111–120 of 132 posts
I talked about this recently, and I was reminded of the Blackhawk War. I have read Blackhawk's memoirs, because it's such a part of my community, but nobody knows it. There were extenuating circumstances (the British gun-running down the Mississipi). U.S. forces suffered important defeats (Campbell's Island, and the Battle of Credit Island that humbled future president Zachary Taylor.) I learned from another source t…
We're aware enough to change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like what the US and Canadian government did to indigenous children. That's not to excuse anything the Chinese government does but it feels like they dusted off an old playbook.
> But they say the worst punishment was being sent to the school's basement. Lütfullah says the teachers told him ghosts lived there, and children including him were locked there in the dark, alone, for hours at a time. I wasn't aware the US or Canadian governments had institutionalized these kinds of punishment (or similar) to specifically indigenous people in a peaceful period. Was this really the case and were cou…
> It's hard to find a country a century ago that didn't behave like an absolute savage.
Behaving like a "savage" has very little to do with time but where countries are in their development. Reality is countries who has capability to address restive minorities until they're merely marginalized or managable, will. That's prerequisite to internal security and domestic serenity. And there's no non-savage way of doing it, pretending we live in an enlightened age doesn't make the underlying tensions and security dilemmas go away. Just about the "best" we can expect is less bloody systems of integration (cultural genocide), that's what's happening in XJ, plenty of carrots along with the sticks. It's how most of PRC was harmonized, now it's simply XJ's turn (and other previously unreachable restive populations) because PRC has the resources to reach that far. The upside is CCP doesn't half ass these things, chances are Uyghurs will be sinicized and more integrated in PRC society before Canada solves it's Indigenous issues or US/EU their minority issues. It's the alternative to platitudes like "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice". And that scares people.
> In quiet, polite voices, Aysu and Lütfullah Kuçar describe the nearly 20 months they spent in state boarding schools in China's western region of Xinjiang, forcibly separated from their family. > Under the watchful gaze of their father, the two ethnically Uyghur children say that their heads were shaved and that class monitors and teachers frequently hit them, locked them in dark rooms and forced them to hold stres…
Sounds like what the US and Canadian government did to indigenous children. That's not to excuse anything the Chinese government does but it feels like they dusted off an old playbook.
> In quiet, polite voices, Aysu and Lütfullah Kuçar describe the nearly 20 months they spent in state boarding schools in China's western region of Xinjiang, forcibly separated from their family. > Under the watchful gaze of their father, the two ethnically Uyghur children say that their heads were shaved and that class monitors and teachers frequently hit them, locked them in dark rooms and forced them to hold stres…
Sounds like what the US and Canadian government did to indigenous children. That's not to excuse anything the Chinese government does but it feels like they dusted off an old playbook.
Can anyone point to a change or sacrifice they have made because they disagree with Chinas treatment of anyone?
1. I always check the country of origin before buying. I still buy China-made products when there's absolutely no other option, but whenever there's an alternative made anywhere outside China (whether higher priced, or even slightly inferior), I buy that instead. 2. Going to fund the development (since I can't do this myself) of a browser plugin to help people find non-China goods on Amazon easily. Just two features:…
Can anyone point to a change or sacrifice they have made because they disagree with Chinas treatment of anyone?
None whatsoever. Because 1) I do not hold people collectively responsible, and 2) even if acting in good will and on voluntary basis, this would mean I believe foreigners should be able to dictate to other countries how they should work within their own borders. If there is indeed a violation of international treaties, escapees should be able to sue China in Brussels or NYC at the International Criminal Court. This i…
Can anyone point to a change or sacrifice they have made because they disagree with Chinas treatment of anyone?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like what the US and Canadian government did to indigenous children. That's not to excuse anything the Chinese government does but it feels like they dusted off an old playbook.
> But they say the worst punishment was being sent to the school's basement. Lütfullah says the teachers told him ghosts lived there, and children including him were locked there in the dark, alone, for hours at a time. I wasn't aware the US or Canadian governments had institutionalized these kinds of punishment (or similar) to specifically indigenous people in a peaceful period. Was this really the case and were cou…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_sch...
"During a peaceful period" seems like a bit of a built-in excuse for the US when it was causing conflict with indigenous people by colonizing them and displacing them from their land.
> In any case I don't think it's fair to compare present crimes of a country with past crimes of another.
Why not? If country A committed an atrocity decades ago that largely achieved its objective for the dominant group, and that country still hasn't really atoned for it, it's no surprise that country B would try the same tactics now when they're looking to commit a cultural genocide.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like what the US and Canadian government did to indigenous children. That's not to excuse anything the Chinese government does but it feels like they dusted off an old playbook.
You know what is wrong with this statement? This is normalization: "Yes, it's bad, but you've done it too". Probably, the next is "This is part of development and we go through it..., as well!". Anyway, this sort of rationalization are one of the tricks that authoritarian regimes do and interestingly often then recruit western journalist white wash them and with a diverse assortment of such rationalizations, and much…
The next should be "if we (in the US) think this is horrible, what are we doing to try to make it right with indigenous people in our own country, where we actually have influence over the state's policies?", not "whoops, guess if we acknowledge the US did that too it can't be that bad."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know what is wrong with this statement? This is normalization: "Yes, it's bad, but you've done it too". Probably, the next is "This is part of development and we go through it..., as well!". Anyway, this sort of rationalization are one of the tricks that authoritarian regimes do and interestingly often then recruit western journalist white wash them and with a diverse assortment of such rationalizations, and much…
> Probably, the next is "This is part of development and we go through it..., as well!". The next should be "if we (in the US) think this is horrible, what are we doing to try to make it right with indigenous people in our own country, where we actually have influence over the state's policies?", not "whoops, guess if we acknowledge the US did that too it can't be that bad."
1. I didn't talk about should, I describe the problem with parent comment i.e. immorality of normalization. I have heard such justification before which goes to similar next step. That next step was what the normalizers might say.
2. It's from the point of white washers not the moral stand point that you depicts
3. As a proof, just check the comment in this section by @dirtyid which describe the 'next' I talked about:
> Behaving like a "savage" has very little to do with time but where countries are in their development.
Again, If it wasn't clear originally, What I liked to bring attention to is the white-washing (normalization) of tyrannies. It has been done for Nazis and it's currently being done in western journalists and lobbyist. Look at any sort of authoritarian atrocity and you'll see a white washer in NY or DC normalizing it.