Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 103 posts

Re: China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

#81

Post by FpUser »

jplr8922 wrote: post #63
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To do what, cover up an ongoing totalitarian oppression of millions of people on the basis of their ethnicity?

I agree with you. A month ago I found myself in a debate about the moral equivalency of the US empire vs CCP. My opponent seems to think that any form of power is equaly bad and that the goals and intent does not matter. Therefore, US and China are ''both equals''. I fail to understand how can this form on one-sidedness can come from...

What matters to normal people are the results. When you bomb their houses, cause ruin, starvation, mass displacement etc. etc the victims do not give a shit about your "noble" goals. To them you are just as bad if not worse.

Re: China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

#82

Post by baybal2 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #54
baybal2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cheering on a todays stalin or hitler, because you are in opposition to some factions of your democratic society, makes you a complicit in their atrocities. Absolutely. I see really hard to fathom log from fellows who scream "There is no Democracy in America!," and then decide to run to China. Never met such personally, but I know such are all around the tech industry here. Chinese medias are exhilariating about th…

""There is no Democracy in America!," and then decide to run to China" Are people actually saying this today? I mean, I was discussing with one guy who claimed the corona dictatorship is so bad, he rather goes to north corea. But he didn't go and I stopped wasting time arguing with such people. But this person for instance would have qualifed as mentally ill and drug abuser. Not a normal person. So what normal person…

> So what normal person is saying this today? Or is this a straw man?

Not normal persons, but people in the tech community who quietly cynically sympathise with fascist ideology, and some more or less actively working as apologists.

Re: China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

#83

Post by luckylion »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #80
luckylion wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't argue that they are equals, but consider that the people you talk to might not care for the stated intents ("we will bring peace to the middle east because we're altruists"), but rather the obvious results ("we've removed stabilizing strong-men and now we have open chattel slavery back in Libya"). China is doing lots of shady stuff, and they too claim that it's for the best -- only in this case we (as in m…

Genocide isn't "shady stuff" it's fucking genocide.

I was referencing things like their grab of Tibet, power projection in the South China sea, projects in Africa etc. Please don't try to read everything in the worst possible interpretations.

Re: China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

#84

Post by koonsolo »

hutzlibu wrote: post #16
koonsolo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know who the founder of the PRC is, right? If not, it's Mao, maybe that name rings a bell. Basically the same when Germany would now be ruled by the Nazi party, and you would claim they didn't really do anything bad.

Last time I checked, Mao is not in charge anymore. Since a very long time. So anyway, you claim, china is worse, than the nazis regime? I would like to get some evidence of gas chambers then pls. Also, how many wars did communist china started, compared to the US?

> china is worse, than the nazis regime?

First of all, either you say China is worse than Germany, or PRC is worse than the Nazi regime.

And to answer that question, yes, Mao killed way more people than Hitler.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogen...

Re: China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

#85

Post by spookybones »

jplr8922 wrote: post #63
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To do what, cover up an ongoing totalitarian oppression of millions of people on the basis of their ethnicity?

I agree with you. A month ago I found myself in a debate about the moral equivalency of the US empire vs CCP. My opponent seems to think that any form of power is equaly bad and that the goals and intent does not matter. Therefore, US and China are ''both equals''. I fail to understand how can this form on one-sidedness can come from...

If you study the US empire’s clandestine coups and embargoes and the resulting mass casualties, it’s a valid debate. I still think the US is the slightly lesser evil at the moment. The bigger point is that none of this should be happening. Saying “well your side is worst” is a moral misdirection. Rather, there should be mutual agreement that these are atrocities that need to end.

Re: China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

#86

Post by leereeves »

hutzlibu wrote: post #56
leereeves wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boycotts, disinvestment, and sanctions is how civil rights movements are fought. Of course the Chinese people won't know why other countries are pulling away, because their government won't allow that information to reach them and will blame foreign enemies instead, but blaming foreign powers only works for a limited time. And what better strategy would you suggest? What we shouldn't do is overlook abuses in other na…

"Boycotts, disinvestment, and sanctions is how civil rights movements are fought." How about: leading by good example? There are plenty of chinese people outside of the great firewall regulary going back. So that information would get in.

Why not both? We can (and should) lead by good example while also actively opposing human rights abuses in China.

Re: China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

#87

Post by mdpopescu »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #26
mdpopescu wrote: post #7

Wait till you hear that the US Senate pressured Facebook...

To do what, cover up an ongoing totalitarian oppression of millions of people on the basis of their ethnicity?

Almost right. On the basis of their political affiliation, mostly.

Re: China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

#88

Post by why_Mr_Anderson »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #79
jplr8922 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. A month ago I found myself in a debate about the moral equivalency of the US empire vs CCP. My opponent seems to think that any form of power is equaly bad and that the goals and intent does not matter. Therefore, US and China are ''both equals''. I fail to understand how can this form on one-sidedness can come from...

Classic false equivalence. Compare US democratic and republican parties. While they both have their issues the modern D party versus the R party is a clear winner. One supports the general welfare and has humane policies while respecting the will of the majority while the R party recently tried to install a fascist leader over the votes of the majority of the country, the same leader which also tried to have Congress…

I'm a bit out of touch with American politics, please remind me which one is the 'fascist leader' : village idiot that won previous elections or creepy uncle that won the recet ones?

Re: China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

#89

Post by krapp »

why_Mr_Anderson wrote: post #88
stjohnswarts wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic false equivalence. Compare US democratic and republican parties. While they both have their issues the modern D party versus the R party is a clear winner. One supports the general welfare and has humane policies while respecting the will of the majority while the R party recently tried to install a fascist leader over the votes of the majority of the country, the same leader which also tried to have Congress…

I'm a bit out of touch with American politics, please remind me which one is the 'fascist leader' : village idiot that won previous elections or creepy uncle that won the recet ones?

American political discourse 101:

Republicans = Fascists and Literally All Nazis

Democrats = Marxists and Literally All Pedophiles

Re: China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

#90

Post by throwawaysea »

illustriousbear wrote: post #64

Australia is riddled with this kind of Chinese pressure, particularly at universities. My university went as far as to install an ugly out of place confucious statue. This was followed by being pressured to cancel a talk from the Dalai Llama. Then more recently PRC supporting students engaged in suppression of pro Hong Kong students with no consequences.

It's remarkable how much soft power China has. I've seen some Australian news videos on YouTube that highlight the issues you're referring to. In America, I've been seeing the same, although in a quieter way:

China is seemingly the only power that can quiet the American far left, who have for the past several years been obsessed with "justice" and "equity", EXCEPT when it comes to China. As a recent example, LeBron James took to Twitter to speak against new voting laws in Georgia (https://thepostmillennial.com/lebron-james-boycott-georgia-m...), and drew much criticism in Twitter replies because of his hypocrisy on more clear cut issues of human rights. He's been mostly quiet on the NBA's ties to China, and has even made comments in the past that have been described as repackaged Chinese government propaganda (https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/what-did-lebron-james-...). Similarly, Apple is known for being "woke", and has a history of left-leaning political activism like curating app store content or enacting changes like replacing the pistol emoji with a squirt gun emoji (https://www.newsweek.com/apple-replaces-gun-emoji-water-pist...). But Apple and others reportedly lobbied against bills that would ban the use of forced labor (https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/30/apple-nike-coca-cola-lo...). Tim Cook has also sat quietly as over 150 Asian activist groups asked him for more concrete action (https://www.imore.com/coalition-activist-groups-pen-open-let...).

I guess in the end everyone only cares about issues to the extent it does not affect their own finances, and to the extent they can continue feeling membership in their political tribe even if they're being unprincipled.

Post reply on HN