Earlier quoted context omitted.
The word 'harvested' is so much nicer than 'stolen'. That makes the 'optics' better. (i feel sick now)
Is it? In the context of people's organs they're both pretty abhorrent.
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China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tribunal
71–80 of 254 posts
Re: China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tribunal
#72I quietly wondered, some weeks ago, when China’s “Khashoggi moment” might occur. This probably isn’t it, unless an individual story can emerge that can capture the public’s revulsion in a way that, for some reason, only an individual story can. It took one journalist’s murder and dismemberment to finally make Mohammed Bin-Salman politically radioactive in a way that thousands of dead and starving Yemenis could not. A…
China took and kidnapped their own international official personified in the head of the Interpol. Not much more than a squeak. So, I don't think you're going to hear about "unknowns" much.
The Saudi journalist is an odd exception. Any other journalist (remember the Russian journalist assassinated, or the Maltese journalist). Like there is a squeak but not much else --which tells me there is something about the Saudi case.
Re: China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tribunal
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine how much more efficiently the Chinese government could identify involuntary donors if it had better access to people's personal information. Perhaps through a search engine of some kind. One with a harmless-sounding name. Maybe "Dragonfly" would be a good name.
Google's mission statement is "to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful". I'm sure we can all be happy if, with the help of Google, China becomes a more harmonious society, without any pesky troublemakers, and that hard-working Chinese Communist Party officials get the transplants they so deserve.
You must be using a definition of "universal" that I'm unfamiliar with, since Dragonfly removes key information on things like human rights.
Re: China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tribunal
#74Why does the west continue to tolerate China as a trading partner?
China is pretty obviously building their empire. They, as a government, appear to have almost no regard whatsoever for human life. They, as a government, appear to have absolutely no regard whatsoever for national sovereignty. They, as a government, appear to have absolutely no regard for the environment.
It just seems completely inevitable to me that China eventually wants to conquer the world. Why is the west enriching them, and by proxy funding their research into war machines when it seems obvious that these things will eventually be used against us?
These acts are atrocities, no doubt. But these atrocities aren't being committed by some dictator in some small, isolated country. These atrocities are being committed by a regime that has all but said that it intends to conquer the rest of the planet and export these atrocities as the standard operating procedure for the entire planet, and which very probably WILL DO THIS if something doesn't occur to change the course.
People are upset about the "trade war" we are currently in, or about to be in, or were in, or whatever the pundit of the hour says. I can't say I agree that restricting trade with China, and encouraging the infrastructure being built there to be built in the US, or at the very least in a country that respects human rights instead, is a bad thing.
Re: China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tribunal
#75When I was younger, maybe five years ago or so, I was living in Boston and I'd consistently see a pack of Chinese protestors outside the public library at Copley (very popular area) holding up signs, looking to gain attention for this very issue. They spoke to me as best as they could, handed me a pamphlet with hard-to-parse English but nonetheless gruesome descriptions, and asked for my signature along with any othe…
I lived down the road from the Chinese consulate in Houston, it being along my walk from home to the grocery story. I would see a decent-sized protest once or twice a month. One was always Tibet-related, the other would vary, but at recall least once seeing something along the lines of what you describe.
Re: China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tribunal
#76U.S. perspective, writing this. I find this is an area where a "moral decision" is rather clear-cut. And it highlights the... "amorality", at best, of much of our relationship (whether speaking at the personal level or the state/economy level) with contemporary China. With our technology, we've enabled and empowered a political and economic structure that has not... "sorted its shit" as part of achieving same. Simult…
At first look, from a Western perspective, this is 100% clear-cut morally bad. But I've also learned a limited amount about the Chinese moral perspective in college, and it can be a useful exercise to examine how someone who doesn't have a Judeo-Christian/Locke moral framework may view this practice. In some ways, the harvesting of organs from political prisoners can be viewed as the trolley problem. Killing one poli…
I feel much the same way about forced labour in prisons, but, unfortunately, our courts have made numerous arguments (That they feel are quite reasonable) to support it.
"They shouldn't have become criminals." "They cost us money, make them earn their keep." "The constitution permits this." are examples of how we justify that bit of inhuman utilitarianism.
Re: China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tribunal
#77U.S. perspective, writing this. I find this is an area where a "moral decision" is rather clear-cut. And it highlights the... "amorality", at best, of much of our relationship (whether speaking at the personal level or the state/economy level) with contemporary China. With our technology, we've enabled and empowered a political and economic structure that has not... "sorted its shit" as part of achieving same. Simult…
At first look, from a Western perspective, this is 100% clear-cut morally bad. But I've also learned a limited amount about the Chinese moral perspective in college, and it can be a useful exercise to examine how someone who doesn't have a Judeo-Christian/Locke moral framework may view this practice. In some ways, the harvesting of organs from political prisoners can be viewed as the trolley problem. Killing one poli…
> At first look, from a Western perspective, this is 100% clear-cut morally bad.
There is no such thing as a western perspective or morals. Just like there is no such thing as an asian perspective or morals. The western, just like the asian or even chinese, perspective is so vast and disparate and diverse that it is futile to pigeonhole one region into a single perspective.
Case in point, the "west" encompasses everything from christian charity to nazism to black enslavement to native genocide. We aren't a monolith with one set of values. Never have been, never will be.
And if you think western perspective views this as 100% morally bad, then you haven't researched the history of western medicine.
> But I've also learned a limited amount about the Chinese moral perspective in college, and it can be a useful exercise to examine how someone who doesn't have a Judeo-Christian/Locke moral framework may view this practice.
There is no such thing as judeo-christian anything. The judeo and christian are morally antithetical. The basis of christ and christianity is the fundamental shift from judeo values and morals to christian ones. I grew up christian but am an atheist, but I cringe whenever people use "judeo-christian". Also, "judeo-christian" has nothing to do with Locke's philosophy.
> In some ways, the harvesting of organs from political prisoners can be viewed as the trolley problem. Killing one political prisoner (an 'undesirable' in Chinese society) could save a number of lives of upstanding citizens.
In the west, we call this utilitarianism. It isn't anything special to china. One of the most important thinkers in the past few hundred years ( john stuart mills) formulated the philosophy.
The problems with china isn't a "chinese" problem. It is a human problem. Whatever china is guilty of is what we all are or have been guilty of.
Re: China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tribunal
#78Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
> "According to the reports, political prisoners, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, are being executed "on demand" in order to provide organs to recipients." Wild... I had no idea this was going on. There are a lot of things about China that I disagree with, but this might be the worst thing I've heard so far.
Unbelievable. It would be an atrocity merely to rob someone of “non-vital” organs that they can live without, like a spare kidney.
To murder someone and profit from the sale of vital organs is simply beyond my comprehension. I cannot fathom a more monstrous act.
Re: China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tribunal
#79any tricks to get full article?
Google "Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China" and it should turn up the website of the panel itself, and a few sites that covered the release of the interim report. The BMJ article is a news article covering that release, not a research article, so the BMJ article has nothing that isn't readily in the other coverage.
If you find this report interesting, this Wikipedia article would probably also be interesting [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...