moderatecentrist

joined 3 weeks ago
[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I think the testimonies of rape are credible and major news organisations from multiple countries clearly think that leaked police files from Xinjiang are credible. I'm not aware of similar accusations regarding American prisons concerning black inmates.

Anyway, I expect you just won't believe anything the BBC says (which I just linked to). I think the BBC are credible and reliable, but if you don't think that, okay. I can't change your mind of course. We will just have different views.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 1 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

are there any ONGOING acts of mass mistreatment of Uyghur in Xinjiang?

I don't know. But even if the detention camps have closed (whether they have, I don't know), the treatment of Uyghurs for a while still seems to have been bad. I'm not trying to say "China is worse than the West" or anything like that. I just think that massive internment camps for ethnic minorities, where rape allegedly happens, don't seem like a great thing - whether they appear in China, the USA, or anywhere else.

there was a series of terrorist attacks in China in 2013-2014 onwards, coming from Islamist radicals linked to Al-Qaida and ISIS. The government responded later with a big reeducation program in the province of Xinjiang

If the US had done the same thing in their country after 9/11, I bet you would have criticised it.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 1 points 3 days ago (5 children)

According to the BBC, Xi Jinping himself may have been pushing for the system of camps used for the internment of Uyghurs:

In a speech, stamped as “classified” and delivered by Zhao Kezhi, China’s Minister for Public Security, on a visit to Xinjiang in June 2018, he suggests that at least two million people are infected with “extremist thought” in southern Xinjiang alone.

Peppered with references to President Xi Jinping, the speech heaps praise on the Chinese leader for his “important instructions” for the construction of new facilities and an increase in funding for prisons to cope with the influx in detainees necessary to reach that two million target.

You mention "massive amounts of footage" - the article I have just linked to has photos taken inside these internment camps, but it seems the wider world was only able to see these photos once Chinese police computers had been hacked (the source of the info in that article).

Anyway, maybe the truth is that every country is capable of bad things, whether it's the US, or Israel, or China, or any other country.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 2 points 3 days ago (7 children)

Okay I read what you wrote. You say it's just random instances of police violence in Xinjiang but it looks like an orchestrated programme of forcing Uyghurs to become communist loyalists. The BBC looked at documents leaked from Chinese authorities (these documents were leaked to other media outlets too such as Der Spiegel in Germany):

The cache contains another secret speech, delivered in 2017 by Chen Quanguo - until recently Xinjiang’s hardline Communist Party secretary.

“For some, even five years re-education may not be enough,” he tells his audience of senior military and police cadres, a seeming admission that for as long as any Uyghur continues to feel a loyalty to identity or faith at least as strong as to the Party, there’s no end in sight.

You mention fabricated western propaganda, and sure that can happen. Surely that would come from governments though rather than media companies.

As for the New York Times and the BBC. Maybe you think they spin things in a certain way, or that they don't cover what they should cover. But that's a different question to the question of whether their claims are factual. You could have a media outlet that selectively covers only particular topics, but nonetheless their facts may still be accurate.

You might dislike the US and Israel, and sure they have done some terrible things over the years, but maybe there are lots of countries that have done terrible things. Maybe China is one of those countries.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I found it by clicking on my inbox's RSS feed. If you want to copy it, this is what I can see:

Regarding testimonies, apparently there are several women

There are some isolated testimonies, true. I don’t doubt police violence has taken place, as it does everywhere. Mistreatments of individuals by the police is a recurring phenomenon everywhere in the world, though, and not isolated or specific to China. I condemn the isolated events, but they don’t indicate widespread abuse of prisoners.

Furthermore, testimonies of atrocity propaganda are a well-known tool of the West, such as the infamous Nayirah testimony used to justify the Gulf war. It’s well known that bounties are offered by intelligence agencies to manufacture stories of atrocity propaganda, and so when using testimonies one has to be careful for generalizing. It’s better to refer to independent material evidence, of which essentially none exists for any ongoing mistreatment of Uyghurs.

The “leaked documents” feature internal communications of the party talking about adopting a strong stance against terrorism following the radical islamist terrorist attacks in 2013-onwards. They show no proof of mass mistreatment of Uyghurs, and the whole thing is more of a nothingburger consisting of a few questionably translated bold claims by government officials.

The New York Crimes and the BBC have been complicit over the past years in the whitewashing of the genocidal state of Israel, which has proven that beyond ethical journalism, they’re underpinned by supporting the US-aligned geopolitical narratives.

I will read through it now.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (12 children)

On the topic of Palestine, I think it's completely wrong that Palestinian civilians have been killed with Israeli bombs and due to an Israeli starvation campaign. But I think that's a separate issue to whether or not the PRC has mistreated ethnic minorities.

Regarding testimonies, apparently there are several women who have talked about rape and sexual abuse in Xinjiang camps. In the West, when a woman claims she's been raped, people on the left will often say we should believe those women. If we're going to take rape allegations by western women seriously then we should probably take rape allegations by Xinjiang women seriously too.

Also apparently there have been leaked documents from the Chinese government which give details about the Xinjiang camps.

Those last two links are to The New York Times and the BBC, and I guess you'll say they're "fake news" or whatever. I'm pretty sure they're both accurate sources and if they do publish anything false they will usually publish corrections where they admit their mistakes.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 0 points 4 days ago (14 children)

This is about a deportation of Uyghurs from Thailand

Yes, but it mentions their assessment of the situation in China.

Sky News (Australian equivalent of FOX)

Wrong. The British Sky News is different (owned by Comcast, who also own NBC and Universal Pictures). Murdoch sold it. But Murdoch does still own Sky News Australia.

You keep proving that you have no idea about the topic

I provided stories that you have been unable to disprove. Everything they say stands until you can disprove it.

I don’t defend human right abuses

You've spent the last few posts doing exactly that.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 0 points 4 days ago (16 children)

The reeducation camps were closed years ago

I found this from Amnesty International earlier this year. It says that "Uyghur and other non-Han ethnic groups in Xinjiang have faced torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance". It mentions "internment camps" and it doesn't say those camps have been closed.

BBC was constantly airing lies of the genocidal maniacs of Isntreal, such as mass rapes during Oct 7th in an attempt to do atrocity propaganda against Palestine to justify genocide. They’re literal genocide supporters.

Here you have an interview with an openly lying genocide supporter on prime time.

The BBC airs the views of many people, but it doesn't mean the BBC agrees with those views. E.g. they did a high-profile interview with Prince Andrew about the sex scandal surrounding him. That doesn't mean the BBC agrees with everything Prince Andrew said.

On the topic of Israel and Palestine, I have seen Palestine's head diplomat to the UK interviewed on the BBC, multiple times I think, such as this.

based not on independent journalism but on supposed “anonymous interviews”

Anonymous interviews are part of journalism. Some people don't want to provide their names because they could be persecuted. Maybe you dislike the fact that the BBC is not "independent" because it's owned by the UK government. In which case, look at the articles I provided from The Guardian and Sky News - neither of them is owned by a state.

TLDR: I don't understand how people who are supposedly on the left try to defend human rights abuses just because they're done by countries that aren't allied with the US.

 

The victory of Milei's party comes after Donald Trump threatened to cut US aid to Argentina if Milei's party lost the election.

This is despite Trump previously being critical of "foreign interference" in the 2024 US presidential election, when members of the UK's ruling Labour party assisted (in a personal capacity) the campaign of Kamala Harris.

Rules for thee but not for me, I guess.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 0 points 4 days ago (18 children)

Hardly can you call it “colonize” when there isn’t a population in said islands. At any rate it’s much less violent than the poverty and lack of political representation that Puertoricans are imposed by the US.

Whatever you call it, I would still say it's imperialist behaviour of China to take over islands that it doesn't seem to have a right to. Regarding Puerto Rico, I think they should have proper representation in the US Congress. Are Puerto Ricans being interned in camps like Uyghurs in Xinjiang though?

Taking the BBC seriously on the mistreatment of Muslims in China is as laughable as taking Russia Today seriously on the mistreatment of ethnic Russians in Donetsk.

No it isn't, because RT seems to air lies, while I don't think the BBC does. For example, RT featured an interview with two Russian military intelligence agents who seemed to have lied to hide the fact that they poisoned Sergei Skripal in England in 2018. Can you provide an example of the BBC doing something like this?

any independent journalistic work post-2021 about mass mistreatment of Uyghurs

What is wrong with the BBC article I provided? You haven't shown that the BBC lies or is unreliable. It looks like The Guardian has also reported on this story though and here are articles from Sky News.

your lack of concern for Ukrainian mass economic and population crisis

I genuinely am just not aware of what you were referring to. Anyway, I hope that Ukrainians and Russians can live in peace, and preferably with political freedom. The first step towards achieving this would be the Kremlin withdrawing their invasion of Ukraine. I think Ukraine should be able to make their own democratic decisions. Ideally every country should be able to make independent democratic decisions I think.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 0 points 5 days ago (20 children)

Tell me a war in which China has participated over the last 30 years

I guess the answer to my question is "no" then...

China simply doesn’t engage in remotely imperialist behaviour compared to the west

They're colonising islands in the South China Sea which other South East Asian countries claim, even though a UN tribunal ruled that China's claims aren't valid. Also what should people think of seeming mistreatment of ethnic minorities in China? Of course there are examples of western countries mistreating minorities, e.g. the USA interning Japanese-Americans during WW2. I don't know if the USA is currently doing anything similar to what is described in the article I just linked to though.

Surely since you care about Ukraine, you condemn the capitalist regime in Ukraine which led to the defunding of healthcare, education, the removal of guaranteed housing and guaranteed employment, and a massive demographic crisis of loss of life through hunger, crime, drug abuse and lack of healthcare, which killed millions of Ukrainians prematurely?

Did this happen after the USSR collapsed? I don't know enough about Ukrainian history to be honest. I do think though that it's probably a good idea if world borders, such as those of Ukraine currently, aren't redrawn by force. It's probably better to settle disputes democratically and diplomatically.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk -1 points 5 days ago (22 children)

I think it's right to say that Palestinian civilians should be able to live in peace, and it would good if poorer people can get healthcare. On the point of "imperialism", would you condemn seemingly imperialist behaviour from countries like Russia and China as much as you would condemn imperialist behaviour from western countries? I see users from Lemmy.ml and Hexbear who defend the behaviour of Russia and China for whatever reason.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 0 points 1 week ago

For some time now, I have written stuff on the internet under the assumption that one day, my identity will be publicly tied to everything I wrote. Surely in the future it will be easy to give an example of my writing to an AI bot, perhaps combined with some facts about my life, and the bot would be able to find anonymous posts that were likely written by me, across the internet.

 

Here's my attempt to explain the situation in a brief way. DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails, wrote some things which are considered racist by some people. This caused a prominent Ruby programmer to withdraw his large sponsorship of Ruby Central, a non-profit which organises Ruby conferences, because DHH spoke at one of their conferences. Therefore Ruby Central ended up very dependent on Shopify, a large company, for funding. One theory (mentioned in the article) is that Shopify (where DHH is a board member) then pressured Ruby Central to perform a "hostile takeover" of the RubyGems GitHub organisation, where they revoked the maintainer privileges of long-time contributors. What is RubyGems? It's a website which is the de facto standard source for "gems", which are Ruby packages. I guess this is equivalent to NPM in the Node/JavaScript world.

If you want to know the potentially racist stuff said by DHH, he essentially seemed to be unhappy that London is "no longer full of native Brits". He says "native Brits" now make up "about a third" of London. So by "native Brits" he seems to mean the White British ethnic group, because they made up 37% of London in the 2021 census.

The Ruby programmer who withdrew his sponsorship of Ruby Central (allegedly worth $250,000 according to the article) said this: "I rescinded a six-figure grant because the org invited DHH, a white supremacist, to speak. We cannot tolerate hateful people as leaders in our communities."

The "hostile takeover" of RubyGems has led some Ruby programmers to create an alternative to the RubyGems website. This alternative is gem.coop. Also there is an open letter signed by influential Ruby programmers which calls for Ruby on Rails to be forked so that DHH no longer has an association with it.

The article that this post links to is an update to the situation: Ruby Central is now taking steps to try and cool the controversy.

Thoughts on this?

Edit: fixed typo.

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