion as “sub-human” to the point where it’s easy to ignore.
> I don’t understand how you can say something like that with a clear conscience
Not the gp, but my position is that equating a fetus to a person is a fallacy based in the idea that it's a potential person. Which however means it's actually not one. Human beings have language, thought, self-awareness, memories, knowledge, experience, friends, family, hopes and fears. A fetus, wild speculations aside, has none of these. A dna is just a long molecule, not necessary and not enough to attribute humanity. A developed brain and a sense of self instead are both necessary and sufficient. A fetus has neither.
He's been pretty tough on them compared to past presidents with the 25% tariff, plus he has a sanction bill coming to his desk to sign.
> The Senate just passed a bill that further sanctions China by authorizing the Treasury Department to identify Chinese banks and financial firms which enable the Communist Party regime, and punish them by restricting their access to the US dollar and visas for their executives.
> Unlike past Chinese sanction bills, the restrictions will apply not just to individuals, but the banks that employ them. And it will apply not just to Chinese-owned banks, but subsidiaries of American companies operating in the country.
Well, John Bolton in his new book alleges that Trump told Xi to keep locking up Uyghurs.
> “According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do,” Mr. Bolton wrote.
On the other hand, he also signed the Uyghur Human Rights Act.
I think it’s pretty clear at this point that Trump says a lot of different things and constantly contradicts himself. The running theme is that he tries to say what he thinks is the best thing to say at that time but with all the savvy and nuance of a used car salesman.
"alleges" "according to anonymous sources". Hardly any criticism towards Trump comes from reliable, confirmed sources. It's just throwing random conjectures, hoping something sticks.
Though it's for different reasons, Trump is putting large numbers of people in camps himself, and we've seen plenty of evidence of systematic abuse, neglect, and dehumanization. It isn't surprising that he would be sympathetic to another leader who uses similar tactics (even if his advisors make him condemn it to keep up appearances). There's little reason to think he'd do anything different in Xi's position.
Edit: For the downvoters, I am not 'whatabout-ing' or trying to diminish these terrible crimes committed by China's government. But I think it's naive to expect any credible US-led action against it while the leader of the US is committing similar crimes on a lesser (but still massive) scale.
> I definitely do. At least Trump and his supporters have the had guts to stand up to China. Nobody else seems to be doing this.
The problem is that they seem really only willing stand up (incompetently) over trade issues. Trump, himself at least, has never seemed to care at all about human rights issues (foreign or domestic).
> we supposed to be past this type of thing as a species already?
There is no indication of that.
Just decade after WWII British government did yet another genocide in Kenya. Concentration camps, floggings, torture and rapes. After that there has been many others.
The fallacy is assuming the nature of civilizations has changed or will continue to get better over time. Human nature is fundamentally warlike, with the subjugation of those tribes deemed lesser, or just in the way of some natural resource. While there is cooperation within individuals in the tribe, history has shown that tribes will conquer rather than cooperate with other tribes given the chance.
This is just the present manifestation of human nature. I assume, just as genocides and war has occurred in the past, they will continue to occur in the present and future, and we will never achieve world peace until human nature itself is changed, perhaps through some future genetic engineering that would make everyone exceedingly docile.
you're attributing to individuals traits that belong to groups. americans are docile, but america is very violent and easily provoked. so why do you think genetically engineering people to be more docile would help?
what could be more docile than an ant? but an ant nest is a psycho. i think you might have the whole thing flipped on its head, at least. mass violence requires mass discipline, and you can only discipline a subject that's docile.
From the Wiki article, the UN definition of Genocide is met if...
...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
— Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2[5]
I'm not a fan of China, but the UN bar for genocide is so low that it's essentially meaningless.
The word itself means gene-killing.
Whether china is actually trying to wipe out or is being oppressive isn't clear when the UN definition is used.
No, it means (in the etymological sense rather than the denotative sense, since the UN definition is the primary denotative use in the modern world) race-killing. The “geno” is from the Greek “genos” meaning “race”, not from the English “gene” (the English “gene" ultimately is descended from “genos” also, through the German “pangen" a hypothesized ultimate unit of heredity, which etymologically is “all-race”.)
> Whether china is actually trying to wipe out or is being oppressive isn't clear when the UN definition is used.
The convention for the prevention and punishment of genocide includes certain forms of group oppression as well as direct killing because historically those kinds of group oppression usually precedes and paves the way for direct killing, and are also themselves an indirect means of killing (by reducing ability to survive and thrive.).
It seems to meet the definition of genocide if sterilisation methods are used, as it is claimed in the article.
On the other hand, it's a bit of a tricky point because China has nation-wide policoes about fertility (the one child policy and its regional variations) so it's not clear if the Uighurs are especially singled out or simply punished for not respecting a national law.
> Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang.
> But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show. Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even for having the three children allowed by the law
> Leaked data obtained and corroborated by the AP showed that of 484 camp detainees listed in Karakax county in Xinjiang, 149 were there for having too many children - the most common reason for holding them.
> Seven former detainees told the AP that they were force-fed birth control pills or injected with fluids, often with no explanation. Many felt dizzy, tired or ill, and women stopped getting their periods. After being released and leaving China, some went to get medical check-ups and found they were sterile
You also have to take in account the rate of compliance to the law by Uighurs. If they're strongly religious and fiercely determined to keep their traditions, I guess they might also be much less compliant than the rest of the population, and therefore subject to more widespread repression.
> But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show. Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even for having the three children allowed by the law
Yes, so are the Han actually complying more with the law (which seems very probable, since they're culturally aligned with the state)? Or is this "largely spared" already taking in account relative percentages of non-compliance? It's not clear.
> Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even...
This is very vague ("some" followed by the name of a single person is not really a strong statement).
>China has nation-wide policoes about fertility (the one child policy and its regional variations) so it's not clear if the Uighurs are especially singled out or simply punished for not respecting a national law.
The interesting fact is, the one child policy, in all its year of existence, never applied to Uighars and non-Han muslims.
Makes me think these camps are precisely what they say they are, "to nonviolently deal with extremists and separatists".
The alternative would be an Afghanistan-like war to rid certain areas of extremist groups which would probably result in major collateral damage and more innocent casualties.
Britain joined to stop Wilhelm making a blue water navy that could rival the royal navy. I don't think it's a given British hegemony would have lasted as long without joining ww1.
Germany's navy was never going to be more than Wilhelm's pet project because Germany's main threats were land based France and Russia. Britain joined because of honor over protecting Belgian neutrality, which shocked Germany diplomats who thought Britain would never fight over something with so little material gain for it.
Without Britain I don't think Germany would be required to transfer resources from ship building to the land campaign. As far as I'm aware Wilhelm was very serious about developing a navy and they were fairly close to parity with the RN in some aspects even in ww1.
> SIMON: People need to be careful using the word genocide. Why do you think it's justified and important to use it now?
> ZENZ: I have long argued that the atrocity in the region is a cultural genocide, not a literal genocide. I do continue to believe that, generally speaking, the Chinese government does not intend to physically eradicate the Uighurs and Kazakhs, just to integrate, subjugate, dominate and assimilate them. However, this is coupled with a policy of ethnoracial domination, as the government has brought millions of Han Chinese settler in the regions with promises of high salaries, jobs and free housing.
> The reason why now this has changed - we do need to probably call it a genocide - is quite simply because the evidence now, for the first time, very specifically meets one of the five criteria set forth by the United Nations Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide from 1948, which specifically says the suppression of birth.
This is similar to what happened to indigenous peoples here in Canada. For the most part, and while there are clear and heinous exceptions, the intent was to wipe out indigenous culture and society. Because it wasn't gas chambers it's been harder to get the general population to recognize what was/is happening.
Also, forced sterilization is still a thing, particularly outside of urban health authorities.
The last residential school didn't close until the 90s. There are far too many communities without clean drinking water, let alone access to quality education and health care. We still struggle to maintain obligations regarding indigenous land rights and safe guarding indigenous culture.
> The reason why now this has changed - we do need to probably call it a genocide - is quite simply because the evidence now, for the first time, very specifically meets one of the five criteria set forth by the United Nations Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide from 1948, which specifically says the suppression of birth.
The timing for Zenz shift in opinion is very convenient. China removing family planning policy exemptions for minorities like Uighurs started back in 2017. The policy was proposed back in 2014 and saw some discussion among China watchers in the following years. This is not a new policy change, and one Zenz should be aware of for at least 5+ years.
> HN mods have likely flagged it as flamewar, or non relevant, or both, effectively contributing to the soft censorship on the topic.
IIRC, HN has a couple of algorithms to automatically detect "flamewars," and I wouldn't be surprised if this post tripped one, since much of the discussion is flamewar-ish.
I've been on forums where the moderators would remove "derailing" comments/threads, and I think this is a topic that probably needs that kind of moderation, unfortunately.
There is an option for mods to accelerate or slow the decay function of the post.
This is a practice that all content platforms use and few know about. Burying content down, or removing from feed (for Facebook/YouTube) is a soft censoring that avoids user and regulatory backlash.
I would like the platforms to be more transparent about the practice. They could display a ‘derank’ or ‘delisted’ label to all users.
A lot of international politics/treaties enforcement boils down to - are you willing to bleed and die for that cause.
Unless we are willing to go to war - there are no viable ways to prevent China from doing whatever they feel like in the territory they control. Even the tiny Iran and Cuba survived decades of sanctions.
> Unless we are willing to go to war - there are no viable ways to prevent China from doing whatever they feel like in the territory they control.
This just seems false. There are no ways to guarantee that they won't do something, but China, like everyone else, is vulnerable to international pressure. An optimistic historic parallel to which one could look is the Helsinki Accords, where diplomatic measures far short of war wrung what turned out to be dramatic human-rights concessions from the Soviets.
> And they were not binding anyway. And I can assure you that USSR and the eastern bloc didn't comply at all.
Of course, there is no such thing as a binding international agreement—a state that feels itself empowered to abrogate an agreement will do so, regardless of anything that it has signed. As you say, in the end, the only sure-fire tool of enforcement is war, and even that is not sure fire, because victory in war is not guaranteed. Nonetheless, despite the many and flagrant violations of the Helsinki Accords, it is plausible to trace the beginning of the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact directly to the accords.
Unless we are willing to go to war - there are no viable ways to prevent China from doing whatever they feel like in the territory they control. Even the tiny Iran and Cuba survived decades of sanctions
There is one recent-ish historical exception: the SA Apartheid regime was brought down by the West without any land invasion.
But invasion is no guarantee either; the Indian caste system, which makes apartheid look like Sunday school, survived the British occupation.
Sure but that was in a country where the ruling class was a small minority; perhaps the internal pressure was much more significant. In China the ruling class is a supermassive majority compared to the relatively tiny number of Uyghur’s.
Objectively, it may be relevant to note that the rich history of the Silk Road includes numerous cultural genocides, the largest of which was contemporary with the coming of Islam.
We have yet to even comprehend the vast trove of materials recovered from the region indicative of those past cultures, which includes a trove of languages, scripts and religious affiliations.
An amazing international digitization project hosted by the British Library at has full document search capabilities. http://idp.bl.uk/ ... scholars are desperately needed to sort and interpret the material, which crosses the Chinese, Indian, Central Asian and Tibetan worlds in addition to endemic kingdoms. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/59/73/5d/59735daf093ccb7787c7...
A fact little known amongst modern Chinese is that one of China's most celebrated poets, Li Bai, actually hailed from Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan). He relocated to Sichuan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Bai Other popularly remnant modern Chinese cultural links to this region from China include the coming of Buddhism and the fictionalized account Journey to the West, the romanticized export of silk technology, former military significance of 'blood (sweating) horses' and no doubt various contributions to medical, astronomic and scientific knowledge.
The Uighurs, like hundreds of ethnic and cultural minorities globally, and dozens within China, are facing a difficult integration with the modern world surrounded by far more significant economic and cultural spheres. It's also objective to say that a minor Uighur-affiliated violent separatist group has been operating with a distinct anti-government position since at least the early 1990s, and prior to that the region was a victim of the Great Game: http://pratyeka.org/books/kazak-exodus/
China historically allowed members of registered minority groups to be free of the one child policy, which otherwise affected all Chinese. The linked article asserts it is still being applied in Xinjiang and specifically against the Uighurs which is different to the rest of the country at present, but not historically. It would be good to see what the primary sources are on this.
There are potentially reasonable grounds for an international relations argument that nominally recent anti-Uighur measures might be, at least in part, traced to immediately contemporary post-911 "anti-terror" rhetoric by the US providing global laisser-faire on rights suspensions and heavy-handed tactics.
Conclusion: There is more to the story than a timely and simplistic villification, none of which excuses the actions being taken, but all of which add context.
> Christian Christensen, Professor of Journalism in Stockholm, argues that the accusation of whataboutism is itself a form of the tu quoque fallacy, as it dismisses criticisms of one's own behavior to focus instead on the actions of another, thus creating a double standard. Those who use whataboutism are not necessarily engaging in an empty or cynical deflection of responsibility: whataboutism can be a useful tool to expose contradictions, double standards, and hypocrisy
> Others have criticized the usage of accusations of whataboutism by American news outlets, arguing that accusations of whataboutism have been used to simply deflect criticisms of human rights abuses perpetrated by the United States or its allies. They argue that the usage of the term almost exclusively by American outlets is a double standard, and that moral accusations made by powerful countries are merely a pretext to punish their geopolitical rivals in the face of their own wrongdoing
I am trying my best to avoid it though I have my axe to grind. But it's hard because it all strikes me at least as preposterous: all these terrible news about China started to come out just when it suddenly turned from "super dynamic developing country we can make tons of money with" to "serious competitor to our economic and technological supremacy". And my personal axe tells me that when it's about friends, it's all fine anyway.
For the specific case, I know very little about what's happening to the Uighurs, though I tend to think that China doesn't practice tolerance and the Uighurs don't practice integration. I am afraid of moral outrage though, especially when it seems to affect majorities: it can become very dangerous.
I don't think that the mods deny the astroturfing happening. They're actively looking out for and removing it. I think it's more that they don't want arguments to become polluted with accusations of astroturfing against specific users.
> I don't think that the mods deny the astroturfing happening. They're actively looking out for and removing it.
What I've understood from comments from dang so far is that it's mostly allegations based on feelings of disbelief ("no sane person could ever believe that, this user must be a paid shill") and when they look at it there's nothing to see. It doesn't seem to be an actual issue, more of a moral panic and a blunt instrument to silent dissent.
"And you are lynching Negroes" (Russian: "А у вас негров линчуют", A u vas negrov linchuyut) and the later "And you are hanging blacks" are catchphrases that describe or satirize Soviet propaganda's response to American criticisms of its human rights violations.
Another holocaust is being committed right in front of everyone. What will the world do now? Sit back and keep taking advantage of the benefits of cheap Chinese labour? Isn't it time to wake up and cut this barbaric behavior if we're going to claim we moved past what happened in WWII?
> Another holocaust is being committed right in front of everyone. What will the world do now? Sit back and keep taking advantage of the benefits of cheap Chinese labour?
Note: I'm not defending this, and I'm not looking forward to the coming Chinese hegemony. However, what is the proposed alternative? It's obvious from the past few months just how deeply reliant western supply chains are on China.
When the Dutch were at the height of power, they heavily invested into British manufacturing, only to later be taken over as the hegemonic power by the British. The British later did similar with the US, and, in combination with the world wars and exiting as the only possible creditor from WW2, the American hegemony was established. From Volcker onwards, the American economy increasingly turned to financialization and local communities came to be service-oriented economies.
We're just historically at the end of a cyclical process of accumulation and China's up next.
> It's obvious from the past few months just how deeply reliant western supply chains are on China.
It's not just the West, but the world in general. Everyone should cut economic ties with them, that's the least we should do. At an individual level, we should boycott Chinese products as much as we can. There are efforts like https://www.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/, which are a start, but we need more stringent measures.
It's also obvious as another poster in this thread mentioned, the pro-Chinese propaganda being pushed on forums like this one. Any sentiment or comments that raises awareness against Chinese crimes and barbarism gets down voted. This should be a wakeup call, they're infiltrating everything.
Oh come on, China's a big powerful profitable country. And genocide has a special meaning, we can't just call any ethnic extermination a genocide, that'd be improper.
China will just keep on killing their Uighurs and companies will keep doing business there. There's perks, too, I bet CEOs can get organs if they need them, CHEAP, these days, if they bring manufacturing into China.
I don’t have any direct political ability to meaningfully influence policy in China.
I, in theory, can participate in US elections and purportedly have some say in how things are done in the US. Additionally, I don’t have a language barrier to inciting others to action in the US.
I think it’s a very hypocritical situation, and I wonder specifically about the who and the why for the huge anti-China campaign in the global west.
I also think scale is important. Human rights violations against one person are bad. A system that imposed them against millions is worse. Both the US and China have such systems.
If we know what the Chinese government is doing to ethnic minorities does the motive behind the media covering it even matter? So long as the atrocities stop I don’t think I really care who benefits from having a public discussion or how.
Do we know what the Chinese government is doing to ethnic minorities? I've seen enough evidence from both sides to know that it's despicable but that it is also not a genocide.
That is where the accusation of "whataboutism" comes into play, because given my limited time and influence I'd rather focus on issues of similar or greater magnitude (indigenous rights, climate change, the prison system, healthcare, white supremacist structures in our countries, imperialist tendencies that result in freedom bombings) over posturing about re-education and vocational camps in China that have humans rights abuse. I would 100% prefer the latter to not exist but it really feels like a distraction tactic and something we in the West have no power over.
i'm sure this is what the 'america first' crowd told themselves in the 30s.
china sees us as rivals and has designs on our allies and global institutions. ignoring them is at our own peril.
america has deep problems, like any country, but you are a fool if you think that a chinese hegemon would leave us better off or that the ccp can be ignored.
I'm sorry but the Uyghur birth rate in Xingjiang has dropped 83% year on year. The Uyghur people are being exterminated and you're more interested in a conspiracy about who is behind us caring about it.
FYI you don't have a direct political ability to meaningfully influence policy on China but you are directly supporting the CCP by buying blood-goods.
US prisons might be the worst prisons in the "first world" but they are a far sight from death camps. The US doesn't kill its prisoners and then harvest their organs for transplant.
The only reason is that the lethal injection combo we use in the US doesn't leave the organs suitable for transplant because it stops the circulatory system for too long. There's some pushes among groups like the AMA to change that.
I don't think it's "whataboutism" to question the validity of a source as cartoonishly biased as the victims of communism foundation. These are the people that claim every covid death is a victim of communism.
> The reason why now this has changed - we do need to probably call it a genocide - is quite simply because the evidence now, for the first time, very specifically meets one of the five criteria set forth by the United Nations Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide from 1948, which specifically says the suppression of birth
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation counts all COVID-19 deaths worldwide as victims of communism, in case anyone was wondering how credible this organisation is.
> While the pandemic’s final human toll is still unknown, those who have perished from the outbreak must be included in the global count of 100 million deaths at the hands of Communism.
> If Beijing had given the real number of infected people and deaths, other countries would have recognized the danger, and taken necessary steps.
No matter what transpired, eventually there was a warning, and most countries still took no steps until they had high numbers themselves. Hell, Italy could have been the warning and it would have helped.
But that paper, at least in the abstract, talks about preventable deaths in China. The anti-communists talk about China being to blame for the deaths in other countries because those countries had no warning.
The paper was posted on March 13 [0], before Covid-19 peaked outside of China. Of course it didn’t focus on other places.
The abstract shows the authors believe its findings have relevance elsewhere:
> These findings improve our understanding of the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19, and will inform response efforts across the world
According the exact same logic used by this ZENZ guy, China's majority group (Han) has been subjected to such "genocide" for decades. As a result of such "suppression", only 400 million Han Chinese were born in the last 30 years rather than the estimated 800+ million.
I may be mistaken but Han Chinese weren't forced to undergo sterilization. If you had a second child, you were fined and your child wouldn't be recognized as a Chinese citizen. Still horrible though.
> The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show. Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang.
> But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show. Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even for having the three children allowed by the law
> Leaked data obtained and corroborated by the AP showed that of 484 camp detainees listed in Karakax county in Xinjiang, 149 were there for having too many children - the most common reason for holding them. Time in a camp — what the government calls “education and training” — for parents with too many children is written policy in at least three counties, notices found by Zenz confirmed
> Seven former detainees told the AP that they were force-fed birth control pills or injected with fluids, often with no explanation. Many felt dizzy, tired or ill, and women stopped getting their periods. After being released and leaving China, some went to get medical check-ups and found they were sterile
> But are Han Chinese sent to concentration camps?
All of them? Certainly not, China would look pretty empty. Some of them? Yeah, unless you have a special definition of concentration camp.
The organ harvesting also does not seem to have an ethnic component. You tend to be targeted if you're loudly critical of the government or engage in unwanted religion, your ethnicity does not spare you.
> The organ harvesting also does not seem to have an ethnic component. You tend to be targeted if you're loudly critical of the government or engage in unwanted religion, your ethnicity does not spare you.
If Surgeon Enver Tohti’s testimony is to be believed, then Uyghurs are indeed targeted for organ harvesting.
Most likely, my point is: so are Han Chinese that are imprisoned for a variety of reasons. It's not an ethnic thing, it's primarily an authoritarian-regime-with-little-regard-for-human-rights-thing. Falun Gong practicioners for example are also heavily targeted, and they are predominately Han.
That's actually not true. The Han Chinese are imposed forced sterilization. Even worse, pregnant Han women who violate the policy have been taken from home to do forced abortion. I hate this policy as much as anybody, but I won't call it genocide.
Fair point, my comment was incorrect. I suppose the distinction I would draw is that the restrictions on Han births were imposed by a Han government. That seems different than imposing it on other groups.
The U.N. guidelines for genocide extend beyond suppression of birth. You typically have to meet several of the guidelines, "with intent to destroy," for the UN to classify policy as genocidal. You can find them here:
And even the U.N. guidelines are controversial in genocide study circles due to the ongoing academic debate on intent.
Edit: Intent is the most fierce academic discussion in genocide studies. It's the first major academic topic introduce in Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (Adam Jones), which is the standard introductory book. Here's a collection of books, not even articles, primarily concerned with intent:
* With Intent to Destroy: Reflecting on Genocide
* The Khmer Rouge and the Crime of Genocide: Issues of Genocidal Intent with Regard to the Khmer Rouge Mass Atrocities
* A Collective Theory of Genocidal Intent
* On the Nature of Genocidal Intent
Not to mention dozens of articles, symposia, proceedings, debates, book chapters, reviews, and more. The UN-defined "with intent to destroy" has become the most notorious and controversial phrase in genocide studies. Adam Jones pp 11-39, 49-51 is my recommended reading for a primer on the subject. It's online for free. [0]
Suppression of birth does not mean “limiting”, it means “preventing”. The actual U.N. article phrasing is as follows:
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
If the Chinese government was imposing sterilization on their own people in the native ethnic majority, then that too would qualify under that definition, as long as the intent to "physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" is proven (emphasis mine). The same need to prove intent applies to this situation with the Uighur people as well.
The intent matters. Suppression of birth among Han Chinese was intended to limit population growth. Locking up 1.5 million Uyghurs in concentration camps, sterilizing them, and harvesting their organs is done with quite a different intent.
The UN guidelines that Zenz is following:
> In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
> The second study relied on flimsy media reports and speculation. It was authored by Adrian Zenz, a far-right fundamentalist Christian who opposes homosexuality and gender equality, supports “scriptural spanking” of children, and believes he is “led by God” on a “mission” against China.
> As Washington ratchets up pressure on China, Zenz has been lifted out of obscurity and transformed almost overnight into a go-to pundit on Xinjiang. He has testified before Congress, providing commentary in outlets from the Wall Street Journal to Democracy Now!, and delivering expert quotes in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ recent “China Cables” report. His Twitter bio notes that he is “moving across the Atlantic” from his native Germany.
The difference is now the population growth is collapsing, even after they loosened the limit to 2 kids per family, China desperately needs more babies.
Still a limit, and a low one at that, so doesn’t sound “desperate” at all.
TFA says “I uncovered evidence that the Uighurs are subject to internment in camps if they violate birth control policies, have too many children.” Presumably too many is greater than 2, but who knows.
Of course I can’t answer that question, it’s not like I’m particularly perturbed by minorities having 10 kids. (I am in general perturbed by people giving birth to many children without the means to properly support and educate them, though. This is a problem in many parts of the world.)
My point is either one child policy was a genocide against the ethnic majority (which would frankly be ridiculous) or this one is not a genocide against an ethnic minority. Pretty sure whether the two occurred at the exact same time isn’t a factor in the cited definition.
China desperately needs more female babies to be precise. The one-child policy coupled with certain cultural quirks resulted in 50-60M "excess" men, who will never find a partner, and unhealthy competition for the rest.
It's the other way around: rural ethnic minorities were previously allowed three children. This limit hasn't changed, but Han Chinese in rural areas are now allowed to have the same number of children.
Does China really treat ethnic majority and Uyghurs equally?
> Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang
> The population control measures are backed by mass detention both as a threat and as a punishment for failure to comply
> But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show. Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even for having the three children allowed by the law
> Leaked data obtained and corroborated by the AP showed that of 484 camp detainees listed in Karakax county in Xinjiang, 149 were there for having too many children - the most common reason for holding them. Time in a camp — what the government calls “education and training” — for parents with too many children is written policy in at least three counties, notices found by Zenz confirmed
> While fines also apply to Han Chinese, only minorities are sent to the detention camps if they cannot pay, according to interviews and data
> Seven former detainees told the AP that they were force-fed birth control pills or injected with fluids, often with no explanation. Many felt dizzy, tired or ill, and women stopped getting their periods. After being released and leaving China, some went to get medical check-ups and found they were sterile
Why was "report says" just removed? It's in the headline of TFA and it was in the HN headline a minute ago. I'd consider it a salient piece of information given that the report isn't authored by the UN but by some christian fundamentalist.
> Zenz co-authored the book Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation which links modern trends, including gender equality, homosexuality and bans on corporal punishment, to the power of the Antichrist.
The more I look at it, history is one ethnic group against the other. The winners do what they want, the weak suffer as prisoners of war.