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In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

nytimes.com

481–484 of 484 posts

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#481
post #434
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that we put Japanese people (including US citizens with Japanese ancestry) in concentration camps during WWII. "Internment camps", we called them... what a euphemism. And unfortunately our record isn't great on forced sterilization either: https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/forced-sterilization-policies-us... https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilizat... https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2020/11/04/ame…

'Concentration camp' started as a euphemism too. The Nazis actually borrowed the originally English term.

Yeah, I never understood how "concentration" fit in that usage. Wikipedia says

> The term concentration camp originates from the Spanish–Cuban Ten Years' War when Spanish forces detained Cuban civilians in camps in order to more easily combat guerrilla forces. Over the following decades the British during the Second Boer War and the Americans during the Philippine–American War also used concentration camps.

So this goes back to the mid 1800s, not just from WWII. But I guess the Nazis didn't want to correctly label them "extermination camps", big surprise there.

Then there's:

> The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."

So I guess the "concentration" bit is because they are taking people of a certain group and "concentrating" them physically in one location. So... okay... but still a really weird term to me.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#482
post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You recall incorrectly > McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to communism and socialism.[1] The term originally referred to the controversial practices and policies of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), and has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting from the late 1940s through the 1950s. https://en…

Doesn't seem too far off what I said. A widespread persecution of people with left-wing politics. Some other groups such as homosexuals also suffered. There was a tenuous and absurd justification of "un-American"ness or of communist sympathies.

Yeah that was my fault. I completely misread the comment.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The collateral damage from this error is a setback for the China Initiative, as it undermines public support for the program and discourages legitimate researchers from applying for government funding, hurting US scientific progress." Was that so hard?

Is your comment meant to be an improvement?

Yes.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that is the right takeaway. The US espouses freedom. Unless someone is actually spying, their personal beliefs and political affiliations shouldn’t be subject to government scrutiny.

That statement is nigh ungrammatical, anyway illogical. "is actually spying" is a present tense. "shouldn't [unless]" is either a past tense, thus an illogical consequent to the present tense, or it is a hypothetical, irrealis or desiderative subjunctive in which case it merely implies that someone should not be "spying", in effect. This offers no objective criterion for the government's scrutiny, and the article doe…

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