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'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

theguardian.com

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Re: 'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

#111

Post by Grangar »

ddrdrck_ wrote: post #101
elliekelly wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Brainwashing millions of people is a terrible thing to do, but I don't believe it is on the same level of atrocity than genocide and mass murdering. Nazis did not try to "assimilate" Jews by forcing them to reject their religion and traditions, and by forcing weddings between aryan and jews (could you imagine that ?).

There have been reports of Mengele-tier experimenting on Uyghur prisoners such as unsedated organ transplants. If these are true I'd say it's already on the same level vertically and only has horizontal scale left to exceed.

Re: 'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

#112

Post by murph-almighty »

Faark wrote: post #91
murph-almighty wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: After writing this I realized the parent comment was talking about an episode of South Park from S12, not the recent episode that led to the ban in China. I'll leave this up but read into this with that context! You should really actually watch the episode. It's a blatant dig at China's government, censorship policies, and treatment of political prisoners. Its treatment of `China invading the US` were not out o…

The parent was commenting one the episode linked in that image (S12E8), since that was that GP compared the current episode to.

Damn! Thanks for the clarification there, I'll edit my post to reflect that.

Re: 'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

#113

Post by gizmo686 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #20
wjoe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The USA as the only nation in the world with true free speech protections" Is this accurate? Legally, I understand that free speech is protected in the US constitution. I'm sure it's not the only country in the world with free speech laws, but I don't know how the specifics compare. Culturally, the US seems less tolerant of free speech than plenty of other places in the world. Obviously China is orders of magnitude…

>> The USA as the only nation in the world with true free speech protections. > Is this accurate? Legally, I understand that free speech is protected in the US constitution. I'm sure it's not the only country in the world with free speech laws, but I don't know how the specifics compare. There is at least a very good case to be made that the US has by far the strongest free speech guarantee. Commonwealth countries an…

From Wikipedia on the Official Secrets Act [0]

> "The offences under the Act, that can be committed only by persons who, as the case may be, are or have been Crown servants, government contractors, or members of the security and intelligence services, can be committed only where the information, document or other article in question is or has been in the possession of the person in question by virtue of their position as such."

This seems less onerous then US laws related to classified materials. As with the UK, "normal" citizens are not bound by the law. However, those with a clearence are barred from speaking about classified material regardless of if they acuired access through their work. (They are also barred from reading classified materials, but that might be just a condition of maintaining clearence)

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Secrets_Act_1989

Re: 'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

#114

Post by awb »

dekhn wrote: post #39

I have to say, this is really the only way to respond to China when it comes to their no-humor censors: just come out and mock them. They don't really have any way to reply. One wonders if there is an entire revolutionary class within China sharing South Park videos for freedom.

> “Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts.”

It's interesting that we used to think the more connected we were the more other countries would see and appreciate our democracy and start to adapt it.

This is the first time I can remember communism and censorship flowing the other way.

> “It’s not worth living in a world where China controls my country’s art,” says one character in the episode.

About sums it up.

Re: 'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

#115

Post by Phillips126 »

jotm wrote: post #68
Phillips126 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the causes of WW1[0] and WW2[1], seeing the name "South Park" on the WW3 wikipedia page [assuming the world still exists] would be the most bizarre thing I could imagine. That being said, it may just happen! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II

That would go down as the single dumbest reason of civilization collapse, surely?

Without a doubt!

Re: 'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

#116

Post by hevi_jos »

umvi wrote: post #106

I don't get the Winnie the Pooh meme. Is that a real thing Chinese people get upset about?

No. It is a joke that most people in China did about its leader from a picture of Obama.

It is the leader, who appointed himself as dictator for life, who can't stand this joke. And has forbidden it.

Chinese people laugh at the joke. It is only that the leader finds it not funny at all.

Re: 'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

#117

Post by dTal »

jaynetics wrote: post #73
dTal wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they weren't, how on Earth would you know? Being anything other than publicly "overwhelmingly supportive of the government" gets you killed. I believe many Chinese citizens are aware that their situation is not ideal ("oppressed" is probably not quite the right word), because I believe at least some subset of Chinese citizens are not brainwashed morons and any idiot can see what's going on. If they really had over…

> any idiot can see what's going on Yes? Would you want to try circumventing the great firewall without getting caught? I fear the Chinese are mostly supportive. Most Germans also supported Hitler before things went awry, and his election results were superb even before massive manipulation began. There was still a substantial minority that didn't support him and resisted at great personal cost, much like some educat…

>some educated Chinese citizens are resisting at great personal cost now, knowing that many share their sentiments

It seems we agree.

>assuming that most people will find a way to look beyond the propaganda seems overly optimistic to me.

Most people? Yes, that would be overly optimistic. But enough people to render "overwhelming support" inaccurate? Not overly optimistic at all.

Re: 'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

#118

Post by Konnstann »

notduncansmith wrote: post #103
Konnstann wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give me an example of something a non-white, non-middle class person can't say or do in public? Maybe it's my limited world-view, but I can't think of anything specific.

Depending on where you are, simply leaving the house. Black people are more likely to be "randomly" stopped, more likely to be searched at a stop, and more likely to be arrested at a stop. Other statistics highlight similar issues faced by other minorities. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/black-people-more...

The article you linked draws more of a link between income levels and police violence than it does race. They explicitly say that the crime rates of low-income neighborhoods, populated by majority minority groups, are higher than that of more affluent neighborhoods. Furthermore most of the injuries happen when the person stopped has a gun, regardless of race.

Not great, and certainly unacceptable, but not equivalent to not being able to "simply leave the house".

Re: 'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

#119

Post by krilly »

umvi wrote: post #106

I don't get the Winnie the Pooh meme. Is that a real thing Chinese people get upset about?

It's a streisand effect thing. Pooh was banned for one stupid meme, which made him a symbol of the ludicrousness of Chinese censorship and oppression. So yeah, it's a real thing in China

Re: 'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology

#120

Post by throwaway_bad »

hevi_jos wrote: post #99
corodra wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, lets not forget their detention camps for ethnic minorities they don't like: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/23/china-footage-... I mean at this rate, I seriously think in a decade or two, we're going to find a Holocaust level event has been going on in China that's going to make the Nazis look like amateurs. But instead, we're focused on stupid left/right political differences and figuring out wheth…

For your information, Mr Hitler killed over 5 million people. Mao killed way over 30 million. Absolutely incompetent, he manage to remain in power just using terror. The other day there was an 70th anniversary of the founding of PRC and this criminal's gigantic picture was at the hotspot.

Technically speaking it's not really apples to apples. One is due to malice (hitler was actively trying to exterminate a race). The other is due to incompetence (mao would've preferred if those people didn't die but was too stupid to predict the result of his actions).

Not trying to defend either of them of course. But just for the record books we would should have a saner way of counting.

If you're going to attribute deaths due to lack of foresight then the inventor of cars probably have one of the highest kill counts. Or Genghis Khan for fathering such a large population of mortals who eventually needs to die.

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