[HN Gopher] President Daniels responds to Chinese student's hara...
___________________________________________________________________
President Daniels responds to Chinese student's harassment
Author : h2odragon
Score : 759 points
Date : 2021-12-17 12:53 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.purdueexponent.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.purdueexponent.org)
| netcan wrote:
| " _Those seeking to deny those rights_ " are not, in the sense
| that matters, individual students. This is a state pursuit, a
| state seeking to...
|
| Chinese points of priority are going to continue increasing in
| relevance. " _Is the CCP good?_ " is not an acceptable
| conversation topic, in chinese, even in Purdue. Superpower
| superpowers, so to speak. The US has some of these too.
| theturtletalks wrote:
| By "those," they mean the other Chinese students that harassed
| him after his speech and more than likely reported him to the
| Chinese government. Did you read the article?
| netcan wrote:
| I understand.
|
| Still, this is a state effort. The state/ccp made of people.
| The other students, the chinese officers.. the parents who
| got a visit in China. This is not all that different from how
| college "censorship" works in china itself..
| dehrmann wrote:
| Interesting side note: before becoming president of Purdue,
| Daniels was governor of Indiana. His successor in that job was
| Mike Pence. Daniels was also a rising star in the GOP, so he's a
| competent politician who got closer than most to actually dealing
| with international relations.
|
| He's also run Purdue differently than most administrators. He
| famously froze tuition, and he's using the name for an online
| school Purdue bought.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > before becoming president of Purdue, Daniels was governor of
| Indiana. His successor in that job was Mike Pence. Daniels was
| also a rising star in the GOP, so he's a competent politician
| who got closer than most to actually dealing with international
| relations.
|
| How is the governor of Indiana closer to dealing with
| international relations? I suspect the president of Purdue does
| it more, given the international nature of academia. How does
| Mike Pence affect Daniels' experience?
|
| > he's using the name for an online school Purdue bought
|
| Is that good?
| sparcpile wrote:
| It wasn't good. During his tenure, he had the university
| create a deal with Kaplan to brand Kaplan University as
| Purdue Global and get the Indiana legisture to pass a
| sweetheart law for it. The result is that Purdue's name as a
| very good engineering school is mud.
|
| https://tcf.org/content/commentary/purdue-global-got-irs-
| sta...
| mgamache wrote:
| Really?
|
| Its programs are among the top in the nation.
|
| https://engineering.purdue.edu/Engr/AboutUs/FactsFigures/Ra
| n....
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > and he's using the name for an online school Purdue bought.
|
| I've read this several times but not sure what it means - what
| "name"?
| 1024core wrote:
| I read it as: he bought an online school, and started calling
| it "Purdue" to cash in on the school's reputation.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Hmm. Purdue bought a school and "cashed in" on their own
| reputation? Still confused... :)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| He froze (in state) tuition because the school is completely
| bankrolled by wealthy Chinese sending their kids to school.
| Every luxury car driving around town has a foreign student at
| the wheel.
| jasonzemos wrote:
| Why are communist Chinese even admitted at all? Many
| Americans have tried and failed at admission and now have to
| settle for some lesser education or none at all. What are we
| teaching people who are forbidden to learn? Why should we
| tolerate people returning with systemic resentment? I see no
| return on this investment -- none at all.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It's more complicated than that. They held the line on costs,
| which let them maintain the freeze, which increased
| enrollment and alum donations and made investments beyond
| low-hanging fruit possible. They claim not to have changed
| their mix of in-state. Daniels is a legitimate tightwad so
| it's in character for him to take cost control seriously.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| This is a great statement, I disagree with people saying it's not
| strong enough. The school administration can't identify people
| without evidence. But he made a strong, definitive statement of
| support of harasee, called the Tianamen Square protesters
| martyrs, and said both people that directly harassed the student
| as well as those that reported it to authorities in China would
| be subject to discipline. The question is follow-through, but we
| will have to wait to see how that bears out.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| > 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons > > We recognize you are
| attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the
| European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the
| General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access
| cannot be granted at this time.
|
| 1. I didn't know about 451. 2. What is so important that they
| cannot allow to read behind a GDPR?
| pcmoney wrote:
| We should never yield a political, ideological, or material inch
| to the barbaric CCP and their brainwashed citizens.
| fefe23 wrote:
| I find it highly entertaining that they talk about denying rights
| and then deny the whole of the EU access because they insist on
| violating their readers' privacy rights and that would be illegal
| in the EU.
| Miner49er wrote:
| What makes you day they are violating readers' privacy rights?
| It's a not-for-profit student newspaper, they probably just
| don't want to risk GDPR fines. Or they don't expect readers
| from Europe.
| pc86 wrote:
| Unless Purdue plans on opening a campus within the EU, they
| don't have to pay any of them. Not much of a risk, right?
| kube-system wrote:
| I have no clue about Purdue, but many large universities
| with significant numbers of international students have
| things like recruiting offices abroad, etc.
| rnotaro wrote:
| I have not a deep knowledge of GDPR but wouldn't their
| study abroad / student exchanges programs with universities
| from Europe be considered like doing business in Europe?
| pc86 wrote:
| This is an excellent point I hadn't considered. You're
| probably right.
| oauea wrote:
| Why would they be fined if they're not violating their
| readers' privacy?
| quartz wrote:
| As someone who has asked that question to a series of
| lawyers, the answer is surprisingly expensive.
| oauea wrote:
| Of course, lawyers exist to make themselves money.
| Doesn't change that if you don't violate GDPR you won't
| be fined. A simple blog does not violate it, so they must
| be doing something creepy.
| quartz wrote:
| > Doesn't change that if you don't violate GDPR you won't
| be fined.
|
| For most companies figuring out if they violate a foreign
| privacy law like GDPR and remaining compliant with it
| isn't a technical question, it's a legal one.
|
| Attempting to hand-wave this away is likely what led to
| the decision to geo-block in the first place (tech person
| says "there's no risk", board says "prove it", lawyer
| says "pay me", tech person blocks the EU).
| minkzilla wrote:
| Very simple sites can violate it. For one example: if
| you, or anything in your stack, logs IP addresses you
| need a legitimate business interest to do so. It is
| needed for security and usage statistics and stuff but
| you will need a lawyer to explain that when you get hit
| with some fines.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| First you would get a request from a private citizen to
| explain. And -if you can indeed explain- it would seldom
| go further than that.
|
| Possibly it'd be nice to have some boilerplate and
| possibly config tweaks for some of the most common
| default server configurations though. (Eg. for a standard
| Wordpress site).
| cdot2 wrote:
| They probably just don't want to put a cookie banner on their
| student newspaper to comply with foreign regulations
| oauea wrote:
| They wouldn't have to if they didn't invade your privacy to
| begin with.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Or they could just not track readers with cookies and not
| collect their private data.
| cdot2 wrote:
| It looks like they use cookies for saving login
| information.
| teddyh wrote:
| In which case a cookie banner is unnecessary.
| yosito wrote:
| I mean, that's kind of tangential to the topic at hand, but
| you're not wrong.
| civilized wrote:
| Perhaps a fair point, but I don't think it's remotely
| comparable to the topic at hand. We're talking about Chinese-
| born students in America being ratted out to the Chinese
| government for exercising their free expression rights like
| model American citizens, even though they are foreigners.
|
| If I had the relevant Presidential powers, I'd offer
| citizenship to every one of the threatened students, and the
| rats would be sent packing home to China the second they were
| identified.
|
| The 50 cent lackeys of Pooh-Bear[1] are not welcome here in
| America. Go home, scumbags!!
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-
| win...
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Kinda bizarre assumption that the Chinese nationals getting
| their education in the USA automatically want to become
| citizens of the USA.
| civilized wrote:
| Your assumption that I'm assuming that is even more
| bizarre. But regardless, plenty of them do want to become
| citizens -- especially the kind that speaks their mind in
| public. There's nothing wrong with making the offer.
| swsieber wrote:
| That's not what was said. I think the offer is nice even if
| they don't want it.
| Icko wrote:
| Richer country, better quality of life, more personal
| freedoms. Not bizarre assumption at all.
| justicezyx wrote:
| > Richer country
|
| Trust me most students in US nowadays are family
| financial support. They are already rich. And the US do
| not often give enough working position for them (outside
| of tech, which h1b is not particularly friendly)
|
| > better quality of life
|
| This definitely is wrong. Those kids enjoyed a far better
| life in China than US.
|
| > more personal freedoms.
|
| Well, for what they want to do, they'll have more
| freedom...
| BINGCHILLING wrote:
| > This definitely is wrong. Those kids enjoyed a far
| better life in China than US.
|
| they can stay there then lol
| pcmoney wrote:
| Then maybe we don't let them study here if they don't
| need it and we don't want them?
| throw10920 wrote:
| Please cite the section of the comment that assumed that? I
| can't see it anywhere.
| pasabagi wrote:
| It would be kinda interesting if somebody actually
| implemented a law like this: all citizens without free speech
| get automatic asylum. You'd have half of the world turning up
| on your doorstep within a month.
|
| More seriously, it's also interesting when you think back to
| how asylum worked during the cold war. Migrants, even
| explicit economic migrants, were encouraged to emigrate from
| communist countries (cuba, east germany, etc), while asylum
| seekers in imminent threat of torture and death (say, 70's
| era Iranians, 80's tamils, etc) were blocked.
| popcube wrote:
| you know, this is why so many scientists migrated to USA
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| This is a very shallow statement. Probably 99.99% of people
| fleeing the above-mentioned communist countries were
| detained at border and sent to camps with tens (maybe
| hundreds) of thousands being literally murdered while
| attempting to do so. Obviously the big difference in this
| case is the numbers of potential asylum seekers, not the
| origin.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "Probably 99.99% of people fleeing the above-mentioned
| communist countries"
|
| As far as Czechoslovakia goes, the success rate was WAY
| beyond 1:10000, that is why people still tried.
|
| About 400 people were killed on our militarized border
| with West Germany and Austria. The # of people who
| succeeded was actually over 10 thousand, especially in
| the earliest phase (1948-51), when the security of the
| border was far from perfect.
|
| You could also escape in less dramatic fashion, for
| example by going to Yugoslavia (a non-aligned country)
| for a vacation and defecting.
|
| Of course, whoever was caught and their families would
| face serious repercussions. In the Stalinist era, Gulag,
| after it, less pronounced bullying (loss of jobs,
| forbidden from higher education, forcibly moved to rural
| regions).
| quartz wrote:
| I feel like you've got that backwards: making the site
| available if it violates GDPR would be violating your rights.
| Making the site unavailable to you is respecting them.
|
| That's not to mention that what's much more likely here is that
| a student focused and student run campus newspaper in West
| Lafayette, IN likely just considers the EU out of scope of
| their audience vs the cost of figuring out if they're GDPR
| compliant.
| oakfr wrote:
| The "cost" of being GDPR compliant is negligible if you
| simply put static content on your website and don't track
| users.
| oytis wrote:
| At quick glance their page does have a login button, which
| you can't implement on a static site. It also has social
| network buttons. These are probably all useful features for
| them and their audience
| freemint wrote:
| Opt-In Social Media buttons exist.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It's also negligible if you block EU access. The people
| that own the content get to decide which approach to take.
|
| I for one am a little tired of EU citizens telling me
| something doesn't have compliance costs when I've been in
| the room when outside counsel couldn't agree if a brochure
| ware site was compliant because the logs contained IP
| addresses.
|
| You may wish that the regulations didn't make the choice of
| blocking EU citizens the more palatable but that doesn't
| make it true.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| GDPR seems straight up common sense to me, but ...
|
| At times it seems like the common sense behind the GDPR
| is not -in fact- entirely common to American (lawyers)
| somehow.
|
| That can't be entirely true though, since some US states
| seem to have been considering similar laws recently.
|
| Color me confused by it all. (see also an earlier comment
| I made in a similar conversation
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29126413 )
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| I'm not sure that computes for me. Can you explain in more
| detail how refusing service outright is better than providing
| ethical service?
|
| To trigger GDPR, you need to be collecting PII (of EU
| citizens).
|
| What interest would a student focused and student run campus
| newspaper in West Lafayette, IN have in people's PII (let
| alone the PII of European Citizens) in the first place, and
| why would they be collecting it?
| DocTomoe wrote:
| You should take the outside perspective into account: For me
| as an EU employer, this implies students from West Lafayette,
| Indiana, are unable to fulfils even the most basic of rules
| regarding privacy and are thus a liability. Doing this - even
| if the site itself is not directly associated with the
| student body - diminishes the perceived worth of the degree.
| [deleted]
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| The fact that they don't want to spend the time and money to
| conform to the EU's bureaucratic "privacy theatre" is not
| evidence that they're actually violating anyone's privacy
| rights.
| [deleted]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > because they insist on violating their readers' privacy
| rights and that would be illegal in the EU.
|
| Bad assumption. Maybe an unpopular fact, but many sites simply
| block EU access to avoid potential legal pitfalls of navigating
| foreign laws. Getting the site compliant would require review
| from legal teams and work from (likely contracted) web
| developers, which is almost certainly not in the budget for a
| side site like this.
|
| Not every website is backed by a corporation with on-staff web
| developers and corporate counsel to double-check everything.
| Their audience is primarily a local one, so allocating the
| budget to do this and maintain it isn't worth it.
| bubblethink wrote:
| This is a completely backwards way of looking at it. If you
| don't have the budget, create a static website and throw it
| behind github pages or s3 or whatever. An entire university
| with a school of computer science cannot figure out some
| standard way of doing this ?
| tapoxi wrote:
| This publication is independent and not run by the school.
| bubblethink wrote:
| Right, but surely they have resources at the school if
| they need technical assistance. It's a university. Just
| find any CS major and they'll tell you how to set up a
| website.
| dogleash wrote:
| I don't know about you, but when I was at school I didn't
| have much luck getting randos from other majors to do
| free work for me.
|
| I collaborated with some EE and ME students on personal
| projects, but they were 1) more interesting than GDPR and
| 2) friends.
| bubblethink wrote:
| I don't know how this newspaper works, but typically the
| team itself will comprise students from different majors,
| seniority, etc. So it's not a question of begging for
| help or money.
| Benlights wrote:
| It's not the technical assistance needed it's the legal
| review. Go get that from a CS major.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| You don't need a legal review.
|
| * A static site without JavaScript;
|
| * with all images / external resources hosted on the same
| domain;
|
| * where the logs are default configuration, don't leave
| the server (except as GoAccess reports), and are deleted
| / anonymised eventually;
|
| is GDPR-compliant. Sure, there are other ways to be
| compliant, but this works, and is basically the _default_
| way of setting up a website. It 's not hard to check
| whether this is how your website works.
| oytis wrote:
| I miss the web of the 90s too. User expectations and web
| economy have changed a lot since then though.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > is basically the default way of setting up a website
|
| It's not the default way of setting up an online content
| management system to which student journalists can post
| articles without going through some convoluted command-
| line build process ("...then you do a git commit and
| push, run the Hugo script, and rsync the files to the
| server"... yeah, no.)
|
| > It's not hard to check whether this is how your website
| works.
|
| Since they're using a third-party content management
| system, they most likely neither know nor even _care_ how
| the website works. Why should they? They 're journalists,
| not system administrators.
|
| As others have noted, this is an independent student
| newspaper. Their normal readership outside the Purdue
| community is probably in the low single digits on a
| percentage basis, and their EU readership is likely close
| to non-existent. They (or, more likely, the people who
| run the CMS for them) have concluded that a full audit of
| their system to ensure GPDR compliance is simply not
| worth it for the minuscule number of additional readers
| they'd gain. And they're almost certainly right.
| dogleash wrote:
| When you put together that simple bulletpoint approach
| you still leveraged baselevel knowledge about the GDPR
| that would be ridiculous to assume of a CS major.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I'm not even a CS major. I just read the thing. It's not
| that long. https://gdpr-info.eu/
|
| You can get this knowledge with just the first 7
| articles.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| This is an independent website, not part of the official
| University budget.
|
| You can't just round up some CS students and have them
| produce a website compliant with international law for
| free.
|
| This involves legal teams, contracted developers, and
| constrained budgets that are already stretched thin on
| operating in their core business. It's not reasonable to
| demand they invest tens of thousands of dollars (or demand
| equivalent free labor from CS students and lawyers) to
| serve a population that almost never visits the site.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > You can't just round up some CS students and have them
| produce a website compliant with international law for
| free.
|
| But the issue isn't "international law" in the general
| case (which, indeed, would be very hard), it's the
| _specific_ case of the GDPR, the solution to which (for
| this particular site, which only serves static content)
| is mind-numbingly trivial: don 't collect personal data,
| don't set cookies. That's it. That's all you have to do.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| You're only talking about the technial part. But there
| are non technical requirements as well: In many cases you
| need to name a person responsible for data protection, a
| privacy policy, a list of services you're sharing data
| with,...
|
| Though I'm not sure if a local US newspaper even needs to
| be compliant, since it doesn't target EU residents and
| thus might be out of scope.
| bubblethink wrote:
| How are they producing a website compliant with local
| laws then ? What if they inadvertently end up violating
| DMCA ? What happens then ? The answer to that is one can
| be reasonably sure that they aren't doing anything stupid
| or malicious. It's the same with GDPR. Don't use
| trackers, cookies, adware etc., none of which are
| necessary for a college newspaper. This is a simple
| technical problem.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Within the EU itself, GDPR is rarely enforced. A paper tiger
| of sorts. Its main meaning is to scare some people straight,
| but the resources for actual enforcement of its provisions
| are rather limited.
|
| For example, I still receive a lot of commercial spam that
| advertises in-EU businesses.
| bmn__ wrote:
| > rarely enforced. A paper tiger
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28140406
| blululu wrote:
| Maybe but no lawyer is going to say it's probably fine to
| break the law since enforcement is lax, and the engineering
| team isn't going to say we can stand by all the random code
| this we pulled from npm. The obvious thing to do here is
| blocking readers from 7 time zones away which up until
| today went unnoticed.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "which up until today went unnoticed"
|
| GDPR-related 451 is quite widespread in my experience,
| but that is what VPNs are for :-)
| gorgoiler wrote:
| It's a form of _purity spiral_ where the consensus on
| acceptable behaviour becomes narrower and narrower as peope
| try to out-compete each other on who is the most virtuous, or
| in this case who is the most careful about nonexistent GDPR
| risks.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > or in this case who is the most careful about nonexistent
| GDPR risks.
|
| Parent comment is convinced the site is doing something
| that would be illegal.
|
| You are convinced that the site's GDPR risk is non-
| existence.
|
| It's amazing how many people sitting on the sidelines can
| be so confident about GDPR while having entirely opposite
| opinions.
|
| But my point stands: This stuff is complicated and requires
| sign-off from the lawyers in any large institution. If you
| don't have a reason or budget to go through that process,
| you don't do it. It's not virtue signaling or anything
| silly like that. It's basic corporate legal protections.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| With respect, your assertion that these 451s serve a
| useful purpose does not match up with my experience of
| seeing them in the wild.
|
| In fact this is the first one I've seen that isn't being
| done as a protest.
| kriops wrote:
| They are complying with EU regulations in place to protect the
| right to privacy, I can respect it.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| It's not denying rights, it's denying service. Right or wrong
| (I think it's wrong, btw), let's not mix up what's happening to
| make it sound worse.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Isn't denying service even worse?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The intimidation is real.
|
| The wealthiest billionaire athletes are afraid to lose millions
| of dollars and don't even speak up.
| Benlights wrote:
| I only know of one or two billionaire athletes, who are you
| referring to?
| superdisk wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pqjOrsMupgg
| Qub3d wrote:
| Lebron James comes to mind:
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/lebron-james-angers-
| hong-...
| Bayesian_bro wrote:
| This is just an example of the different ethics between China and
| America. America is very deontological in terms of FREEDOM. We
| love freedom above everything else. China is very
| consequentialist, they care about prosperity and success over
| everything else. I'm a pretty red blooded American (I drive a
| black smoke diesel truck and have enough firearms and ammo to
| make it pretty far in the apocalypse). I wonder what ethical
| system will be more successful in the future. We can already see
| having consequentialist ethics that don't care about your freedom
| do a lot better at fighting pandemics. The Chinese know that
| Tiananmen Square was a bad thing, but they want to forget about
| it and move on (consequentialism). In America our Tiananmen
| Square is probably slavery and we apparently don't want to forget
| about it even if it rips our county apart (deontological). What
| system will succeed in the next 100 years? The pandemic really
| showed me some of the issues of Western deontological ethics.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Wow. not "forgetting about slavery" is tearing the country
| apart? You are so far down the racist q-anon rabbit hole, I
| doubt you can see your way out. The US is today, and always has
| been deeply racist. That didn't end when slavery ended. The
| main forces tearing this country apart today are white
| nationalists who were so freaked out that cops started being
| held accountable for modern day lynchings that they are trying
| to overthrow the government.
| Bayesian_bro wrote:
| I definitely voted for Biden.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I think this is overly reductive, even if it's largely pointed
| in the right direction.
|
| For example, I think the best way to interpret the pandemic
| isn't through ethical systems, it's through state capacity and
| competence. America didn't fumble the pandemic because of
| deontological ethics, it fumbled because the federal government
| was just straight up incompetent. Without the federal
| government coordinating the crisis, every state was left to try
| its own strategy, which really does not work during a pandemic.
|
| Furthermore china might have eventually taken a "utilitarian"
| approach, but only after their first strategy of denial and
| repression failed. Like many authoritarian regimes China's
| first interest is in their own stability, not prosperity per
| se. In cases where the prosperity of the citizens and the pride
| of the party are in conflict, China will clearly favor the
| latter over the former.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Look at you, getting all fancy with your "deontological" and
| "consequentialist." Does it feel erudite to use 5 dollar words
| when a 10 cent word like "freedom" would do?
|
| No, actually we _cannot_ see that "having consequentialist
| ethics that don't care about your freedom do a lot better at
| fighting pandemics." But then, we don't have police welding
| people's doors shut, either.
| Bayesian_bro wrote:
| I think you need to look up what "deontological" means. It's
| putting a means before an end. America does this with
| spreading freedom. Colonial Spain did this with spreading
| christianity. Russia did this with spreading communism.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| I know how to look up words, thanks. You do need to de-
| obfuscate, though.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Historically categorizing America like this might have made
| sense but ever since 9/11 it's been less and less true. How
| else do you explain the economic response around the 2008
| recession, the patriot act and everything in the Snowden leaks,
| our insane wars that are ostensibly not about oil futures, or
| the insane amount of money printing and spending in the wake of
| covid? I'm not even sure I'd be willing to buy the argument
| that China is more consequentialist than we are.
|
| I don't think that Tiananmen Square is their slavery. When I
| was in high school we had a guy visit from China and I dragged
| him to the school library and showed him the Wikipedia page for
| Tiananmen Square. He'd never heard of it. Same experience when
| I discussed it with Chinese friends in college. It's not
| because Chinese society wants to get over it -- China does not
| have such a thing as public opinion. Don't look at China with
| rose colored glasses in the context of their 2021 economy, you
| have to remember how backwards and broke they were just 20
| years ago. It was a totalitarian regime and it's still a
| totalitarian regime, just a more wealthy one.
|
| In summary, I agree that it seems like "consequentialism" has
| won, but it's not the case that the two are battling it out to
| see which is better. Both countries independently chose
| consequentialism, and maybe it didn't have to be that way.
| gtsop wrote:
| MURICA FREEDUM = everyone in the whole universe is free to do
| as they wish _.
|
| _ as long as it is not in conflict with the interests of the
| american economic elites.
| Bhilai wrote:
| and the Church or Christian beliefs.
| pphysch wrote:
| To be crystal clear, the PRC does not view Tiananmen Square as
| a purely domestic affair. The extent to which students were
| radicalized, or signal-boosted by foreign influence is unclear.
|
| In that sense, a better comparison would be an event in
| America's history that had significant foreign interference.
| For example, 9/11. You can talk objectively about 9/11, sure,
| just like you can talk objectively about Tiananmen Square in
| China. However, you absolutely cannot publicly _glorify_ 9 /11
| and side with al-Qaeda. That will put you on watch lists and be
| socially shunned to the point of never getting hired by any
| company that can view your online comments.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Tiananmen Square: foreign interference is unclear.
|
| 9/11: Clear foreign involvement.
|
| You're comparing these two things because they both have
| foreign involvement?
| pphysch wrote:
| Tiananmen Square certainly had foreign involvement. Extent
| is unclear, just like extent of US ICs role in 9/11 is
| unclear (e.g. to what extent were the hijackers protected
| by the IC?).
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I'm not sure what to make of this comparison. You're not
| _sure_ the extent to which foreign influence played a role in
| radicalizing people leading up to an event where Chinese
| citizens were massacred by the Chinese state, so it 's fair
| to compare it to a situation where foreign nationals murdered
| US civilians? This is apples and oranges. Apples and Teslas.
| Dogs and supercomputers. They're not the same thing.
|
| > just like you can talk objectively about Tiananmen Square
| in China
|
| Citation needed. Even researching Tiananmen Square in China
| gets you on watchlists.
| pphysch wrote:
| There is substantial evidence that Washington was involved
| in amplifying misinformation and possibly directing student
| leaders to escalate the violence. Take student leader Chai
| Ling, for example [1]. She is on record _advocating_ for
| bloodshed, yet apparently did not take part in the deadly
| rioting. Instead, she landed at Princeton and Harvard.
|
| The sad truth is that most Americans have no interest in
| understanding what really happened that week, beyond
| reinforcing our ideological biases. We accept
| propagandistic claims of "organized massacre" when
| "chaotic, deadly riot" is far more accurate. There are
| pictures of charred government soldier corpses, burned
| alive in their vehicles. That simply does not happen in a
| one-sided massacre. Meanwhile, there is a suspicious _lack_
| of any photographic evidence of organized executions and
| other characteristics of a massacre.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai_Ling#Documentary_c
| ontrove...
| pyuser583 wrote:
| What is this substantial evidence? A one of the
| protestors moving to the US isn't terribly convincing.
| pphysch wrote:
| I provided some evidence in the Wikipedia link, which
| links to the primary video source. You should view it!
| pcmoney wrote:
| They machine gunned and steam rolled their own people by the
| thousands. Used road equipment to make them into a giant
| "meat pie" (British ambassador's description) soaked the sea
| of mangled corpses in gas and lit it on fire. Then they drove
| over it repeatedly and washes the body parts and ashes down
| the drain.
|
| This is not a two sides issue. It doesn't matter if the
| students were radicalized etc. the Chinese Govt murdered
| thousands of people who questioned it. Completely barbaric
| system of govt but in line with their current use of slave
| labor and concentration camps.
| pphysch wrote:
| Do you have _any_ evidence to support these claims beyond
| hearsay from government officials and Western establishment
| media?
| pcmoney wrote:
| This seems like a pro china troll account. For further
| engagement you should post one well reasoned critique of
| current CCP policy.
| pphysch wrote:
| Please factually address my arguments rather than
| resorting to harassment, which is against HN rules.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| Any criticism of Xi at all will suffice. And there is
| mountains of evidence about the thousands of innocent
| protesters that died that day, despite the attempts of an
| authoritarian government to prevent the truth from being
| known.
|
| You seem to be doing the CCPs work for them. Why?
| pcmoney wrote:
| Yes, eye witness accounts. Thousands of families whose
| children never came home. Widely available photos online.
| The smoking gun that you aren't allowed to talk about it.
| pphysch wrote:
| Sorry, but hearsay is the opposite of a "smoking gun".
| Give me $1000 and I'll produce a video of an Asian-
| looking person saying anything you want.
|
| No one is denying that people died that week. There are
| pictures of it! It's the media spin that requires
| scrutiny.
| pcmoney wrote:
| I have talked to people who saw it. Similar to how we can
| still talk to holocaust survivors. Maybe they are all
| lying. But the motive seems unclear and the testimonies
| are corroborated by others.
| pcmoney wrote:
| No further engagement until you critique Xi or the CCP to
| prove good faith.
| achenatx wrote:
| letting the government have total control over your life works
| great until someone gets in charge that does bad things.
|
| Then you get 60-80 million killed by their own government in
| the great leap forward.
| throwawaygal7 wrote:
| There's a lot Id like to discuss about the logic in this
| comment, but one thing really struck me 'the Chinese know
| tienamen square was a bad thing'...
|
| I have a number of Chinese friends from college and they
| universally view this event as a CIA fraud with no actual basis
| in historical reality. I really would like to know what your
| basing your logic here on.
| analog31 wrote:
| >>> We can already see having consequentialist ethics that
| don't care about your freedom do a lot better at fighting
| pandemics.
|
| The free world developed the vaccine, and virtually the entire
| R&D and manufacturing infrastructure that made vaccine
| development possible.
|
| Also, response to the pandemic has been highly regional,
| suggesting that we don't have a single unifying "ethical
| system." There are also two polarized camps related to the
| presentation of information to the public, such as the effects
| of carbon dioxide, the results of elections, and so forth.
|
| I wonder if there's a better example than the pandemic for
| supporting your hypothesis.
| xwolfi wrote:
| I'm a French immigrant in China.
|
| I think you're building a fake dichotomy: as a politician in
| France once said, borders are the only hope we have to escape
| if we dont like what we have. It's fine to have many models and
| important we can move in between them. I agree China cares
| about the result now but it's probably temporary: once the
| middle class is proportionally more important, priorities will
| shift, they already have somewhat. Xi Jinping announcing in
| glorious pomp a new stock exchange in Beijing is, for all the
| flaws of the communists, sort of different from what Mao would
| have done.
|
| Tiananmen is not something the Chinese want to forget, but that
| the communists want to hide, it's a bit different. But, since
| there's always balance in everything, rather than throw
| themselves wave after wave on their bullets, they make the most
| of what they can get now and bide their time. If that can give
| you some sense of relief, I never met a pro communist Chinese,
| never one, who would defend the party: they only ever say stuff
| like "bah, we had an emperor before, it's the same with another
| name", hardly a support of the ideology you'll agree lol.
|
| In America your Tiananmen are the civilian deaths and war
| crimes in Afghanistan, and see, you forgot about them and
| prefered to talk about someth you reformed already, like a
| Chinese would say of nobility and servitude under the empire.
| Face your demons, if you dare :)
| brodouevencode wrote:
| Summing up this response as
|
| > you accuse people of this while you do that
|
| Assuming this is right (and even if it's not), do not confuse
| the values and actions of a government with the values of its
| people. The CCP has gone out of its way to remove Tiananmen
| from history. Many bureaucrats in the US government wish they
| had the power to erase points in history as what the CCP
| wields.
| clavicat wrote:
| This is some asinine cultural analysis, as if entire cultures
| can be reduced to the embrace of moral philosophies. You could
| just have easily described China as harboring a deontological
| commitment to social harmony and deference to authority, or
| America as being consequentialist in its embrace of freedom as
| the approach most conducive to happiness and opposed to
| tyranny. Both are caricatures, of course.
|
| A problem I've noticed with philosophy nerds is that they have
| a tendency to overemphasize the importance of their niche
| interest by hallucinating the influence of philosophical
| reasoning in human affairs and historical events. Most people
| in most times don't think about this stuff at all. It's
| completely irrelevant.
| Bayesian_bro wrote:
| This logic works on the average. There are plenty of nuances
| between the two countries. This is my reduced experience from
| spending lots of time in China from the early 2000's.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Indeed, all of philosophy has devolved from praxis to theory
| unmooring itself from the seed by which it began: that of
| living informed by wisdom. It is damning that one of its
| elevated patrons is a man who wrote in spirals.
|
| The philosophers of thousands of years ago instructed by
| which they lived: drinking to excess in bathtubs if you were
| a hedonist or meditating in the woods surviving only on the
| food which others gave you if you were a Buddhist.
| naruvimama wrote:
| One reason could be that Americans are traumatised by the total
| control by the church for almost 2 millennia, save for the last
| century perhaps.
|
| Even today every President takes oath at a church because
| without the Shepard's blessings it would be impossible to get
| the sheep's votes.
|
| As much as I dislike the CCP, I would like to see Americans ask
| their churches to come clean on their past and present
| activities. And there is some true separation between the
| church and state.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > We can already see having consequentialist ethics that don't
| care about your freedom do a lot better at fighting pandemics
|
| We'll see. Due to it's Zero COVID strategy and ineffectual
| vaccines China has a highly immunonaive population just as the
| virus gets so infectious that other Zero COVID countries have
| abandoned that strategy. However, New Zealand, Singapore etc
| have the much better mRNA vaccines. I hope the terrible cost of
| losing their basic human rights was worth it for them, but I
| suspect the worst days of COVID are ahead for China.
| Aunche wrote:
| I think that deontological vs consequentialist ethics is a
| spectrum. If Covid were as painful and dangerous as Ebola,
| people would be much more likely to accept stricter quarantines
| and mandates.
|
| I think the problem with Western deontology is that it is no
| longer rooted in consequences and has become a parody of
| itself. Take US foreign affairs, for example. We used to care
| about limiting the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. The most
| efficient way to do so was to support anti-communist dictators
| that could be bought out. However, this was sold to the people
| as "spreading democracy". A generation later, those in power
| genuinely believed that America is supposed to spread
| democracy, which is why we spent trillions of dollars trying to
| do so in the Middle East to little effect.
| tshaddox wrote:
| A very similar thing happens with "democracy." In America it's
| basically just anything that calls itself democracy and vaguely
| follows some notion of Western democracy is just accepted as
| the _obvious_ best way to organize society.
|
| You'll get a lot of head scratching if you ask questions like
| "What if it turns out that the correlation between government
| policies and the policy preferences of the population is
| _stronger_ in some supposedly 'undemocratic' countries than in
| major Western democracies?" After the head-scratching you'll
| usually get some kind of argument that strips the former
| population of agency, like "oh well they're just brainwashed."
| Kinda ironic for supposed proponents of democracy to strip
| people of their agency.
| Nevermark wrote:
| If by 'undemocratic' you mean autocratic, it isn't proponents
| of democracy that are stripping them of agency. It is their
| form of government.
|
| However, understanding the pro's and con's of any type of
| government, including autocracies, is a worthy pursuit. We
| can learn something from anyone.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > If by 'undemocratic' you mean autocratic, it isn't
| proponents of democracy that are stripping them of agency.
| It is their form of government.
|
| But you would need to show that they are actually being
| stripped of their agency. You can't just say "I declare
| that their government doesn't represent their preferences,
| and when they say that the government actually does
| represent their preferences, that's because they can't
| think for themselves." Having different preferences than
| you is not sufficient evidence of brainwashing. That's
| pretty circular, and you could just as easily say "Western
| democracy is bad, and anyone who lives in a Western
| democracy who says they like it is just brainwashed."
| Nevermark wrote:
| If a government severely punishes debate about its
| behavior or views it wants accepted and unchallenged, or
| has a system in place to eliminate information in the
| public sphere that it does not want you to encounter,
| through technology and overwhelming pressure on
| organizations and individuals, ...
|
| ... that's all you need to know. That is a situation
| designed precisely to stay in power despite _not_
| responding to a freely informed public 's preferences.
|
| If an autocratic leader actually asked its citizens for
| their preferences on whether the autocrat should stay in
| power, and abided by the result - it would not be an
| autocracy.
| tshaddox wrote:
| We're talking about the form of government though, not
| specific acts of censorship about specific government
| actions. Those are definitely bad! But I don't think
| there are secrets about the form of government of, say,
| China, and how it is similar and different than, say, the
| United States.
| petre wrote:
| Different ethics? You are very open minded. Those who do not
| learn history are doomed to repeat it. Totalitarian governments
| busy themselves with editing history and skewing the narrative.
| I've been there, growing in a communist country liberated
| because the USSR went bankrupt. So, thank you USA. Now we can
| hold views critical of the government without being arrested,
| tortured and sent to forced labour camps.
| smt88 wrote:
| I would qualify your comment about "prosperity and success" to
| say that the CCP (which is not the same as "China") cares about
| _average_ prosperity and the further entrenchment of the ruling
| elite. Chinese _people_ are too numerous, varied, and under-
| studied (since no honest political surveys are done there) for
| me to comment on their overall culture.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Completely disagree with your portrayal of consequentialism.
| Freedom absolutely provides utility, and allowing the
| government to disappear people who disagree with it is in no
| way a path to maximizing utility.
| Bayesian_bro wrote:
| The American government "disappears" many people by locking
| them up in the criminal justice system. It's just for
| slightly different reasons.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| You understand that when you disappear someone, it means
| that you have no idea what happened to them.
| pphysch wrote:
| Now that this is moving the goal posts. Lots of people go
| missing and die for unknown reasons, including non-
| violent ones.
|
| The issue with "disappearing" is that it is done by
| coordinated groups (including the prison-industrial
| complex). It is not that we don't know precisely how the
| victims got hurt.
| dionidium wrote:
| This comparison is risible. First of all, you actually do
| have to commit a crime to go to prison, in the vast
| majority of cases. Second, the details of your trial (and
| appeal) are public. The "mass incarceration" meme has been
| too successful for it's own good, so successful that people
| seem earnestly to believe that most prisoners are innocent
| or there for spurious reasons, but it's simply not the
| case. The median state prisoner in the U.S. is a violent
| offender with a long rap sheet.
| gruez wrote:
| >The median state prisoner in the U.S. is a violent
| offender with a long rap sheet.
|
| source?
| dionidium wrote:
| As the chart here shows, violent offenders are the
| largest category of prisoners:
|
| https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
|
| This chart reveals a lot of problems with our system. Are
| too many people in jail for drugs? Sure, probably. (But
| it's nowhere near the largest category.) Do we have a big
| problem with getting people in local jails to speedy
| trials? Yes, absolutely. Are our sentences too long? Yes,
| in some cases.
|
| But most people in prison committed a serious crime.
|
| I don't have the data on the "long rap sheet" portion of
| my claim, though I would encourage you to look out for it
| every time there's a news story about a high-profile
| arrest. The list of previous crimes in most cases would
| be comical if it weren't so tragic.
|
| Additionally, studies of released inmates show very high
| recidivism rates. One study showed that, " _401,288 state
| prisoners released in 2005 had 1,994,000 arrests during
| the 9-year period, an average of 5 arrests per released
| prisoner_ ".
|
| Source:
| https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/2018-update-
| prisone...
| ctvo wrote:
| The American criminal justice system has problems. Those
| problems are systemic and publicly discussed, but the rule
| of law exists, and the process is public, and you have the
| right to defend yourself against charges the state levies.
|
| When is Jack Ma's public trial? Peng Shuai's?
|
| Putting things into quotes doesn't make it "work".
| BurningFrog wrote:
| 96% of sentences in the US are handed out without a
| trial.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Because the defendants choose to forgo their trial.
| Chinese defendants are not given the option.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| They choose that, because trial sentences are 2-4 times
| longer than plea deals.
|
| You _can_ choose to go to trial, but if you do, you will
| be severely punished for that choice.
|
| This is one major reason so many innocent people are
| jailed in the US.
| dionidium wrote:
| A vanishingly small percentage of these defendants are
| innocent. Prison reform cannot proceed rationally unless
| everybody involved admits that _nearly all_ the people
| who go to prison did indeed commit a serious crime.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Slightly different? Who is in prison for something
| "slightly different" than publicly accusing a government
| official of rape?
| merpnderp wrote:
| I don't think you're down in the weeds enough. China does
| have freedom to a degree. Obviously there's lots of ways
| where they have zero freedom also. But it certainly looks
| like the CCP is attempting to maximize freedom where it
| provides utility and minimize it where it hurts their goals
| or prosperity.
|
| I vehemently disagree with that stance, but I do want
| acknowledge the CCP's actual stance.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Disappearing people who accuse the government/government
| officials of wrongdoing will never maximize utility.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think that is a weak argument and difficult or
| impossible to prove.
|
| The better argument is against utilitarianism itself.
| Humans deserve some rights even if it means less utility.
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| I think you will disappear if you offend anyone too
| powerful, even in first worlds/democratic countries.
| asib wrote:
| Are you genuinely comparing Tianamen Square to centuries of
| slavery?
| Bayesian_bro wrote:
| The Chinese also don't talk about a lot of the bad things
| that happened in the great leap forward, which could have a
| case made that it was worse than slavery.
| yardie wrote:
| Is like to see what that case is? Because nothing about the
| Great Leap I've read compares to chattel slavery or the 40%
| losses of life in the transatlantic slave trade.
| cloverich wrote:
| Go read stories about neighbors eating each others
| children to survive. It is pointless to compare tragedies
| as to which is worse, but it is worthwhile to recognize
| the magnitude of the (unimaginable) suffering caused by
| bad policy. The point is you wouldn't want to experience
| either -- neither is a better choice, they were both
| disasters worthy of keeping in memory.
| nescioquid wrote:
| The Great Leap famine that killed between 11.6 - 55
| million over fours years, compared to the Atlantic slave
| trade with estimated deaths from 2 - 60 million (over 200
| hundred years).[1]
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthrop
| ogenic...
| fmajid wrote:
| In absolute number of dead, it's certainly worse, if only
| because of the scale of China. According to Henry Louis
| Gates 12.7 million Africans were abducted by the slave
| trade. Estimates for the Great Leap Forward are 15 to 55M
| dead from famine and several million more from violence.
|
| https://www.abhmuseum.org/how-many-africans-were-really-
| take...
| apocolyps6 wrote:
| No, they are comparing the atrocities of the Chinese
| government that inspired Tianamen Square to slavery, without
| saying that the two are equivalent
| slothtrop wrote:
| Ostensibly consequentialist, but that is just a symptom of
| maintaining authority and order. Arguably many choices from the
| Chinese State reported in the last decade have been at the
| expense of prosperity and success, such as Xi consolidating
| power and cracking down on business leaders. Hyper
| centralization of power rarely works out well, and when it has,
| those personalities as in SK and Singapore favored Capitalism.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I liked your take on this situation and the tradeoffs, but
| please note I'm a red blooded American that just ordered a
| tesla, doesn't own guns, and couldn't tell you who won the
| Super Bowl last year.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Yeah, I'd push back a bit on the "red blooded American" =
| "rural truck driver/gun owner" idea, at least if "red blooded
| American" is supposed to mean "typical American" or
| "indisputably American" or "American who wishes their country
| to flourish".
| thakoppno wrote:
| > who won the Super Bowl last year
|
| Tom Brady is usually a good guess.
| Bayesian_bro wrote:
| My backstory is that I used to live in SF for 10 years before
| this pandemic. We moved to a rural western area because of
| the pandemic. I need the diesel truck to tow trailers.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| You went from https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Promethea
|
| To https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Pandora
| sschueller wrote:
| I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race massacre.
| How many Americans don't know about it?
|
| The time I spend in the US I had the feeling that you have more
| of a pseudo freedom than actual freedom. Everyone keeps saying
| how free they are and how great their country is yet you can't
| even drink an alcoholic beverage on the street without getting
| arrested. You go to a town festival and the people who want to
| drink are enclosed in a small area like cattle.
| ridaj wrote:
| Prime whataboutism. But anyways, just as one example, the
| Tulsa race massacre was the subject of a major recent TV
| series (The Watchmen). Mere mentions of Tiananmen square
| massacre, observing quiet vigils, etc. could get you jailed
| in China. On freedom of speech, there is no possible
| comparison. Even the existence of this very conversation
| would be immediately censored on the Chinese domestic
| internet.
| gaoshan wrote:
| If you compare how China treats discussion and remembrance of
| Tiananmen to the how the US treats the Tulsa Race Massacre
| you will find there is no comparison.
|
| It's true that many in the US don't know about it but many in
| the US cannot find China on a map so ignorance of the thing
| might be explainable by something rather more benign than the
| oppressive and punitive way China handles things.
|
| In recent years information and documentaries on the Tulsa
| race massacre have been popping up with regularity. The
| information is easy to find, there are multiple documentaries
| you have easy access to, the government (in the form of the
| Tulsa Historical Society) has a very through website
| exploring what happened, etc. More importantly no one is
| punished for exploring and discussing this topic. Quite the
| opposite lately, it is of growing interest to many in the US.
| Now compare that to China and the Tiananmen Square massacre.
| As I said at the top, no comparison at all.
|
| I'm not a rah rah "Murican", either. I am very critical of my
| own country (as I think we all should be.. you can't improve
| if you don't learn from the bad) and the US has many problems
| that should be addressed but to compare China and the US on
| these points is not even a little reasonable, in my opinion.
| It shows a lack of knowledge of both China (someplace I have
| lived for years) and the US (where I grew up and currently
| live). Also, your example of drinking in public is just a
| generalization and of all the things you could have picked
| that would be valid arguments, is not a good one. In my
| community in Ohio you can drink anywhere in the downtown
| public area, for example and it is several square miles in
| area.
| zepto wrote:
| The Tulsa race massacre which has been featured in pop
| culture and all over the press in the last few years
| _because_ a lot of Americans didn't know about it.
|
| Vs
|
| The Tiananmen Square massacre which is censored to even
| mention digitally in China, and state agents intimidate
| citizens outside China just for mentioning it.
|
| Also note that Tulsa was 100 years ago. Around the time of
| the _birth_ of the CCP, which has killed _tens of millions of
| its own citizens since that time_. Tiananmen was in 1989.
|
| Any attempt to equivocate these two is utterly intellectually
| dishonest.
| vmception wrote:
| Okay so a more apt comparison would be 30 years after the
| Tulsa race massacre in America to see if was easier to talk
| about it
|
| Or 100 years after the Tianamen Square massacre in China to
| see if its easier to talk about it then
|
| great. very productive.
| zepto wrote:
| It's a delusional if you think that in the 50s, there
| were American agents intimidating their citizens abroad
| for _talking about the Tulsa race massacre_.
|
| The idea that it is OK for it to take another 50 years
| before the Chinese can talk about Tiananmen without fear
| of state reprisal, seems to be an apology for
| totalitarian oppression.
| vmception wrote:
| "Agree with me or its an apology for totalitarian
| oppression"
|
| Alternatively its just not an apt comparison.
| zepto wrote:
| Sure but you knew it wasn't an apt comparison when you
| made it, which is what makes it apologist.
| vmception wrote:
| I was talking about yours. The thing i initially replied
| to.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| sschueller made the original comparison; it sounds like
| both you and zepto agree it was a bad comparison.
| vmception wrote:
| Good observation
| lazide wrote:
| Well, they were busier intimidating and harassing
| American citizens abroad for daring to say anything in
| support of Communism. I doubt Tulsa made the radar.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| In the US in the 50s if you talked about race in the
| wrong manner you were prevented from going abroad in the
| first place. (See: Paul Robeson)
| jeffh wrote:
| In the 50s there was US agent repression and intimidation
| of beliefs around communism (see McCarthyism). The KKK
| was also still rampant and had members that were police
| or other "state officials". So ... maybe US isn't so
| different after all?
| zepto wrote:
| The KKK wasn't a part of the state.
|
| And yes, there was state sponsored anti-communism in the
| 50s, but it is not even close to comparable. Nobody was
| being intimidated for _mentioning_ communism, or even
| advocating for it.
|
| People were targeted for group membership. This is still
| wrong, but please stop trying to make it seem equivalent
| to what is happening _today_ in China. The fact that you
| have to go back 50 years to find an example shows how
| different the two countries are today.
| lazide wrote:
| You seriously need to read your history.
|
| The KKK was a defacto paramilitary arm of several states
| and municipalities during that time. Many sheriffs, and
| more than a few high level state government officials
| were members. Folks got killed and programs of terror
| were instituted against 'uppity' populations using the
| KKK as the instrument.
|
| There was widespread state supported suppression (as in
| literal FBI members harassing and destroying peoples
| lives) for anyone who even SEEMED to POTENTIALLY support
| communism, even if they literally had no idea what the
| FBI was talking about.
|
| If you dared publicly support communism, many folks got
| deported, disappeared, or worse.
| zepto wrote:
| The KKK was not a paramilitary arm of the state.
|
| To claim it was is a lie.
|
| The KKK was a terrorist organization bent on violently
| oppressing Black Americans. It was never part of the
| state.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| The KKK was absolutely part of the state in the American
| South up to 60s.
| zepto wrote:
| No it wasn't. This is completely false.
|
| Just because someone who had a public job was also a KKK
| member doesn't mean it was part of the state.
| handrous wrote:
| > I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race
| massacre. How many Americans don't know about it?
|
| I'd never heard of it until I watched Watchmen. So, I'd lived
| nearly half my life before hearing of it.
|
| I spent my entire childhood in states bordering Oklahoma,
| and, for a while, in Oklahoma itself (though not in/near
| Tulsa).
| georgeecollins wrote:
| This is what-about-ism. I am surprised you didn't mention
| that we are less free to smoke in public places!
|
| Here's the thing: Laws about where you can smoke and drink
| vary from place to place in the US but in every part of them
| you are free to complain about them. The laws were passed by
| elected officials. You can start a petition to change them.
| You can run for mayor on the platform of changing the rules
| about where you can smoke or drink.
|
| I agree that it is a sad commentary that many Americans don't
| know about the Tulsa race riot. Yet here we are discussing
| it. A popular TV show in the US (The Watchmen) depicted it
| quite graphically. Could those things happen with Tiananmen
| Square in China?
| sschueller wrote:
| I personally feel that the term "what-about-ism" is
| excessively used to down play the wrongs of a other party.
| Especially when that other party is pretending to be at a
| higher moral ground than the one they are critical about.
| One should not make things OK because someone else does it
| but one should point out the wrongs another party is
| engaged in especially if it is hypocritical.
|
| In this case however I didn't say what about, I did suggest
| an alternative to Ops comment which in itself may have been
| what about ism.
| djrogers wrote:
| > Everyone keeps saying how free they are and how great their
| country is yet you can't even drink an alcoholic beverage on
| the street without getting arrested.
|
| This shows a common misunderstanding of the US legal system -
| the federal gov't couldn't make public consumption legal or
| illegal even if it wanted to. I go to local festivals in my
| town multiple time s a year with thousands of people milling
| about drinking freely - because my city and county don't
| prohibit it.
|
| You come to the US with the assumption that the federal
| government has authority over these things, but they don't -
| constitutionally they are largely forbidden from creating
| laws like that - it's up to the state, county, and city to do
| so.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| You can talk about the Tulsa race massacre. You can make TV
| shows depicting it. Forces may have conspired to keep it from
| the forefront of the American consciousness, but nobody was
| going around burning the books or throwing people in jail for
| bringing it up.
| echelon wrote:
| > I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race
| massacre. How many Americans don't know about it?
|
| Since HBO's _Watchmen_ , I've heard and read about the Tulsa
| race massacre quite a bit. It's frequently mentioned in the
| media now.
|
| I was shocked that this was almost totally unknown and
| unspoken about prior to the show, but I guarantee you that it
| won't remain that way.
|
| That's the difference with Tiananmen.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Everyone keeps saying how free they are and how great their
| country is yet you can't even drink an alcoholic beverage on
| the street without getting arrested. You go to a town
| festival and the people who want to drink are enclosed in a
| small area like cattle.
|
| Public space alcohol consumption is one of the weirdest
| metrics I've seen to gauge freedom.
|
| But for what it's worth, laws regarding public alcohol
| consumption are a local thing. There are plenty of places in
| the United States where public alcohol consumption isn't a
| crime. And of course, you're free to drink privately.
|
| But freedom doesn't mean anarchy. If you want to nit pick
| individual restrictions on _non-speech activities in public
| spaces_ then you can find something to complain about every
| country.
| nautilius wrote:
| > Public space alcohol consumption is one of the weirdest
| metrics I've seen to gauge freedom.
|
| How so? It seems to me that the people's ability to use and
| enjoy public spaces as they fit (of course unless they
| intrude on other people's freedom) is at the very heart of
| what I consider freedom.
|
| > And of course, you're free to drink privately.
|
| And of course you're free to express your opinion
| privately, at home, when no one's listening. See the
| problem with that kind of 'freedom'?
| t-3 wrote:
| The reason many municipalities ban public drunkenness is
| _because_ it intrudes upon other people 's freedom. Very
| many people tend to behave badly while drunk!
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Many other places deal with that by making _behaving
| badly_ the thing you 're not allowed to do, rather than
| the activities that sometimes lead people (who partake in
| them irresponsibly) to behave badly.
| nautilius wrote:
| Ah, a preemptive punishment for all! The very heart of
| what I would call freedom! Wonderful!
| dgb23 wrote:
| > But freedom doesn't mean anarchy. If you want to nit pick
| individual restrictions on non-speech activities in public
| spaces then you can find something to complain about every
| country.
|
| Anarchism is based on freely agreed rules and organization.
| It denies rulers, not rules. I find this to be a necessary
| condition for freedom. So yes, one can find something to
| complain about pretty much every country if arguing from
| freedom. The status quo is not a good excuse for lack of
| freedom, that's just circular reasoning.
|
| I urge everyone not to fall into the trap of the "Us vs
| Them" rhetoric that almost always leads to more oppression
| and violence. Trying to quantify freedom is moot. The enemy
| of freedom is corruption, fear and hate.
| Sharlin wrote:
| _> Public space alcohol consumption is one of the weirdest
| metrics I've seen to gauge freedom._
|
| I would say it's a much more relevant metric than the
| ability to own a shitload of guns, or to drive a black
| smoke diesel truck, the latter of which is honestly
| bafflingly antisocial behavior. The definition of "freedom"
| should begin with the freedom from others pushing their
| negative externalities onto you.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > The definition of "freedom" should begin with the
| freedom from others pushing their negative externalities
| onto you.
|
| While I (European) generally agree with you, this could
| also be a point against public consumption of alcohol ;)
| ysavir wrote:
| I think the attitude might be that we should prohibit and
| punish the behaviors, not the source. If someone is being
| belligerent or otherwise disruptive in a public space,
| whether or not they're drinking alcohol should not be a
| factor. And if someone is drinking alcohol without being
| disruptive, is there cause to punish or prohibit their
| behavior?
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Except it should be, because alcoholism is in fact a
| lethal disease all on its own and frequently overlies
| serious mental health issues, including things like
| domestic abuse, drunk driving, etc. Where there's smoke,
| look for fire.
| Sharlin wrote:
| But this was about public vs private drinking. Many, if
| not most, problem drinkers drink in private. Cherry-
| picking some visible issue X, that may be related to a
| more complex underlying problem Y, _just because it 's
| visible_, is called window-dressing and is in general a
| very ineffective way to try to solve Y (and honestly,
| solving Y is often not even the goal, marketing speeches
| notwithstanding).
| killjoywashere wrote:
| I think we have a disagreement about the number of
| problems. I agree with you at to the 0th iteration but in
| the particular example of alcohol, the externalities are
| so large, the perturbation is important and we should
| make sure the model is "as simple as possible, but no
| simpler".
|
| So your statement "If someone is being belligerent or
| otherwise disruptive in a public space, whether or not
| they're drinking alcohol should not be a factor"
|
| Please find a different example, or, if you believe in
| the goal of improving human society, please revise that
| statement. Belligerence and other disruptiveness
| involving alcohol should be tracked, because it can
| reveal the deeper problem that is present in some
| (honestly, many) cases of public belligerence and
| disruptiveness once a trend is established. Saving lives
| is important all on it's own.
| 323 wrote:
| > _you can 't even drink an alcoholic beverage on the street
| without getting arrested_
|
| Just switch to injecting heroin in public spaces. The police
| will leave you alone and you might even become a celebrated
| person.
| allendoerfer wrote:
| I want to help the parent poster out here: I think he was
| refering to how easy it is to get thrown in jail in America.
| Jail as a concept does not really exist in many European
| countries. You can swap drinking in public with speeding or
| some other minor offense.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It varies a lot by where you live and how much premium you
| personally care about following the letter of the law.
|
| I think HN tends to assume nobody has any freedom because
| most of HN lives in "nice" suburbs or "nice" parts of cities
| where law enforcement is being used in a backhand manner to
| enforce conformity and also comes from a life where obeying
| basically all the laws basically all the time is considered
| default behavior. The lower classes are far, far free-er on a
| day to day basis than HN is. Nobody cares if you smoke weed
| on your porch in any neighborhood where a Ford E350 is a more
| common driveway adornment than a Mercedes E350. I walk my dog
| beer in hand two days a week. Kids ride dirt bikes on the
| street. The section 8 people play loud music in languages I
| don't speak. Nobody gets hassled by the powers that be, as
| far as I can tell. And this isn't some rural area in a small
| government red state, it's working class neighborhood in a
| blue state.
| peatmoss wrote:
| Not talking about the Tulsa race massacre, is an example of
| society at large choosing, through inattention or other
| social forces, to not care about something they should
| probably choose to care more about.
|
| Not being allowed to talk about Tiananmen Square massacre is
| society being told what to find worthy of attention.
|
| While the ends may on occasion align, I think it's an
| important distinction.
|
| But it is also worth considering "practical" freedoms.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| In the US (and most western countries), I can put up a
| website detailing what happened in the Tulsa race massacre
| with no fear of government censorship or retaliation. In
| China, I could not do the same with details of Tiananmen
| Square.
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| This struck me as I was visiting Munich, momentarily agog at
| the guy in front of me walking down the street drinking beer
| like it was no thing. Meanwhile Americans were protesting
| that mask mandates were an infringement on their freedom
| (Germans too).
|
| Many, many things are an infringement on our individual
| freedom, but it's revealing what people actually choose to
| rally around, and when. It points to how certain issues have
| become politicized and have organized, well-funded
| opposition.
|
| To all the people up in arms about masks -- why now? Why this
| easy thing? Why weren't you protesting restrictions on voting
| age, driving age, drinking age, restrictions on gay marriage
| rights? Those are all very consequential restrictions, as
| opposed to wearing a bit of fabric on your face. Something
| that snow-sports enthusiasts routinely do without complaint
| or consequence.
| montblanc wrote:
| I got comments from neighbors for going into the street
| with a cup of coffee in the Netherlands. My Dutch wasn't
| that great but I picked up they were busting my balls in a
| friendly way - guess it looked funny to some. I also
| sometimes would get uncomfortable stares whenever I came
| down to throw something in the garbage room - the old guy
| looking was making sure I'm not gonna put garbage A in a B
| dumpster. Now every society has some kind of norms police
| citizens, but I feel it's quite worse in places like
| Germany/NL/Switzerland etc.
|
| Not really much substance to my argument, just sharing.
| Also I'm not criticizing these countries, their culture is
| just different than what I was brought up with. Where I
| live if you start correcting everyone around you you will
| be the one corrected eventually. That's why where I live
| looks much worse than Germany I guess.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race
| massacre.
|
| The issue with that comparison is Americans can easily search
| about Tulsa and find a bunch of information about it. People
| in China are restricted from getting information about
| Tienanmen Square.
|
| While a lot of people in China know bad stuff happened in
| Tienanmen Square, they can't so easily confirm their
| suspicions. They can't hear people's take on it and fully
| understand what happened.
|
| >How many Americans don't know about it?
|
| Just because Americans don't know about a topic doesn't
| really matter. Americans don't know about a lot of historical
| events, especially ones that happened 100 years ago.
|
| I would guess a lot of Americans don't know Harding was
| President during Tulsa. Does that mean Harding is like
| Tienanmen Square?
|
| I would go as far as saying people don't even know about
| Tulsa shows people aren't really moving on, but just forgot
| about it. On the other hand, everybody knows slavery
| occurred.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "The time I spend in the US I had the feeling that you have
| more of a pseudo freedom than actual freedom. "
|
| Having grown up in Germany and now living in the US I think
| in the US you can have more freedom if you are willing to
| live outside the boundaries of the life the average citizen
| has. If you are willing to live off the grid you can be
| pretty free. Some people think freedom also means the right
| to not have health insurance.
|
| But if you live the life of the average citizen with a
| regular job I feel the US citizen is less free. You
| constantly have to worry about the cost of health care and
| education. I also feel people are less willing to voice their
| opinion in order to not offend others. You have way less
| rights as an employee. Police is less predictable and may do
| weird stuff. I also feel less free when I get into a
| confrontation with somebody and have to worry about getting
| shot.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Interesting perspective, though I'd like some detail around
| the 'worry about getting shot' comment.
|
| I'm in my 50s and have lived in the US all but 2 of my
| years, and have never been concerned about getting shot (in
| the US or abroad.) In what kind of situations have you
| found yourself that you've actively had this worry?
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I had a situation where almost every morning a guy with
| big work truck would pass us extremely closely at full
| speed while we were walking our dog. The road didn't have
| sidewalks so usually cars would slow down or change sides
| but this guy didn't. We tried to wave to him to slow down
| which only resulted in him swerving towards us so we had
| to jump off the road. One day I stood in the middle of
| the road and made him stop. I explained the situation to
| him and he was extremely aggressive and threatened to
| beat me up. I told him he can try but should think about
| the consequences first. After a while he backed off. I
| called his employer and never saw him again.
|
| When i told this story to some people they told me that I
| would have had a real problem if he had had a gun. That's
| probably true.
|
| In Germany you usually can assume that even bad guys
| don't have a gun but in the US you have to assume that
| every idiot has a gun. This brings confrontations quickly
| to a dangerous level.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I'll take not being able to drink on the street in some parts
| of the US if it means I can criticize the government without
| being harassed (or worse) by government officials.
| chmod600 wrote:
| In the U.S. there's a hierarchy of freedoms. Fundamental
| rights, like speech and the right to a fair trial, are
| necessary to secure other "lower" freedoms if you want.
|
| You can drink outside in some places, like Las Vegas. The
| fact that you can't drink outside most places just
| illustrates that the overwhelming majority don't even want to
| do that.
|
| Drugs and booze are cheap freedoms that don't do anything to
| avoid repression.
| inopinatus wrote:
| > more of a pseudo freedom than actual freedom
|
| My experience of the US is similar to yours.
|
| Note that the USA is rather special in how it encodes
| freedom. There is, after all, literally a big list of
| guaranteed freedoms. In practice, if something's not on
| there, then every government and quasi-governmental entity
| assumes _you are not free to do it_ , or at least, they
| believe they can decide to stop you.
|
| This is the inverse of almost every construction of freedom
| that went before it, and your experience arises from that
| difference. The notoriously vast & byzantine scale of the US
| Code is another emergent property, it being essentially a
| salami attack on its own fundamentals.
| jalanco wrote:
| There are number of places in the US where it is legal to
| walk around outside with a drink. New Orleans is the place
| I'm most familiar with but there are others. Some people
| forget that the US is not a monoculture.
| tristor wrote:
| I don't think you made the comparison between these two
| events with any ulterior motives, but the subthreads below
| your comment are interesting and telling in part because a
| significant number of the comments are parroting each other
| from users with little history on HN. It feels like this
| thread may have attracted the attention of the Fifty Cent
| Army[1].
|
| There are a remarkable number of comments that fall into the
| same vein, and at least one is a username I recognize from
| previous threads about China shilling very hard in a pro-CCP
| way. I wonder if @dang or HN have any processes by which to
| identify bot / shill accounts and limit them, because it's
| obvious there's a far larger contingent of these accounts on
| the site than I originally expected. I guess HN is no longer
| an unnoticed corner of the Internet where folks can just have
| normal conversations like it used to be.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Let's compare them:
|
| The Tiananmen Square massacre killed off the Chinese
| democracy movement which challenged the CCP for national
| power. It set a new course for Chinese government, that it is
| still more or less on.
|
| The Tulsa massacre was a local race riot, with little impact
| outside Oklahoma.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| The area involved was also fairly affluent. There's a
| possibility that Black Americans could seen that become a
| larger enclave, not unlike Atlanta's Black community. It's
| impossible to know which butterfly's wings might have
| changed the course of history.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| I think what I mean by "freedom" is that "citizens" are a
| branch of government. Freedom is that we've decided the
| citizens are the ruling class.
|
| To oversimplify quite a bite: As a citizen of the United
| States, and Arizona, I'm allowed to get together with a group
| of citizens, draft law, and bring it to vote during the next
| election.
|
| As long as it's constitutionally valid, and we get a majority
| vote, it becomes law.
|
| Several cities have changed their ballot box from First Past
| The Post to Ranked Choice Voting through citizen lead
| initiatives. Ending the full prohibition on Marijuana in my
| state was a citizen initiative.
|
| I'm sure they exist - but I don't know of other countries
| that have this kind of freedom.
|
| We've gotten it wrong in places (gerrymandering is a big one)
| - but we've been one piece of citizen lead legislation away
| from improving it for a long time. And that gives me hope.
| desireco42 wrote:
| Maybe alcohol is not the best metric, but Assange is, or
| endless wars.
| dnautics wrote:
| not comparable. I know of it (and have for 20 years; hey, I
| went to a public school run by hippies so we talked about
| this kind of stuff) AND ALSO I can post about it right here,
| right now, without worrying about the state coming after me
| (as, obviously I have, just now, and has everyone else in
| this thread) AND ALSO I can go to a FOREIGN COUNTRY and post
| about it without worrying that the us will go after my mom
| living in the US.
| bsza wrote:
| > I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race
| massacre
|
| If that were a valid comparison, your comment wouldn't still
| be on this site.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I would compare Tiananmen Square with the Tulsa race
| massacre. How many Americans don 't know about it?_
|
| This is a legitimate comparison between the CCP and the
| government of Oklahoma. It is a bad comparison in terms of
| responses. China fears and represses discussion of the
| Tiananmen Square massacre. In America, we discuss and debate
| and try to incrementally learn from our experience.
| geofft wrote:
| There are a large number of bills in US state legislatures
| aimed at suppressing honest and uncensored discussion of
| the Tulsa race massacre.
|
| In America, we _should_ discuss and debate and try to
| incrementally learn from our experiences. And we do, a lot
| of the time. But not always.
| zepto wrote:
| > There are a large number of bills in US state
| legislatures aimed at suppressing honest and uncensored
| discussion of the Tulsa race massacre.
|
| Bullshit. There is not one.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Many isn't one so I guess you're right there https://duck
| duckgo.com/?q=legislature+bill+crt&t=h_&ia=web
| zepto wrote:
| As I already said - this just proves you don't know what
| CRT is. CRT is not a history curriculum and has nothing
| to do with the Tulsa Massacre.
|
| If you can find a bill which would outlaw teaching about
| Tulsa, try presenting it. I don't think you can.
| [deleted]
| guipsp wrote:
| Quick google search: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-
| congress/senate-bill/234...
| twofornone wrote:
| >RACE-BASED THEORY.--The term "race-based theory" means a
| theory that--
|
| >(A) any race is inherently superior or inferior to any
| other race;
|
| >(B) the United States is a fundamentally racist country;
|
| >(C) the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution
| of the United States is a fundamentally racist document;
|
| >(D) an individual's moral worth is determined by the
| race of the individual;
|
| >(E) an individual, by virtue of the race of the
| individual, is inherently racist or oppressive, whether
| consciously or unconsciously; or
|
| >(F) an individual, because of the race of the
| individual, bears responsibility for the actions
| committed by members of the race of the individual.
|
| Have _you_ actually read and thought about these bills,
| beyond the anti-anti-CRT hysteria? There 's a difference
| between teaching about the history of racism/slavery in
| the US and doing so in a way that singles out and blames
| modern white people and white culture. These bills are
| effectively a response to the overt demonization of
| "whiteness" that has been increasingly en vogue in our
| academic (and other) institutions over the last few
| years. They absolutely do not prevent teaching of
| history, and are anti-discriminatory - because people
| have suddenly decided that belonging to an arbitrarily
| defined majority or "dominant" culture somehow makes you
| immune from discrimination.
|
| No one should be made to feel guilty for the color of
| their skin, for the sins of others who looked like them
| in the past, and that includes white people. The hysteria
| over these bills is ironically steeped in anti-white
| racism. It comes from the same place as the diversity
| seminars where whites are explicitly being asked to
| apologize for their whiteness.
| zepto wrote:
| Ahh, so in other words complete bulkshit,
|
| That bill has nothing to do with preventing teaching
| about Tulsa.
| guipsp wrote:
| It does, for example, the provision regarding >(B) the
| United States is a fundamentally racist country; Could be
| interpreted as preventing proper discussion about what
| caused the Tulsa massacre
| zepto wrote:
| Ok, so you just proved the point. These bills do not
| prevent teaching about Tulsa. That claim has always been
| a lie.
|
| As for what you call "proper" discussion about what
| caused the Tulsa massacre. Nothing in the bill prevents
| people talking about how the massacre was caused by
| racism. Nothing in the bill even prevents discussion of
| the idea that the US is fundamentally racist, or why
| people might believe that to be true.
|
| The only thing the bill prevents is teaching that the US
| is fundamentally racist _as if it were an absolute truth
| or fact, rather than an idea that some people hold._
|
| So no. You are simply wrong about what the bill means.
| geofft wrote:
| My claim (upthread) was "honest and uncensored
| discussion." You can talk in censored ways about it, yes.
|
| If you think it's okay to censor particular views because
| they're obviously wrong or misguided... you're totally
| free to hols that view, but that's still censorship.
| zepto wrote:
| Your claim I was responding to is this: "Could be
| interpreted as preventing _proper discussion_ about what
| caused the Tulsa massacre"
|
| > If you think it's okay to censor particular views
| because they're obviously wrong or misguided... you're
| totally free to hols that view, but that's still
| censorship.
|
| It's a false claim to say that these bills 'censor'
| particular views. That is the lie.
|
| They seek to prevent certain views being taught as _fact
| that can't be debated_.
|
| I.e. the bills do the opposite of what you assert.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Name a single one
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Did you want to make sure it's the same one, that your
| preferred media outlets are talking about?
|
| It's more than one. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=legislature
| +bill+crt&t=h_&ia=web
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| ? Banning the teaching of critical race theory in schools
| is not the same thing as banning any discussion of the
| Tulsa race massacre.
| geofft wrote:
| I didn't claim it bans "any discussion." I claimed it
| bans "honest and uncensored discussion."
| guipsp wrote:
| https://www.kjrh.com/news/local-news/oklahoma-lawmaker-
| propo...
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| In the very slim chance that this bill might ban talking
| about the Tulsa race massacre, I actually read the dumb
| thing.
|
| This is just anti-CRT/adjacent shit, it in no way
| prevents anyone from talking about the Tulsa race
| massacre.
|
| And even if it DID talk about Tulsa, its mentioning it
| Teaching it in schools, so your original claim STILL
| doesn't apply.
|
| Try harder
| chmod600 wrote:
| Controlling how classroom time is managed is not
| suppression of speech. The teacher can't spend the whole
| day preaching the gospel, either, and that doesn't amount
| to suppression of religion.
|
| It may not be the best example of the U.S. remembering
| its failures, but it's nowhere close to what China does
| to force people to forget.
| trothamel wrote:
| This doesn't ban discussion of the sort we're having
| here.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > There are a large number of bills in US state
| legislatures aimed at suppressing honest and uncensored
| discussion of the Tulsa race massacre.
|
| Which bills are those?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Let me google that for you https://duckduckgo.com/?q=legi
| slature+bill+crt&t=h_&ia=web
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| Huh?
|
| How is disallowing in public schools the use of a
| particular instructional approach (not discussion of the
| topic as such) equivalent to "discussion of the Tulsa
| race massacre"?
| zepto wrote:
| That just proves that you don't know what CRT is,
|
| CRT is not a history curriculum and has nothing to do
| with the Tulsa Massacre.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| No need to be snarky, I didn't know what term to search
| for.
|
| This is the first actual bill that comes up from those
| search results - https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-
| congress/senate-bill/234...
|
| Now the problem is I'm not a lawyer or expert in reading
| laws or understanding how they would be interpreted. The
| bill aims to prevent the following kind of theories being
| taught, ones that say:
|
| (A) any race is inherently superior or inferior to any
| other race;
|
| (B) the United States is a fundamentally racist country;
|
| (C) the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution
| of the United States is a fundamentally racist document;
|
| (D) an individual's moral worth is determined by the race
| of the individual;
|
| (E) an individual, by virtue of the race of the
| individual, is inherently racist or oppressive, whether
| consciously or unconsciously; or
|
| (F) an individual, because of the race of the individual,
| bears responsibility for the actions committed by members
| of the race of the individual.
|
| This sounds pretty good to me. B and C could be
| controversial in that those things were true in the past,
| but they seem to refer to the present tense. So the
| letter of the law is okay and the rest of the points are
| banning racist theories which is good, so the spirit of
| the law seems reasonable too. I don't see how this would
| be interpreted as banning the teaching of past racism
| like slavery or segregation or that massacre. But as I
| said I'm not an expert so I would be interested to know
| whether that's a real concern.
| guipsp wrote:
| https://www.kjrh.com/news/local-news/oklahoma-lawmaker-
| propo...
| zepto wrote:
| Some of what is in that bill is repugnant - the part
| about not teaching that one group was the victim and
| another the oppressor in slavery is totally absurd.
|
| If you are claiming that bill is about the Tulsa race
| massacre, you either haven't read it or are lying.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Is it somehow better that the government of the United
| States _doesn't even need to try_ to suppress the
| information?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is it somehow better that the government of the United
| States doesn't even need to try to suppress the
| information?_
|
| Is the claim the United States is not having a
| discussion, in public and politics, reckoning with its
| racial past?
| tshaddox wrote:
| No, the claim is just that most Americans have never
| heard of it, even now after it was featured in some
| critically-acclaimed (although probably not massively
| watched) TV shows, and certainly not for the century
| before those TV shows.
| avmich wrote:
| I'm not even sure it doesn't try. Didn't some politicians
| made actions in the recent past regarding the so called
| critical race theory?
| DFHippie wrote:
| > In America, we discuss and debate and try to
| incrementally learn from our experience.
|
| Well, some do. The anti-CRT brouhaha is a reaction against
| that. Do you suppose they'll be teaching about the Tulsa
| Race Massacre in Oklahoma high schools in the near future?
|
| ETA I think people were taking me the wrong way. I added
| "anti-" above. The brouhaha is all the people trying to
| prevent their kids from hearing anything in history class
| that makes them feel bad. To the extent that they're
| putting the force of law behind suppressing the discussion
| of ugly events in US history, I would say this is pretty
| analogous to the policy of the CCP.
| zepto wrote:
| CRT has nothing to do with teaching history.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Also, CRT has probably never been taught in an American
| K-12 public school. It's an academic subject you would
| only encounter at a university in a very specific field
| of study.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| The parent commenter was referring to "the CRT brouhaha"
| (how the broader issue is playing out in the real world,
| not just what the academic term "critical race theory"
| does or doesn't refer to). The brouhaha is affecting how
| history is taught in at least some places.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/us/texas-critical-race-
| theory...
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/07/02/why-are-
| sta...
|
| https://time.com/6075193/critical-race-theory-debate/
| zepto wrote:
| Sure - but CRT has nothing to do with teaching history.
|
| I don't support banning it, but even if someone did, that
| has noting to do with preventing people talking about
| Tulsa even in schools.
|
| Please stop making this absurd link. There is simply
| nothing comparable to what the Chinese are doing over
| Tiananmen.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Well, some do. The CRT brouhaha is a reaction against
| that.
|
| Yes, because "learning from our experience" is yet
| another form of oppression according to CRT pushers. And
| "discuss and debate" are routinely dismissed as "White"
| values.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > Yes, because "learning from our experience" is yet
| another form of oppression according to CRT pushers.
|
| I don't understand. Are you saying people who discuss
| critical race theory are opposed to learning from our
| experience? Could you characterize what these people are
| doing? I'm genuinely curious. I don't mean to be
| aggressive, I just don't understand your point.
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _CRT brouhaha is a reaction against that_
|
| I'm not claiming that some people in America would like
| to live under a totalitarian regime. I'm saying that's
| not what we have, and that most Americans don't want
| that.
|
| We can look at China, get scared, and note the similar
| systems in our own. But we shouldn't be lazy and conclude
| that, because bees and birds both have eyes they are
| fundamentally the same thing.
| mcv wrote:
| It's clear that some Americans would prefer to hide and
| forget inconvenient parts of US history in the same way
| China would prefer to forget Tiananmen Square.
|
| Personally I'm strongly on the side of remembering
| history so we can learn from it and not be doomed to
| repeat it.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| In the same way China would prefer to forget Tiananmen
| Square?
|
| You are free in America to talk about the Tulsa race
| massacre as much as you like. You can look it up on the
| web, you can buy books about it. The government won't
| threaten you for doing so. It is taught in some schools
| and universities. In Oklahoma, it is required by law to
| be taught in schools. Every year at the end of May there
| are articles published about how no one knows about the
| Tulsa race massacre.
|
| That is not equivalent to the way China would prefer to
| forget Tiananmen Square. Those two things are not the
| same at all. America is not China. Freedom is not
| slavery.
| t-3 wrote:
| I don't know about Oklahoma, but I did learn about the
| Tulsa Massacre in high school. I was also taught that
| it's my responsibility as a citizen to question my
| government and hold them to account, to never blindly
| trust them, and to reject nationalism. This is a pretty
| clear difference...
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| Omitting something from a curriculum is one thing.
|
| Attempting to scrub it from the internet and all of human
| consciousness is a whole new level of tyranny.
|
| If I google "Tulsa Race Massacre" I immediately get
| results and information. Try searching for "Tiananmen
| square massacre" in China and see what kind of results
| you get.
|
| One is subjectively more egregious than the other. There
| isn't even a real comparison here.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Sure. I was just responding to "In America, we discuss
| and debate and try to incrementally learn from our
| experience."
| rajin444 wrote:
| On a higher level the issue is not one sided and focusing
| solely on one side is what the CRT brouhaha is all about.
| It's an ideology not an attempt at portraying reality.
|
| There is no human group in history that holds the moral
| high ground. Trying to convey anything else is tribalism.
| syki wrote:
| I like your terminology: pseudo freedom. You brought walking
| around with a beer being illegal in almost every location in
| the U.S. That's a good example but here is an even more
| fundamental example of pseudo freedom in the U.S. The
| following is about the criminalization of walking. The link
| is to a small sized PDF written by a law professor.
|
| https://www.illinoislawreview.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/05...
| wavefunction wrote:
| As you've described yourself, you're more of a shallow cliche
| of Americans and one that doesn't reflect well on the rest of
| us. You're as real an American as I am, and no more.
| peatmoss wrote:
| We have to also consider the ethical framing of "success."
| Perhaps success is ripping the country apart rather than
| forgetting the moral blight of slavery.
|
| Truthfully, I don't have a good answer here myself beyond, "uh,
| something in between willful forgetting and never ending cross-
| group animus."
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| "China is very consequentialist, they care about prosperity and
| success over everything else."
|
| 1. I'm not sure what consequentialism means.
|
| 2. They care more that just about prosperity, and success.
|
| Xi financial/educational reforms prove the opposite.
|
| a. He doesn't like gambling.
|
| b. He limited tutoring so poor kids could have a fighting
| chance.
|
| c. He clipped the wings of the narcisstic billionaires.
|
| d. He demanded more honesty in a companies financials.
|
| These are off the top of my head. There are qualities about Xi,
| and I imagine there people, that are not just about financial
| success.
|
| Plus--Socialism is not about wealth.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| Why would you describe black smoke diesel as American?
| cloverich wrote:
| They are contrasting their viewpoint by identifying some of
| their other traits in terms of "hard right" characterizations
| in a somewhat poetic manner, e.g. those that would
| stereotypically come from someone who would blanket condemn
| Chinese policy based purely on it not being America +
| Freedom. i.e. "If even _I_, as someone typically far away
| from X, think Y, then...". It would be like saying "I own
| five Tesla's but am a bit skeptical of this whole electric
| car thing because...""
| thinkcontext wrote:
| I believe they are referring to "rolling coal". Its the
| practice of modifying a diesel truck to run dirty for the
| purposes of directing the black cloud at someone.
| montblanc wrote:
| Not everything is measured by economic success. Liberal
| democracy is a value in of itself not just for financial gain.
| Could be that the Chinese system is better economically, who
| knows. But to me it sounds very alien to live there - I
| wouldn't want to. They don't align with most of my values. Now,
| present America which is fast becoming eaten by radicals may
| also become not aligned with my values at some point (at that
| point Europe will be the last standing), but for now it's
| better for people who appreciate liberal democracy.
| kiba wrote:
| It's hard to know if the information we get out of China is
| reasonably accurate, for a given value of 'reasonably
| accurate'.
|
| It seems that the Chinese has problem with rampant cheating
| by both authorities and corporations, leading to many
| projects that seems impressive at first but are of
| questionable quality.
| montblanc wrote:
| For sure. The lack of transparency is a given in an
| authoritarian regime and I'm sure there are consequences.
| Isn't Covid a good example? Chinese scientists who tried to
| ring the alarm where harassed or worse when the whole
| outbreak was beginning. Kinda reminds me of what happened
| in Chernobyl.
| marderfarker2 wrote:
| You also have to be aware of the language barrier/lack of
| voices from within China who can give you context of what
| is happening. News that you hear about China are mostly
| written by western media who has little to no clue about
| what actually happened (remember the Bloomberg report on
| the spy chip?). I would exercise caution when reading
| anything online, especially at this very low SNR climate.
|
| Key to peace and tolerance is understanding,
| unfortunately China is like a blackbox to most, and
| people tend to get angry at things they don't understand.
| montblanc wrote:
| > lack of voices from within China
|
| Whose fault is that? China only has one voice as a
| policy. I'll take Western media's reporting over what the
| Chinese party is saying more often than not. The media
| has its own problems but still.
| beervirus wrote:
| > We can already see having consequentialist ethics that don't
| care about your freedom do a lot better at fighting pandemics
|
| Can we? I have no idea how many people in China have died from
| covid, and neither do you. All we have to go on is what the
| state-run media says.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Chinas pandemic outcome remains to be seen. Their zero Covid
| approach may prove increasingly challenging as new variants
| become more contagious and the rest of the world takes a
| maintenance approach.
|
| I think a centrally controlled society's IQ is the sum if it's
| leaders. A free society's IQ is the sum of its people. That
| makes me optimistic about the prospects for the US.
| smt88 wrote:
| We will never know China's pandemic outcome because the data
| their govt releases is not trustworthy. Perhaps you meant
| only their economic outcome?
| 323 wrote:
| What is the bandwidth of political leaders in US occupied by?
| If you can have an abortion or not, who can vote and in what
| conditions, if vaccines are a good thing or a bad thing.
| Basically issues which were settled 100 years ago in other
| places.
|
| Meanwhile China built thousands of miles of high-speed train
| in the last 10 years (while US built basically none), is
| about to have more navy ships than the US and so on.
|
| https://twitter.com/SpiritofHo/status/1470145473315016704
| chernevik wrote:
| The US leaves far more to people outside the government. We
| get stuff like Space X.
|
| China has profited greatly by allowing its people more
| economic autonomy, but even the most successful are subject
| to State control of whatever the State wants to control,
| whenever the State wants to control it. See Jack Ma.
| bagacrap wrote:
| Americans obviously don't love freedom above all, at least not
| uniformly across the country. Many seem to be surprisingly
| willing to give it up in return for a _sense_ of safety.
| netcan wrote:
| Different but also not always so different.
|
| American alarmism over communism has, at times, led them down a
| similar pathway.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| A lot of Chinas current decision making doesn't seem too
| consequentialist. Cracking down on tech companies? Is that
| supposed to make China a stronger country?
|
| China wants to be a "great power," but that's more
| deontological than consequentialist.
|
| For example, is China's current naval expansion creating good
| consequences? An increased GDP? Higher life expectancy? Higher
| literacy rates?
|
| Not really.
|
| How about the Belt and Road project? Is it increasing GDP?
| ecopoesis wrote:
| Whitewashing history to save the economy is certainly an
| interesting take.
|
| Let's be clear: the reason the Chinese government wants to
| forget and move on from Tiananmen Square is because it
| threatens their power. The scariest thing for an autocrat is
| the people realizing that people hold the real power, and that
| all systems of government only exist because of the consent of
| the governed (implied in China's case, explicit in a
| democracies).
| diordiderot wrote:
| Why does the right want to forget and move on from Tulsa
| massacre?
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| Why does the left want to ignore and move on from their
| broad racist history? What does your comment have to do
| when the above comment you replied to? Partisan tribalism
| does nothing but project your insecurities.
| carabiner wrote:
| Yet the freedom of speech in the US hasn't prevented a
| gerontocracy of multimillionaires (both in government and
| outside of it) to preside over a servant class. We have mass
| incarceration in for-profit prisons whose inhabitants protect
| California mansions from wildfires, "gig economy workers"
| without health insurance, and laborers who are effectively
| indentured servants who cannot leave their jobs without
| losing health care. In every city on the west coast, the tent
| cities grow larger by the day.
|
| "At least we can talk about it..." Yes, talk, and talk, and
| talk. This has come about over _decades_. How many decades of
| "freedom" will it take to actually bring change? Could it be
| that endless debate on Twitter is our modern bread and
| circuses that will amount to nothing?
| [deleted]
| wavefunction wrote:
| As you've described yourself, you're more of a shallow cliche
| of Americans and one that doesn't necessarily reflect well on
| the rest of us. You're as real an American as the rest of us,
| and no more.
| crsv wrote:
| Good on Purdue for taking care of their students.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Eh, talk is cheap. Glad they're speaking out against China, but
| as far as I know it costs them nothing to do so and they stand
| to gain some positive PR.
| someguydave wrote:
| These days talk that defends freedom of speech is not cheap.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I assume university leaders' pay is correlated to a
| university's budget, which is correlated to international
| students paying full price, which is correlated to students
| from China due to their large numbers.
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-
| china...
|
| > At Brandeis University near Boston, Chinese students
| mobilized last year to sabotage an online panel about
| atrocities against Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region. Viewers
| interrupted a Harvard-educated lawyer as she tried to
| describe her brother's plight in a concentration camp,
| scrawling "bullshit" and "fake news" over his face on the
| screen and blaring China's national anthem. To the dismay of
| participants, the university's leaders failed to condemn the
| incident.
|
| > U.S. universities have received more than $1 billion in
| donations from mainland China -- from individuals, companies,
| government organizations -- since 2013, according to the
| Department of Education. That doesn't include tuition paid by
| Chinese students, whose numbers in the U.S. reached 370,000
| in 2019.
| hectord wrote:
| The number of Chinese students is already already in
| decline for various reasons [1]. It means less money for
| the American universities. It also means less tensions
| between students in the future. I don't think it's good
| news for the US though.
|
| [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/international-
| students-impa...
| milofeynman wrote:
| _Purdue President Mitch Daniels sent an email to the university
| criticizing the harassment against Purdue student Zhihao Kong,
| whose experience was documented in an article on ProPublica, an
| investigative journalism outlet based in New York City._
|
| Here is the probulica article:
| https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-china...
| Jensson wrote:
| This is great, but I wonder how long these things will last? Big
| companies with a strong dependency on China tend take China's
| side, and since big companies controls the narrative I wouldn't
| be surprised if it becomes a social faux pas to criticize CCP in
| the future.
|
| China doesn't have enough power and influence for that to happen
| today, but what if/when their GDP per capita reaches the same
| level as US? At that point every big company has to adapt or get
| outcompeted by the companies allowed to operate in the Chinese
| market.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I hold nonprofit colleges and universities to a higher standard
| than corporations.
|
| (Which isn't to say I believe in letting corporations off the
| hook.)
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Well, as John Cena put it: "bing chilling!"
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes a social faux pas to
| criticize CCP in the future
|
| It has been for years. You can find many stories of it,
| including companies firing employees who are critical of the
| CCP and CEOs apologizing. Look up stories of Disney, most of
| Hollywood, the NBA (a firestorm, though I don't know about
| apologies), etc.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| Applause for Purdue eh. I am excited to see how this plays out
| for them but I support this position.
|
| Universities are a place of learning. If someone is misunderstood
| in their worldview or something else. That's the place to learn
| where you're wrong. Therefore all viewpoints must be allowed.
| worried-about wrote:
| West Lafayette resident here, fuck Purdue. As a Purdue employee,
| I was exposed to/directly victimized by so much institutional
| sexual assault at Purdue that it still makes me upset. They get
| away with murder because our local news agency is beyond a joke
| (https://www.wlfi.com/), nobody in town even knows that this is
| happening!!! Anyone remember when Daniels referred to black
| student as "animals" and got it swept under the rug? I fucking
| hate it here, and will be permanently transplanting to distance
| myself from this toxic community.
| k1ll3r wrote:
| China poses a significant threat on basic human freedoms of all
| people. We need to aggressively fight back against any and all
| influences that are Chinese in origin.
|
| Don't do business with Chinese companies, or companies that are
| even affiliated with Chinese companies. Don't accept funding with
| ties to China. Etc etc.
|
| And more importantly, we need programs for Chinese citizens that
| allow them to immigrate and live in Western countries provided
| they renounce their Chinese citizenship. The people aren't at
| fault here, naturally, it's the system that is corrupt and is
| using the population to further its own corrupt ideology.
| jbkiv wrote:
| This a weak response.
|
| It reminds me of a fellow student at Wharton. Whatever the
| question was in classes (ethics, economics) his answer was ALWAYS
| "I really feel strongly both ways". My friends and I even gave
| him a price for his answers/behavior at the end.
|
| Years later he was a CEO of major corporations. That served him
| well to never take the stand.
|
| Life is full of people who "really feel strongly both ways". It
| seems that Purdue is taking that route. We have seen that with
| other Universities: cheating on exams? Don't do that again (=we
| need to keep the money flowing).
|
| This is awful. President Daniels should resign. Or the Board
| should advise him to step down "in the interest of the
| University".
| killjoywashere wrote:
| What is a strong response? Expelling the harassers? Details,
| please.
| [deleted]
| revolutionaryy wrote:
| As a Chinese-American proud of my heritage, I have to scoff at
| the white man's attempt to again portray themselves as beacons of
| "good" and "freedom". You are not so noble. The open secret is
| that China is the greatest threat to Western hegemony, or more
| specifically, white supremacy. For the last 500 years the world
| has been ruled by white people, and now China offers the colored
| people of the world a glimmer of hope. A rising China will uplift
| all Asians. China will rise and be a great nation, reunify with
| Taiwan, and become the richest country. Then we will see what
| your so-called "freedom" gets you.
| Fnoord wrote:
| https://archive.md/aCDDs (For my fellow EU visitors who get
| 451'ed.)
| 99_00 wrote:
| This is not an isolated incident. There is a large pattern.
| Awareness of the broad trend needs to increase.
|
| And it isn't only happening in the US. It's global.
|
| Tibetan-Canadian student politician, Uyghur rights activists come
| under attack by Chinese students in Canada
|
| https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/tibetan-canadian-studen...
|
| Just another example. I'm sure others have many more.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Excellent. Supporting free thought and expression is exactly what
| universities are supposed to do. I don't feel they've always done
| so sufficiently in recent years, but it's great to see them
| taking a stand here.
| maratc wrote:
| That's an easy stand to take. It would be more interesting to
| see what stand would they take on more controversial subjects
| that also support free thought and expression.
| [deleted]
| gopher_space wrote:
| > I don't feel they've always done so sufficiently in recent
| years
|
| I TA'd for an anthro program a bit and the 'free thought'
| people were usually finding out that they'd been abusing terms
| of art or needed to switch contexts and were struggling to
| reframe their perceptions.
|
| The difference between "you can't do that" and "that's not what
| we're doing here" evaded some people for a while.
| [deleted]
| vehemenz wrote:
| Direct link to email:
| https://mailimages.purdue.edu/vo/?FileID=23efd1c5-fa72-4070-...
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| The scale of some Chinese people's commitment to support of their
| government's chosen narrative against facts is quite impressive /
| scary.
|
| Zealots make great cannon fodder, and the more cannon fodder the
| higher the chance of winning.
|
| It bodes poorly for Hong Kong, Taiwan, and any other country with
| a coastline along the South China Sea.
| stelonix wrote:
| You only have to look at this very website to see the same
| happening with US citizens' support for their government's
| chosen narrative. It bodes poorly for Puerto Rico, Cuba,
| Nicaragua and every other nation who had military juntas
| propped up by the USG _and still_ suffer from american
| influence. Some will go to great lengths to foment hatred
| against whistleblowers, such as Assange or Snowden.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Oh yes, I totally agree, but I just think this is on a
| different scale, and I might be way wrong on this, but...
|
| Imagine a US college student studying overseas commenting
| about the US failures in the Vietnam War or the Iraq War over
| nonexistent WMDs. Would other US students harass that
| individual, and if so, would they report the individual to US
| "authorities" to make sure a message was passed on to the
| individuals parents?
|
| I get riled up about bad opinions, but I'm not going out of
| my way to make their lives miserable or report them to
| authorities. Fuck man, I've got shit to do of my own.
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _I 'm not going out of my way to make their lives
| miserable_
|
| But things like that often happen in the US, like, for
| example, in the case of people who spoke against the
| invasion of Iraq. This can even escalate further, I will
| never forget the "freedom fries" or "Today Baghdad,
| tomorrow Paris!"
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| These are other students though, if that makes a
| difference. Kids, in a foreign country, who should be
| either studying, drinking, or fucking. Doing shit because
| their parents are a thousand miles away. Anything but
| home country goddamn politics.
|
| Again, maybe I'm wrong, but usually that level of
| zealotry requires a few years of career and relationship
| failure that's out of reach to the average student.
| someguydave wrote:
| The US governemnt is inept and oppressive in its ways, but
| you are acting exactly as a hostile foreign agent would,
| stirring up strife and making exaggerated equivocations to
| create division.
| stelonix wrote:
| From my point of view, being a foreigner to US citizens,
| it's the USG stirring strife, exaggerated equivocations
| like the Uygur genocide fiasco... All in an attempt to
| create division and weaken their adversaries. It goes both
| ways, the US doesn't get to be morally in a higher ground
| when you do the same things (or worse) as the people you're
| accusing. If you cut down on the jingoism, it's 2 global
| superpowers in a geopolitical battle, and that's the only
| _objective_ view.
| bostonsre wrote:
| I personally haven't met anyone from China who has liked their
| government. I would assume there is some selection bias there
| and those that love their country are more likely to stay home,
| but would be really interested to talk to a true believer. I
| wouldn't be surprised if pressure was applied to those
| individuals to harass the one that spoke out against the party.
| The regime is brutal and most will toe the line when their
| family is threatened back home.
| vidarh wrote:
| If you want to talk to a true believer, go to reddit, on
| /r/sino. /r/china has the people critical to China, /r/sino
| has the pro-CCP crowd. As for similar subs I'd expect the
| threshold for getting banned to be fairly low, though.
| bostonsre wrote:
| I'd be pretty curious to know if there are many people
| working for the CCP in propaganda in the /r/china forum.
| The possibility of astroturfing makes it kind of impossible
| to know the truth. But, I will definitely give it a read.
| vidarh wrote:
| /r/china is _very_ critical of the CCP, so I doubt there
| are many there - even relatively innocuous-looking stuff
| positive on China tends to get piled on there. /r/sino
| is opposite.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Have you met them at a $30k+/yr university? I think that's an
| important piece of context here. The current Chinese system
| affords these students the ability to go to prestigious
| universities abroad. Things are going good for these
| students, so why wouldn't they like the government that
| grants them such privilege?
|
| Folks who've immigrated for other reasons might have a
| different experience...
| justicezyx wrote:
| Does Chinese government pay the tuition for these students?
| That sounds like too good to be true.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| For some of them, yes [0], but even beside that, if
| you're well off enough, in country that treats dissenters
| so poorly, to send your child abroad to study at an
| expensive university, you're likely in favor of the
| status quo.
|
| 0 -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Scholarship_Council
| justicezyx wrote:
| Total number of Chinese students about 370k
| https://fortune.com/2021/08/16/us-universities-
| international...
|
| Your link shows: The CSC funds approximately 65,000
| Chinese students studying abroad in a given year, and the
| same number of international students in China.[1]
| bostonsre wrote:
| I don't think I met any in college who spoke about their
| thoughts about the CCP. But yea, it definitely seems
| plausible and very likely that there are a proportion that
| are grateful to the CCP for the opportunities they are
| given. I would be extremely curious about the ratio that is
| thankful to the party versus thankful that they've escaped.
| d0mine wrote:
| The same can be said about the citizens of the empire.
| Unfortunately, it is the global problem. Especially, countries
| with the oil are affected (e.g., remember Iraq and fake 911,
| WMD connections). Though, countries with social leaning should
| be concerned too I'm looking at you Europe: universal health
| care is a cardinal sin that will be corrected by the empire
| sooner or later.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book
| rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and
| street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.
| And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.
| History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present
| in which the Party is always right."
|
| ~ George Orwell, 1984
| toxik wrote:
| Whenever you think that you're on the outside looking in,
| seeing the world for what it is while others seem blind, you
| should reconsider your perspective.
|
| The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without mental
| faculties. I wince when I see quotes like these spoken about
| a people of literal billions.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| >about a people of literal billions.
|
| I think that so far there, billion is singular since the
| population of China is only about 1.5 billion. The
| population growth rate is also in decline and has been for
| a while.
|
| One and a half billion is still a big number though.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> The Chinese people [are] not some herd of sheep without
| mental faculties._
|
| Meta: sure doesn't take much bad faith to sour a good
| debate! "One bad apple spoils the bunch," they say.
|
| One of the two core ideas in 1984 is a) the extreme
| plasticity of the human mind, and b) that power finds its
| ultimate expression using that plasticity to cause
| suffering. The ruling society of 1984, the "inner circle",
| as represented by O'Brien, is highly self-aware (also,
| insane). The people, like Smith, are not sheep although he,
| like everyone else around him, must act like one on
| command, by threat of force.
|
| To characterize the victims of 1984 as sheep is miss the
| stunning evil of the antagonists, which is that they first
| found ways to make people act that way on a gross level,
| and who are now methodically finding ways to make them act
| that way on a subtle, universal level.
|
| Perhaps you, and rugged individualists like you, believe
| you wouldn't have anything to worry about under such a
| regime, and by extension if you accuse a population of
| actually suffering under such a regime, then it is an
| attack on them. I encourage you to consider the possibility
| that your hypothesis is wrong. Namely that you would not,
| by hypothesis, have survived the events of 1984. And that
| doesn't make you, or anyone, sheep.
| justicezyx wrote:
| The point in 1984 is that *everyone* can fall victim to
| mental manipulation, and an observer can discover the
| manipulation easily. Like American sees the hypocrisy of
| Chinese democracy, and, equally, Chinese seeing the
| hypocrisy of American one. They are virtually identical
| in the observation, and both sides can easily convince
| themselves of their own conviction.
|
| God, I only wish this time the leaders from the both
| sides are responsible ones, people like Trump on both
| sides can easily make wars in a wink of eyes with both
| sides seeing each other this way.
|
| The sideline point is that one is the worst judge of
| themselves...
| dqpb wrote:
| > The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without
| mental faculties.
|
| Can Chinese people freely communicate with each other? The
| ability to do so is critical for unimpaired mental
| faculties of the collective.
| bobthechef wrote:
| I don't see anything in that quote that's specific to the
| Chinese in general. Most people make an at least intuitive
| distinction between individuals of an ethnic or national
| group and the ethnic or national group _as an organized
| political entity_. When we say "the Russians exterminated
| thousands of Polish officers in Katyn", obviously we don't
| mean every Russian exterminated Polish soldiers. When we
| say "the Germans exterminated millions of Poles", we don't
| mean every German was murdering Poles. We mean that the the
| Russians or Germans _as organized political entities_ , led
| by certain people, perpetuated those crimes. Some
| individual Russians and Germans themselves payed for
| opposing such actions. Similarly with "the Chinese". That's
| why when there is animosity between two groups, the
| cautious presumption might be that someone of the other
| side is an enemy, but personal contact can reveal what
| their individual stances are and that they may differ from
| the political stance.
|
| FWIW, Americans themselves often suffer from a great deal
| of myopia and Americentrism, regardless of political
| leaning, and lots of people who lived under the boot of the
| Soviet Union who've moved to the US are sensitized to the
| subtler forms of psychological warfare the American public
| has been subjected to for decades.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without
| mental faculties"
|
| Neither were inhabitants of all the other nations where
| totalitarian regimes seized power, but it did not help
| them.
|
| Totalitarian systems are really adept at controlling
| people. It is a matter of survival for them.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Do you know of any examples of descent against the
| government that ended well for those that spoke up? I
| highly doubt the people are sheep and I'm pretty positive I
| would act in the same exact way and keep my mouth shut in
| order to live my life if I was living in a country with an
| oppressive government.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| The collapse of the Eastern European socialist countries
| 30 years ago is an excellent example. But it only works
| when the general public had suffered enough and isn't
| willing to support the regime anymore. And the economic
| situation needs to get worse for one or two generations,
| it won't happen overnight and in a working economy. A few
| dissidents "speaking up" to incite change is a romantic
| idea, but it's not enough.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| It's a kind of miracle it happened in most these
| countries without bloodshed. You need to mobilize large
| parts of society and have a favorable political situation
| to perform a coup like this without a civil war.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Yea, I meant in China but those examples you provided
| definitely illustrate how unlikely it will be to happen
| in China. It's pretty sad and I can't imagine having such
| a bleak future, especially for those that are more
| oppressed than others over there.
| dpratt wrote:
| So, should the outside observers who noticed the mass
| hysteria, death and destruction in Russia, Germany,
| Cambodia, Myanmar, Romania, Turkey and myriad other
| examples during the 20th century just have realized that
| they needed to "reconsider their perspective"? It's
| entirely possible, and in fact, highly probable, that
| entire mass groups of people can be manipulated into
| collective insanity quite easily. That doesn't make them
| sheep, it makes them Human, and it's up to us to be aware
| of this aspect of our collective psychology and point it
| out where visible.
| gmadsen wrote:
| I'm beginning to think this is an intentional tactic made
| in bad faith. Criticisms of the CCP are not criticisms of
| Chinese people. This was used two years ago regarding the
| cover up by the CCP of the Wuhan Lab.
|
| Direct parallels can be seen in US discourse regarding the
| actions of the Israeli government being equated to
| antisemitism.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Except the quote isn't criticizing people. It's criticizing
| the political party which is defined by 1 person. Not
| billions.
|
| The (Chinese) people are the victims in this.
| roastytoasty wrote:
| You do not know how easy it is to control mass populations.
| Open a history book
| jaywalk wrote:
| You don't even need to open a history book. Just open a
| newspaper.
| slig wrote:
| Just open the window and look outside.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _The Chinese people is not some herd of sheep without
| mental faculties._
|
| Have you read _1984_? Neither are the Party members. (And
| also, the quote doesn 't mention the people.)
| nasmorn wrote:
| The Chinese people will surely not write about the
| Americans like this. 1984 is banned there.
| bildung wrote:
| That's apparently wrong, and your comment thus a
| wonderful example of what toxik meant.
| notRobot wrote:
| In-depth view into Chinese censorship: https://www.theatl
| antic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/why-1984-a...
| nasmorn wrote:
| Apparently nowadays you can buy a physical book but not
| talk about it online. Guess my conclusion still stands.
| oolonthegreat wrote:
| maybe not the book itself, but if you read the article
| you'll see that even weirder stuff are banned:
|
| The government disallows the publication of any work by
| Liu Xiaobo, the determined critic of the Communist Party
| who in 2017 became the first Nobel Peace Prize winner
| since Nazi times to die in prison. Again, for a time last
| year Chinese citizens could not type 19, 80, and four in
| sequence--but they could, and still can, buy a copy of
| 1984, the most famous novel on authoritarianism ever
| written. Prefer Aldous Huxley's Brave New World? They can
| buy that text, too, just as easily, although its title
| also joined the taboo list last winter.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _Whenever you think that you're on the outside looking in,
| seeing the world for what it is while others seem blind,
| you should reconsider your perspective._
|
| My wife's an immigrant, having grown up in Shanghai during
| the cultural revolution. She's got countless stories of how
| she was systematically lied to the entire time. For
| example, when she was little she was taught that children
| in America were largely starving too death, which the
| children of China were lucky that the leadership of
| Chairman Mao had brought them such bounty.
|
| My wife's family was systematically persecuted, in part
| because of their cosmopolitan exposure (her uncle was
| already in America, and her father was a sea captain
| traveling the world). Every member of her extended family,
| other than her grandmother, spent time in prison or work
| camps. I've read the forced "confession" documents from
| some of her family.
|
| All through this time, we know that China has been
| consistently suppressing information about the Tienanmen
| Square massacre, for example.
|
| While under Deng's regime the pendulum started to swing
| back toward freedom a bit, it's completely reversed again
| over the past several years under Xi. On a number of
| occasions my wife's own communications to her family in
| China have been filtered (e.g., postings on WeChat being
| removed after the fact, or email attachments being stripped
| out of messages).
|
| Your point that we need to be cautious about assuming that
| others are blinded while we have a unique ability to see
| the truth is well taken. But I think in this case it's
| really warranted.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| I wonder how much business Western cyber companies have
| with China? If I recall, the Great Firewall was actually
| started by a US company built out of either an IARPA or
| DARPA project. It wasn't until many years later that DoD
| started using similar products, only then after they
| jailed (Shawn Carpenter).
| bsjks wrote:
| People in China are taught to love their country. Seems to be
| working better for them than what we do in the west, the exact
| opposite.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| We have the same problem in the US. Certain "Freedom loving"
| sects applaud military intervention, increased police presence,
| spying on citizens, and the death of any protester, peaceful or
| otherwise.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Not at all the same problem, since those people do not
| control the government.
| bobthechef wrote:
| You've conveniently focused on one group without noting the
| overwhelming power of the far left whose insanity is
| currently tearing through the US and the West in general (the
| tail end of a long progression). As far as political power
| goes, the latter is what should arouse more concern given how
| entrenched (philosophical) liberalism is.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| That seems like a very, very, broad brush.
| yholio wrote:
| It's the same type of problem, but much more limited in
| extent.
|
| Every country has it to some degree, authoritarian regimes
| typically go crazy with nationalism since it's the most
| powerful tool they have to force their victims on the side
| of the aggressors against the evil foreigners.
| hkt wrote:
| Sadly not - remember, the US with the UK's complicity is
| going to let Julian Assange rot in prison probably for the
| rest of his life. For engaging in an act of journalism
| which in all likelihood ended the Iraq war, or at least
| made a substantial contribution to doing so.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| US embarrassments, however, have movies made about them, as
| opposed to burying them as deeply as possible whilst
| simultaneously threatening every single citizen with,
| essentially, removal from society, if they speak against the
| chosen narrative.
|
| No country is innocent, some are, however, free (moreso, at
| least, enough to matter, enough to choose if the need
| arises).
| stelonix wrote:
| Those movies are more often than not glorifying such
| embarrassments, which make them propaganda.
|
| As an analogy for China & the US, you can say one of them
| is Orwellian while the other is Huxleyan. They're both
| oppressive, but it's about time to stop pretending only
| coercion is bad; propaganda is everywhere in american media
| and it's the same tactic used by autocracies in the 40s:
| spin everything you do as "us vs them they evil" and
| dehumanize anything your foes do as "they evil not free
| genocide". People who say there's a genocide in China with
| 0 Uygur deaths are the same to dismiss the Iraq war with
| millions dead; calling it what it was, a genocide, will
| never even pass by their brains. Double standards.
| oolonthegreat wrote:
| AFAIK there was (still is) huge public backlash after it
| became apparent that there were no WMDs in Iraq. Ofc you
| can argue that this reaction was too late and maybe even
| insincere (since public support was very high in the
| beginning of the war).
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| > people who say there's a genocide in China with 0 Uygur
| deaths
|
| Whoa, some paid CCP propaganda there. How about this:
| Allow international human rights groups and Western media
| access to the Uygurh areas? Allow the topic to be
| discussed openly on the Chinese internet?
|
| Until the CCP does that, it's better advised to just
| suppress the story. Like it's doing now.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Two that come to mind are The Big Short and The Trial of
| the Chicago Seven.
|
| Two movies in a rich fabric that give me no confidence in
| the reality of consequences of bad behaviour that my
| parents drilled into me since I was born.
|
| Both movies give me the impression that no lessons have
| been learned by either experience.
| someguydave wrote:
| There is no way you can truthfully say that the US went
| to Iraq to murder an ethnicity. Flagged.
| stelonix wrote:
| I'm still waiting for the incontestable proof China is
| trying to get rid of Uygurs. No, a known anti-China
| source such as Adrian Zenz being propped up by
| adversaries of China does not count. If you have the
| slightest understanding of discourse, you already know
| this: you don't get a biased source to report on the
| subject they're biased about.
| someguydave wrote:
| If you are not in the US, and you are not in Europe (this
| article is blocked there) which continent are you on?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It seems unreasonable to require that all bad information
| about China come from previously neutral sources. Is Zenz
| an anti-China source because he's "biased", or because
| he's reached a reasonable evidence-based conclusion that
| the Chinese government is very bad?
| asimpletune wrote:
| First, now sure I follow how Orwell glorifies these
| embarrassments, because I think it's the exact opposite.
|
| Second, the USA/EU is not perfectly innocent wrt to
| propaganda, but still... it could be much worse.
| stelonix wrote:
| Subjective comparisons are really useless on a debate eg.
| "I think USA/EU are bad but China is worse" while someone
| else will say exactly the opposite. You'll then say "he's
| blinded by propaganda" and the other side will say the
| same. If the debate is in a western website, you win, if
| it's in China, they win. That's a flamewar shitshow, not
| a debate.
|
| The Orwell/Huxley comparison wrt the way China/America
| respectively enforce their narrative. China is through
| crackdown of dissent, coercion, while the US is through
| propaganda that paints everything America does as
| righteous, inherently good, altruist, selfless... You
| only have to look at the output of Hollywood or modern
| videogames to see such an obvious fact.
|
| Of course, if you're the target of state propaganda,
| it'll be hard to decouple what you've been fed your whole
| life as _truth_ from geopolitical interests. Being an
| outsider I can see the bullshit in both governments, but
| the one I 'm worried about is the one which has been
| belligerent since I was born and much before that.
| asimpletune wrote:
| Yeah, I mean you're basically saying if someone is so
| inclined they can approach any question from a
| perspective of bad faith, and never recognize any merit
| to a theoretically valid argument. I don't think that
| problem in general can be solved, even if we eliminated
| propaganda or otherwise. No one can make anyone agree
| with someone, even if they're right.
|
| That being said, I can still ask questions and say what I
| think and see what happens. I'm legitimately open to
| being wrong, in fact I'd love to be.
|
| Also, I'll just add this briefly, I didn't say anything
| about China. I just said it could be much worse. That
| could come from my own people (I'm from the USA).
| stelonix wrote:
| I believe discourse/debate on the internet are broken.
| I'll go as far as saying internet forums have failed
| because they're still text-only, moderation is still
| upvote/downvote-only and people are not obligated to add
| citations for what they claim. We're left with finding
| forums where people are more rational and less biased,
| which is why I frequent HN.
|
| Still, the problem can be alleviated imo if we level up
| the way internet forums work.
| asimpletune wrote:
| You and me are doing it right now! Respect and setting a
| good example at the end of the day I think succeed. I
| can't prove it, but I take it as a matter of faith I
| suppose.
|
| O and yeah, you're right, these kinds of issues aren't so
| much of a problem face to face. Our emotions are like
| little ASICs that just kind of grease the wheels of
| social friction. Evolutions... crazy.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Indeed. If I recall correctly, movies which use US
| Military equipment are often required to work with/be
| reviewed by the Pentagon:
|
| [0] https://www.defense.gov/News/Inside-
| DOD/Blog/article/2062735...
|
| [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-2011-aug-21-la-ca-mi...
| thesuitonym wrote:
| AFAIK there's no requirement to work with the DoD, but if
| you want DoD consultants they want a say in the movie.
| titzer wrote:
| I have yet to see a feature-length film depicting Trump the
| way, e.g. Oliver Stone's "W" or Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit
| 9/11" depicted Bush. Trump's crimes are buried in a
| mountain of...other crimes, and the atmosphere is so thick
| with bullshit that investigating facts is to tempt a
| firehouse of political hate of epic proportions. I think
| certain topics are virtually suicide these days.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I think that's just a case of not enough time having
| passed. There's probably so much material to sift
| through.
| Aunche wrote:
| One "feature" of democracy is that it doesn't matter
| whether people speak out against something. You just need
| 51% of people to agree with you, which can come from
| manufactured consent, and you can accomplish all the evil
| deeds you want all the same. If you try to do anything thar
| _actually_ threatens the government 's operations, you're
| treasonous and can be punished accordingly.
| GordonS wrote:
| > US embarrassments, however, have movies made about them,
| as opposed to burying them as deeply as possible
|
| In some ways, I think this can actually serve to make
| people believe that real events were fictional - after all,
| movies are generally fictional or at least with a good dose
| of artistic license.
|
| I also must point out that some western governments will go
| to extreme lengths to bury bad actions as deeply as
| possible - if it wasn't for leakers, there are a whole host
| of Western war crimes and atrocities that would never have
| surfaced to the public. Even when they do, government and
| media propaganda machines are very efficient at convincing
| the general populace there is nothing to see here.
|
| We like to berate China and others for bad actions (rightly
| so), but in many respects Western governments are appalling
| hypocrites.
| Veelox wrote:
| Hey, let me see if I can play this game!
|
| We have the same problem in the US. Certain "Equity loving"
| sects applaud disregarding national boarders, easy release of
| multiple time offenders, shouting down those who disagree,
| and the death of any vaccine protester.
| [deleted]
| jahnu wrote:
| One of the best ways for those of us in the democratic West to
| combat this is to not tolerate when our own governments promote
| false narratives. This displays the virtues of our imperfect
| system better than anything else, imo.
|
| Don't tolerate lies, hypocrisy, or sophistry from our leaders
| even if they are nominally on 'our side'.
| naasking wrote:
| > One of the best ways for those of us in the democratic West
| to combat this is to not tolerate when our own governments
| promote false narratives
|
| Virtually every narrative peddled by politicians in the West
| is either false or misleading. That's a high bar that I don't
| think we'll ever meet. We can maybe asymptotically approach
| it, say by getting money out of politics, but I don't think
| it will ever go away.
| Aunche wrote:
| The best way for us to combat this is to strengthen our
| diplomatic relations and develop our economy, which is
| exactly want China is doing itself.
|
| I think that people in the West really overestimate the
| importance of combating narratives to the point where China
| is taking advantage of it. China doesn't actually give a damn
| about narratives outside of China, except when they want to
| virtue signal or when it's convenient. For example, look at
| China's reaction towards Nike and H&M after they spoke out
| about Xinjiang. They've encouraged their citizens to boycott
| these companies, which helps their Chinese-owned competitors.
| Meanwhile, they'll happily continue to supply H&M and Nike
| because they would otherwise harm their economy. The result
| is that we have a larger trade deficit.
| titzer wrote:
| > Don't tolerate lies, hypocrisy, or sophistry from our
| leaders even if they are nominally on 'our side'.
|
| But Americans do. Things are so polarized that people believe
| complete horseshit from their political leaders because they
| don't want to budge _an inch_ to the "other" side.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I mean I think that is a very simplistic, limited and
| isolated point of view to address a population, but also very
| optimistic about the democratic West population capability to
| logically read situations.
|
| I see tennis players in China being incarcerated for speaking
| out, I saw recently a video of a guy trying to report about
| Uyghurs concentration camp, and if I was worried as Americans
| right now about China (not even Taiwanese are giving as much
| of a fuck), I am sure I would be aware of more examples.
|
| What I mean is that there are servants in the world,
| patriotic people that are willing to put 1 kilo of ham slice
| on their eyes at every press conference, we have people who
| believe in the second coming of god and people who believe in
| Q theories, we have accepted the incarceration of people who
| reported about war crimes in the middle east, we have
| accepted attacks on women right to abort, we have accepted
| the killing on our streets of black people and minorities.
| All this spotlight on NK, China, Russia, is nothing more than
| a way to keep the people of the west distracted from their
| own misery, if people of the West were able to solve
| anything, there are already enough problems that internally
| need to be taken care of
|
| what kind of example can the west be to the world
| [deleted]
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I suspect the two of you are agreeing more that in
| initially seems - IMHO the proper response of the west to
| the current time of troubles is to double down on the
| values of freedom over safety that made us the dominant
| cultural force. Stupidity exists in dictatorships also,
| it's when we're not willing to be distracted by propaganda
| against our rivals and look at our own mistakes that a
| democratic system lets much of that stupidity cancel itself
| out.
| justicezyx wrote:
| > I see tennis players in China being incarcerated for
| speaking out
|
| Who is this?
|
| > I saw recently a video of a guy trying to report about
| Uyghurs concentration camp
|
| https://youtu.be/zZCq7wLgpEc This? This guy is using this
| to seek political asylum in US. I watched his previous
| videos on Chinese website, this guy had been planning this
| for a while. The validity of the video is up to you to
| assess.
|
| >All this spotlight on NK, China, Russia
|
| If you look closely at all the spotlights, then you
| actually can find that most of them are minor issues. Even
| human rights violation are less diabolical: uygurs are put
| into rededication camp, while Afghanistan/Iraqian/Syrians
| were blow to pieces...
|
| Bot of course, one might believe putting into rededication
| camp is worse than being blown into pieces.
| asimpletune wrote:
| Well, because despite those failures, things can always be
| worse. This game is not zero-sum.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >one of the best ways for those of us in the democratic West
| to combat this is to not tolerate when our own governments
| promote false narratives
|
| I'm far more concerned about tolerating this behavior among
| ourselves. Politicians always lie and people have been
| complaining about it as far back as we have written record.
|
| This case involving these students is the same basic fact
| pattern (but without and abstractions between the victims and
| the thread of government violence) of the narcing on your
| neighbors for various minor stuff behavior that is applauded
| as "being savvy and working the system" behavior in certain
| demographic circles in the US.
|
| If you don't wanna live in a world where the secret police
| show up at the door or someone who's kid said some WrongThink
| don't make us take steps in that direction by making us live
| in a world where people have to worry about not putting the
| wrong politician's sign in their yard lest the building
| inspector showing up and measuring the square footage of
| their garden shed that can't be seen from the street.
|
| It's not like you wake up one day and have a secret police in
| an otherwise free society. It's a long slow slide with a lot
| of intermediate steps where similar behavior under different
| pretexts and with slight abstractions is normalized until it
| is so pervasive it doesn't need to be obfuscated and you get
| an official "secret police" agency
| jahnu wrote:
| I largely agree. My point about not tolerating it extends
| to how we behave towards each other. Perhaps even primarily
| so.
| satronaut wrote:
| "Don't tolerate lies, hypocrisy, or sophistry from our
| leaders even if they are nominally on 'our side'. ", This
| bugs me so much. The biden administration literally
| complained to MSM about the bad news they were getting. In a
| few days CNN came out with "Gas prices are coming down _" , _
| being still not as low as the Trump era. Reminds me of 1984
| when Winston makes up an article about chocolate rations
| tgb wrote:
| I'm confused by your complaint. Gas prices heave generally
| been heading down recently as best as I can tell.
| Gasbuddy.com/charts
| satronaut wrote:
| From your source, gas was an average of ~2.40 on jan
| 20th. Rite after biden gets in gas spikes, peaking around
| 3.40 end of october. Now it's around 3.20. Still up by
| 80c nationally. But CNN is saying "gas is going down"
| trying to give biden a favorable image, instead of saying
| "Gas is still way up because of the ESG policies of the
| biden administration"
| yalogin wrote:
| This is just wishful thinking. Doesn't help other countries.
| We just think way too much of ourselves in the US and our
| influence in the world, specifically how our way of life
| influences other countries. It probably stems from the
| collapse of the USSR, which was mostly because of internal
| system rot but we attributed it to American freedom and
| democracy. Every foreign policy decision since then is taken
| with those lens and we ended up failing miserably in all of
| them.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| China as a strong lobby in DC [0]. And, while admitting
| you're wrong should show strength and courage, for some
| reason, probably due to media pressure among other things,
| the political discourse in the US doesn't allow people to
| admit they were wrong and course correct or just come to a
| new position when new information is found. Remember the huge
| campaign calling John Kerry a "flip-flopper" [1]? I suspect
| the lobbyist money is more of the driving factor here though.
| If you can somehow eliminate that, our elected leaders
| wouldn't have the motivation for lies, hypocrisy, or
| sophistry in the first place.
|
| 0 - https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-the-us-officials-who-
| now-...
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(politics)
| hef19898 wrote:
| I am less worried about our democratic governments then I am
| about private entities, especially in sports and
| entertainment bending over to various totalitarian
| governments for a handful of bucks. Because that is making it
| easier for our governments to do the same, simply because
| people are used to it.
| api wrote:
| America was like this during the run-up to the Iraq war. The
| last iteration of "cancel culture" was when anyone questioning
| the war was shouted down as un-patriotic. Search for the Dixie
| Chicks, a country group who spoke out against the war, and read
| about what happened to them.
|
| One of the things I've learned in my years on this planet is
| that propaganda _works_. It works very very well. That 's why
| governments, corporations, and special interests spend so much
| money on it.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I agree with your main point, and it definitely adds some
| pessimism to my world view.
|
| Regarding the Dixie Chicks, I'm not sure that's a good
| exemplar to support your main point. (See sibling comment
| that suggests they did quite well.)
| areyousure wrote:
| > Search for the Dixie Chicks, a country group who spoke out
| against the war, and read about what happened to them.
|
| In case anyone is curious, the group fka the Dixie Chicks
| spoke out against the Iraq war in 2003. In 2005, they won a
| Grammy award. In 2007, they won five Grammies, including all
| three overall major categories (excluding "best new artist"
| from the four general field categories, because they weren't
| new). They are also the first female band in chart history to
| have three albums debut at No. 1.
|
| In 2020, the group dropped the word "Dixie" from their name
| ... because of cancel culture? In any case, the Chicks then
| performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the 2020 Democratic
| National Convention.
|
| It seems like the summary of their story is that _at worst_
| they "switched sides", attracting fewer fans from Texas
| (though their tour
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_%26_Accusations_Tour
| still finished with a couple shows in Texas) but more from
| the rest of the country, something they had struggled with.
| Harvey Weinstein even produced one of their films:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks:_Shut_Up_and_Sing
| yalogin wrote:
| I used to think but the last few years in the US taught me that
| people everywhere have the same capacity for zealotry, they may
| have to be reached/triggered differently that's all.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| My commentary is (intended to be) more about how effectively
| it's been triggered than any particular group of people's
| susceptibility to it. The effectiveness of the execution of
| it.
|
| Plenty of groups of Western folks get super amped up over any
| threat to the continuity of their chosen self destructive,
| unhealthy, unsustainable lifestyles to which they've become
| accustomed. Because freedom!
| asimpletune wrote:
| Plato talked a lot about this. It's very easy for
| politicians to feed people things that they like but aren't
| good for them, and this is the normal course of affairs in
| history. It doesn't really mean anything bad about the USA
| in the great picture, because we're no different than the
| rest of the world. That being said, good things happen when
| "divine providence" (or whatever) produces leaders who feed
| the people things that improve their health. History in
| this way is sort of chaotic and kind of a waiting game. The
| best way to minimize the time in between downward spirals
| is by strengthening the fabric of society when you have the
| opportunity, by teaching them - for lack of a better word -
| how to recognize knowledge.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Education is the silver bullet. But...
|
| You can bring a horse to the library, but you can't make
| it read
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| There is also a large contingent of young english speaking CCP
| loyalists who go around liberal American social media and
| absolutely shred the US about everything (to much applause). It
| just looks like typical, albeit extreme, young liberal anti-
| establishment (and race centric) rhetoric. Dig through their
| profile though and you'll see they are oddly sympathetic to
| China.
|
| These are people who are simultaneously calling for America to
| be dissolved on the grounds of repaying for slavery while also
| arguing that the youth of Hong Kong are confused and mislead.
| 4bpp wrote:
| Eh, I don't think that this pattern is even remotely a uniquely
| Chinese thing; this is just how most people react defensively
| of the country and narrative they identify with when it is seen
| as threatened by a hostile country. Look into any Reddit thread
| on the topic of Russia and Ukraine, and you will see the same
| patterns play out with Americans giving each other backrubs for
| the most implausible theories imputing cartoonish evil to their
| geopolitical opponents (these days I quite often see celebrated
| posts suggesting that the US should withdraw its military
| protection from the ungrateful Germans which surely will result
| in Russia invading them), while accusing every disagreeing
| poster of being personally on the payroll of the Russian
| propaganda apparatus.
|
| Of course, the situation in Russian popular forums is not
| better in the slightest, and the relevant patterns of
| conspiratorial thinking are reproduced at even the smallest of
| scales all the time. It has become a bit of a trope on 4chan
| that some contingent of posters will, if more than one post
| disagrees with their viewpoint, immediately claim that the two
| posts were actually made by the same person sockpuppeting; and
| last time I checked the recurring threads for some video games
| I play (still among the best sources for real-time information
| and gossip about updates and what-not...), they were all
| getting torn apart by mutual accusations of off-site
| conspiracies (usually on Discord) to push some viewpoint or
| meme or another.
| mherdeg wrote:
| My low-information view is that the Chinese government is an
| extraordinarily effective communications agency who very
| clearly understands the role that university students play in
| transmitting culture, especially when studying abroad, and has
| very openly worked to help spread their message throughout
| their diaspora.
|
| Many US universities have a Chinese Student & Scholar
| Association and it's not like they try to hide that they are
| arms of the CCP. (Just for a random example
| https://myinvolvement.org/organization/cssaatualbany - "The
| Chinese Student and Scholar Association at the University of
| Albany is joined and organized by the Chinese students and
| scholars at the University of Albany of their own record. It is
| a nonprofit organization that is supported and guided by CCP
| through the Consulate-General of the PRC in New York.")
|
| Mass organization can do incredible things -- a group of people
| is much more effective than the individuals.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| I wonder how much of it is similar to East Germany with their
| informants, it's possible that even overseas the students
| don't dare speak out because someone in their friend group
| could report them. And as the press release said, even the
| student's parents back home got harassed by the cops.
|
| It'd be an effective way of control, "Hey why didn't you come
| to our student org meeting last week?".
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| The CSSA is part of the CCP's overseas surveillance and
| intimidation arm.
|
| I speculated last year that the CSSA was also involved in the
| arrest of Chinese student Luo Daiqing from the University of
| Minnesota. He was arrested when he set foot in China for
| Xinnie the Pooh meme tweets he made while in the states.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/university-of-
| min...
| Msw242 wrote:
| Please report any suspected collaborators with the Chinese secret
| police to the DEI campus safety board.
|
| All suspects will need to report to the DEI offices for re-
| education.
|
| Joking, but they literally do the exact same shit to Republicans.
| sebow wrote:
| That might be hard.If i recall correctly a few years ago there
| were some numbers indicating somewhere between 1-3 million
| people who were either "proper spying", doing
| espionage(industrial,research,etc) or having ties(actively
| involved, not merely having relatives/distant connections) with
| China living in the US.[I will edit with a source assuming it
| still is online, otherwise i have to dig in my local data]
|
| This happens a lot at 'FAANG-tier' companies, but then again
| screening employees is virtually impossible at this scale, US
| companies still have an advantage and they remain ahead of the
| competition because copying/leaking information takes time, and
| the re-engineering also takes time.Academia is a sensitive
| area, because on one hand you have to be transparent and keep
| discourse public and open, but on the other hand state-
| sponsored entities actively engage in battles(especially
| cybernetic ones) to control narratives about certain subjects,
| especially in 'public spaces'.
| qeternity wrote:
| Purdue is not a coastal liberal arts university. You're
| unlikely to find support for restrictions on freedom of speech
| there.
| Msw242 wrote:
| And my original comment was flagged. If it weren't accurate,
| the response would be eye rolling, not flagging
| Msw242 wrote:
| https://cm.maxient.com/reportingform.php?PurdueUniv&layout_i.
| ..
|
| They even include "offensive classroom comment" as a category
| Zigurd wrote:
| I was a Republican. I was always pro choice. I was always
| skeptical of cops. I thought the Soviet Union and then the rump
| empire under Putin was dangerous. I never felt "oppressed" by
| standards of decency. Maybe it's not about being a Republican.
| redleader55 wrote:
| Your post supports with facts - ie. your own experience - the
| idea that moderate members of a group don't get oppressed,
| which is missing the point, in my opinion.
|
| I think the point of the parent of your post and the article
| is that regardless of what you believe, you should have the
| right to your opinion and should not be persecuted for it.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Your "persecution" is a cheap shadow of actual persecution,
| which was meted out to whole sexes and races under the flag
| of inherent superiority. That's not what the modern right
| is feeling. They are feeling the consequences of expressing
| overt racism and sexism. It is their right to do so. Nobody
| has taken away that right. It is everyone's right to reject
| racism and sexism and the people espousing it.
| Msw242 wrote:
| Wow, you're making a lot of assumptions, and it sounds
| like you haven't been on a college campus in about 30
| years (USSR was a while ago).
|
| A lot has changed in even the last 10 years since the
| 43rd's DCL.
|
| Nowadays you can report students and professors for
| saying things you find offensive in class. It can be as
| simple as mixing up identifiers, or making a claim that
| others disagree with.
|
| You can't say "Israel is an apartheid state" or "Gaza and
| Palestinians have elected terrorists" because various
| factions now have the ability to weaponize the
| university's bureaucracy against each other, replete with
| show trials that would make Kafka blush.
|
| The among the reasons we have strong free speech
| protections is that the ACLU used to defend groups with
| truly repugnant beliefs, including literal Nazis. That's
| happening less and less.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Whether a one-state outcome in Israel entails apartheid
| or whether the terrorists among Palestinian leadership
| positions is fundamentally different than Sinn Fein are
| wonky policy nerd topics.
|
| That's not what the modern right is about. It is about
| denying the bodily autonomy of women, for example. And
| they wonder why women won't touch them.
| Msw242 wrote:
| Thank you for informing me on what my argument is.
|
| Don't get heat stroke fighting all of those strawmen.
| someguydave wrote:
| I agree, Republicans are suffering for expressing anti-
| racism and anti-sexism.
| dang wrote:
| Please do not take HN threads further into political,
| ideological, and partisan flamewar. It's just what we
| don't want here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| finite_jest wrote:
| This is blatant gaslighting, and an incredibly
| disingenuous framing. "Facing consequences" is merely the
| euphemism all tyrants use for persecution.
|
| If you really were a Republican and did not face
| persecution in university, then most likely you either
| kept quiet about it, or you are a boomer.
| dang wrote:
| Please do not take HN threads further into political,
| ideological, and partisan flamewar. It's just what we
| don't want here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| finite_jest wrote:
| I apologize for that.
| dang wrote:
| Please do not take HN threads further into political,
| ideological, and partisan flamewar. It's just what we
| don't want here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I think it more depends on how you fall on the
| authoritarian/libertarian spectrum. As a libertarian myself,
| I certainly feel that my views are not welcome. I have often
| been accused of being a horrible person for holding a belief
| in what is essentially tolerance of intolerance, and
| voluntary cooperation.
| Zigurd wrote:
| I am estranged from libertarianism. Too many people self-
| assigning that label are against women's rights, voting
| rights, and are comfortable with the dictator in Russia.
| And this is before one gets to issues like Pareto optimal
| policies entrenching existing disadvantages.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Have you become attracted to authoritarianism then? I'd
| be very curious as to why. I'm very much pro women's and
| voting rights, and am under no illusion that Russia is
| somehow a liberal place.
|
| If you're referring to abortion, I think the main
| disagreement between sensible people is the point at
| which a group of cells becomes a child, deserving of
| protection? And whose responsibility is that child? My
| answers are at conception, and whoever is currently in
| custody (the mother, before birth); simply because I
| don't see an alternative that isn't highly arbitrary or
| subjective.
|
| In regard to voting rights, democracy is clearly better
| than the other things we've tried. I just don't think the
| people we elect should have quite so much _power_. Their
| remit should be limited to the administration of peace
| and order, not binding us all into one cooperative
| working towards a common goal. Society is about peaceful
| coexistence, not collectivizing the realities of
| misfortune or inadequacy.
|
| Most basically, I think anyone who is drawn to the idea
| of forcing people to cooperate is taking a moral stance
| that I simply cannot follow. In the absence of an oracle
| to divine good from evil, I can't come up with a
| justification, save one, for using force to compel
| cooperation. Doing so is indistinguishable from a degree
| of slavery.
| Msw242 wrote:
| When did you graduate
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on partisan flamewar tangents.
| That's an extremely low quality direction even for flamewars to
| take.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Msw242 wrote:
| We are all rightfully outraged that a foreign regime is able
| to impact free expression on college campuses in the US.
|
| It strikes me as relevant that we are building a lot of the
| same infrastructure of our own accord, with strikingly
| similar justifications.
|
| At this same university, anybody can anonymously complain
| about professors or other students based on what they say in
| a classroom or lecture hall, and that complaint will be
| investigated.
|
| Does that have an impact on free expression?
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but rightful outrage is not a sufficient
| condition for a good HN thread. If anything, it makes
| people forget all about the mandate of this site in a rush
| to express their rightful outrage.
| Msw242 wrote:
| So wouldn't the submission be the problem, instead of my
| comment linking the issue to developments happening on
| modern campuses?
| dang wrote:
| No, because the submission is interesting, contains new
| information, and is possible to discuss substantively--as
| many commenters in the thread are demonstrating. That
| makes it on topic for HN.
|
| The onus is on commenters to stick to the site
| guidelines, regardless of how provocative the information
| in a submission may be.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| xyproto wrote:
| > 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons > > We recognize you are
| attempting to access this website from a country belonging to >
| the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces
| the General Data > Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore
| access cannot be granted at this time. > For any issues, contact
| help@purdueexponent.org or call 765-743-1111.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Purdue was one of the first universities to commit to the Chicago
| Principles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591899
| VictorPath wrote:
| In the USA, if it it was a student who had commended the
| Intifada, the situation would be the same, except the university
| president would have written an email condemning him as an anti-
| semite and praising the Hillel students harassing him, and he may
| have been charged with one of the hosts of laws in the US
| outlawing the boycotting of Israel.
| president wrote:
| This has been happening for a while now all across the globe. One
| of the most recent egregious cases happened to a student in
| Australia who was attacked by thugs associated with the Chinese
| consulate at a HK protest. His university took China's side and
| made his life a living hell.
|
| Source: https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-
| life/the-au...
| merpnderp wrote:
| For those geo blocked. The president of Purdue sent out and email
| in response to learning that Chinese students had been harassing
| a Chinese student who spoke out about the heroism of the students
| who died in Tiananmen Square, insisting all students respect free
| speech.
|
| "Those seeking to deny those rights to others, let alone to
| collude with foreign governments in repressing them, will need to
| pursue their education elsewhere."
| oauea wrote:
| 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons
|
| We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a
| country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including
| the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation
| (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For
| any issues, contact help@purdueexponent.org or call 765-743-1111.
| matthewmorgan wrote:
| Meanwhile, GDPR has deprived me of the right to read this article
| [deleted]
| oolonthegreat wrote:
| to me it is kinda embarrassing that Purdue administration only
| learned it from a news source. ofc I'm not saying they shouldve
| monitored students' online chatter etc, but if a group of your
| students actively harrass a student and you learn it by reading
| the news there's something wrong there.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| If they had followed a student around campus harassing them and
| causing their family to be threatened:
|
| - because they were LGBTQ
|
| - because of their ethnicity or race
|
| - because they were female
|
| - because they spoke out on issues regarding any of the above
|
| In all of these cases not only would those students already have
| been suspended from the university and on their way to expulsion
| (and rightfully so), the university would have acted within days
| of it being reported.
|
| In some kind of ridiculous reverse-mccarthyism we currently have
| known agents of a foreign government harassing US residents and
| institutions are afraid to do anything about it for fear of
| reprisals from a foreign government!
| a_square_peg wrote:
| He needed to make this about harassment, not China. If the first
| paragraph was corrected to leave these parts out, I think it
| would be a much clearer case:
|
| From:
|
| > Purdue learned from a national news account last week that one
| of our students, after speaking out on behalf of freedom and
| others martyred for advocating it, was harassed and threatened by
| other students from his own home country. Worse still, his family
| back home, in this case China, was visited and threatened by
| agents of that nation's secret police.
|
| To:
|
| > Purdue learned from a national news account last week that one
| of our students, after speaking out on behalf of freedom and
| others martyred for advocating it, was harassed and threatened by
| other students. Worse still, his family back home was visited and
| threatened by agents of that nation's secret police.
| ngc248 wrote:
| Why?
| killjoywashere wrote:
| I disagree. The CCP has made itself a very big problem
| internationally. WE need a LOT more conversation about that
| government in particular, urgently. Hypotheticals can wait.
| a_square_peg wrote:
| I also think that it's a big problem and was thinking that
| not mentioning it would be an easier way to deal with it
| (i.e. expel the perpetrators). Expelling students who harass
| other students, or giving death threats (for the case of
| Emerson) should be a relatively straightforward decision
| without getting politics involved.
| cronix wrote:
| It's a pertinent fact of the case and answers an obvious
| question most would have. After reading your proposed edit,
| since "that nation's secret police" is mentioned, the obvious
| question most would instinctively have is "what country are
| they talking about?"
|
| Reading the letter as a whole, it seems harassment and free
| speech was the main focus. "China" is mentioned once, and
| "Chinese" is mentioned once.
| plandis wrote:
| I've had the pleasure of working with and getting to know several
| Chinese nationals and nearly all of them were hesitant to take
| about China when discussions at bars would turn to world
| politics.
|
| I wonder if this is how your average American would have felt at
| the height of McCarthyism? I hope one day Chinese people feel
| more free to speak their minds about their government.
| antiterra wrote:
| Which is stronger, our distaste for totalitarianism or our
| complete addiction to China's market?
|
| It's a dichotomy that leaves me confounded and unsurprised.
| throw10920 wrote:
| There's no "our" here. America is not a hivemind - it's a
| collection of individual citizens with very different
| perspectives. Personally, I would be alright with the price of
| my electronics doubling in exchange for us cutting off all
| trade with China, but I suspect that many of my representatives
| might not feel the same way...
| rootsudo wrote:
| Weak, so on the campus "sutdents" can't deny rights, but what
| about a country?
|
| If they go against the grain too much, China will not sponsor
| students to go there and pay the high premiums for international
| students.
|
| Current Chinese students will be afraid to speak out, and have to
| swear more allegiance to the Chinese State because dissent is now
| precedent.
| jtms wrote:
| What an utterly toothless response to a direct assault on the
| values we, as a society, supposedly hold dear.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| The university has disciplinary procedures, and referring the
| matter to that process is exactly the rule-of-law response that
| rule of law is intended for. The goal here is to respond in a
| way that defangs the CCP's provocation.
| [deleted]
| antattack wrote:
| Nice speech, but if I was a betting man I would bet this is just
| posturing in response to the article.
| Arubis wrote:
| So, the other students that trailed the speaker with accusations
| and harassment on the university's property will face
| consequences for their actions to discourage this from recurring,
| right? Didn't see that part in the article.
| blcArmadillo wrote:
| It's in the image which contains the actual text from the
| University:
|
| > If those students who issued threats can be identified, they
| will be subject to appropriate disciplinary action.
| Arubis wrote:
| Ah, thank you; hadn't seen that in the non-image text.
| spcebar wrote:
| Response from the student:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Purdue/comments/ri95tp/in_response_...
| vaxman wrote:
| Yeah, he sounds worried about the CCP disappearing his family
| and harvesting their organs. The only thing that will save them
| is turning a global spotlight on them, though that isn't
| working out so well for Peng Shuai and Jack Ma.
|
| We have to evacuate Taiwan, a population the size of LA, by
| boat. They can help us rebuild the infrastructure in Shanghai
| and Guangdong in Ohio Valley, Mojave/Sonora or Alaska regions
| as it becomes more expensive and even impossible to access.
| christophilus wrote:
| Do we? We need to keep Taiwan out of the PRC's control. To do
| otherwise means that China effectively controls the most
| important Asian trading routes. Japan and Korea would be in a
| totally different power structure than the one they're in
| today.
| iszomer wrote:
| "Evacuate Taiwan..", are you nuts?
| bllguo wrote:
| this is exactly the white savior crap that much of the world
| hates from the US. the sheer arrogance to think that even a
| significant fraction of Taiwanese would be interested in
| moving to America, let alone the entire populace.
|
| And then the gall to suggest _Ohio, the Mojave, and Alaska_.
| Bit on the nose, don't you think?
|
| I don't understand how you think this rhetoric helps anyone.
| I guess it lets Americans puff out their chest?
| ddoolin wrote:
| I'm inclined to agree. Half of the Taiwanese in the US live
| in California and the rest mostly in Texas/NY. They are a
| highly-educated, modern populace, they aren't going to go
| "building railroads in flyover country," let alone come
| here at all. There will be some sort of exodus that will
| likely be supported by the US gov't but I can't imagine it
| being anywhere nearing the millions mark.
| fdschoeneman wrote:
| Calling someone you disagree with a racist is unhelpful.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Being racist is unhelpful.
| siculars wrote:
| No, no, this is about exactly right. When the CCP comes for
| Taiwan, the exodus will be on a scale unseen in our
| generation.
|
| It seems your family history has been blessed to not know
| this sort of existential crisis. For generations now, The
| US of America is, actually and literally, viewed as the
| land of salvation and opportunity for millions of people
| around the world. Do not pretend that it is not.
| iszomer wrote:
| Times have changed. I've lived through that era where
| much of my childhood years were living under the
| impending threat of a takeover but over the years, I've
| come to realize that the path laid by the late Lee Teng-
| hui had been a noble and justified one. If it weren't for
| him and history, I would have continued to believe in the
| KMT (I no longer do).
| bllguo wrote:
| your appeal to emotion rings hollow. Did I deny that? My
| family viewed the US as such in the past. No longer, I
| can assure you. It is precisely because we have
| experienced life in the US and Asia that I feel that I
| can actually comment on this topic.
|
| If you seriously think millions of Taiwanese think this
| of America I would love to see your reaction when you
| travel there. Ohio, the Mojave, Alaska. Insulting on a
| whole new level, really.
| filoleg wrote:
| > If you seriously think millions of Taiwanese think this
| of America I would love to see your reaction when you
| travel there.
|
| Whether intentionally or not, I think you are misreading
| the parent comment.
|
| They never claimed that this is how the Taiwanese
| population views the US now. They are claiming that this
| is how they are very likely to start viewing the US
| when/if CCP starts marching towards Taiwan. Those two
| statements are very different.
| bllguo wrote:
| Thanks. That's a more reasonable statement but I still
| stand by my main points that 1. a much, much larger
| contingent would stay than Americans seem to think, 2.
| the US is far less desirable a location now than ever,
| and 3. those that do come to the US will not be going to
| our backwaters, hell the standard of life in Taipei is
| arguably higher than in top American cities.
|
| I also think violent takeover is a remote hypothetical
| but that's another discussion.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| This is something we can actually measure with polling.
|
| 750 million people worldwide wanted to migrate as of
| 2017: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245255/750-million-
| worldwide-mi...
|
| Of those, the US is the most frequent top preferred
| destination, at 21% or 158 million.
|
| Gallup also publishes a Potential Net Migration Index for
| each country, which finds that net 17% of Taiwan would
| like to leave, including 25% of the youth. This data is
| from 2015-2017.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > this is exactly the white savior crap
|
| Really, it's a lot _worse_ ; White savior crap usually has
| at least a couple levels of indirection between it and the
| outright ethnically-stereotyped economic exploitation of
| the "beneficiaries". (To be fair, the latter does usually
| end up accompanying it, but usually not as an overt part of
| the initial sales pitch.)
| Qub3d wrote:
| > We have to evacuate Taiwan, a population the size of LA, by
| boat.
|
| While the Taiwan situation isn't great, this seems a bit of a
| leap. It also completely disregards the reality of a
| situation like that. You can't just relocate cutting-edge
| industry and a population of more than 23 million.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| I participated in planning of potential evacuations of US
| citizens from Japan after Fukushima, 10x smaller problem than
| Taiwan. Air evacuation is infinitely better. The per capita
| economics in time and money are 1000x better by plane. Also,
| evacuation by boat to where? Having been part of the New
| Orleans Katrina diaspora, the problems of diaspora still reel
| my mind.
| baby wrote:
| > We have to evacuate Taiwan
|
| Written by someone who probably never set foot in this part
| of the world :P Taiwan is doing fine
| chernevik wrote:
| Well said:
|
| "In my world there's always a place for you; you can disagree
| with me; you can even insult me; I will not fire back because
| that is your freedom of expression, however
|
| In your world there's no place for me; you want to eliminate me
| and even my family from the world just because I disagree with
| your government or your ideology; this is puzzling isn't it?"
| chmod600 wrote:
| Does that mean freedom is self-defeating?
|
| It comes down to a simple formula: are people learning and
| appreciating freedom faster than it's being diluted by people
| who are ignorant or disdainful of freedom?
|
| There's no fundamental reason one rate must remain above the
| other. Education, immigration trends, business, and culture
| all play a part.
|
| But once the anti-freedom are greater in number than the pro-
| freedom, then freedom democratically self-destructs.
|
| Non-free governments don't have this problem, because they
| aren't democracies.
|
| In other words, losing freedom can be peaceful and even
| consistent with the principles of freedom (you're free to
| give up your freedom). But getting freedom requires some non-
| free (or at least non-democratic) things to happen.
| paxys wrote:
| Yes, it is. We all like to believe in ideals like turn the
| other cheek, take the high road, welcome opposing views no
| matter how extreme etc. Looking back through human history
| though, the only way to combat intolerance has been to be
| intolerant yourself. Freedoms need to be defended,
| sometimes with blood. Look at WW2 for example. Appeasement
| didn't go very far, direct action did.
| imgabe wrote:
| Freedom is never absolute. You can respect other people's
| freedom to disagree with you, but not their freedom to kill
| you. You can choose to only stop them from the latter, but
| not the former.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I believe the answer is 'yes' and it's also true for most
| 'noble' causes.
|
| Analogous to this quote from George Bernard Shaw:
|
| "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
| unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to
| himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable
| man ."
| lou1306 wrote:
| This reminds me of a bit of trivia from Italian politics. A
| few years after WWII, a senator from the main post-Fascist
| party greeted a fellow senator from the Socialist party (who
| had fought for the Resistance), saying: "We fought gallantly
| on opposite sides, now we can shake hands". The other
| replied: "Yeah, then we won so you could become a senator. If
| _you_ had won, I 'd still be a prisoner".
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Beautifully put, what an excellent way to demonstrate what
| seperates the authoritarian mindset from the liberal mindset.
| iszomer wrote:
| What a strange parallel to draw when it comes to the
| actions of the current Democrats and Republicans in our
| House and Senate along with the current presidency and
| adminstration.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| It's pretty clear that in the context of the comment the
| usage of small-l liberal was referring to the classical
| ideal, not the homonym label misused in contemporary
| American politics.
| iszomer wrote:
| I meant to mention that, thanks for clarifying.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| America literally invaded South Vietnam out of fear that
| communist ideas would spread. Now if war does not fall
| under the category of "elimination" then I don't know what
| does.
| dnautics wrote:
| and also China invaded Vietnam after the US did. Everyone
| is a piece of shit.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Which was my point.
| ddoolin wrote:
| What's your point? That doesn't exclude US Americans from
| offering criticism. We are not all one entity, there's
| ~300M of us. Many of us had nothing to do with Vietnam
| and I can damn near guarantee wouldn't repeat that
| decision today.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > That doesn't exclude US Americans from offering
| criticism.
|
| I wasn't replying to the criticism. I was replying to the
| comparison to the "liberal mindset".
|
| If liberal democracies hadn't invaded countries in order
| to stop the spread of ideas then the comment would have
| been fine.
| kizer wrote:
| Beautiful and the essence of a liberal mind
| zymhan wrote:
| Now that is an evergreen quote.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Has anyone verified that the author is the actual student?
| lancefisher wrote:
| Wow. Kindness, humility, and courage. What a role model.
| ridaj wrote:
| Hello, US universities, this is reality calling
|
| All those lucrative foreign students you've been padding your
| tuition income with, they come with strings attached. Just
| because they choose the US to study does not mean they don't buy
| their home country's propaganda. The core tenet of it is
| communist party supremacy. Most 18-year olds who land as
| undergrad from China plan to go back there upon graduation, and
| know that their consulates have eyes on campus. They're not going
| to embrace American values overnight until you are a _lot_ more
| assertive about your expectations in this regard.
| dmix wrote:
| For those unfamiliar with the story here's a short summary from
| his Change petition:
|
| > Zhihao Kong, a student at Purdue University, posted a letter
| online in 2020 commemorating the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen
| Square massacre. Shortly after he received a call from his
| parents, back home in China, saying they had been contacted by
| China's Ministry of State Security--the department responsible
| for national intelligence and managing domestic dissidents.
| Kong's parents told him the Ministry officers said he needed to
| cease his activism or he and his family would face trouble with
| the Chinese government. Other Chinese students at Purdue then
| began harassing Kong and threatening to report him to the Chinese
| government for his activism, which could potentially endanger
| both his life and the lives of his family.
| ospzfmbbzr wrote:
| So brave. Does this championing of the persecuted also apply to
| un-wash.. er sorry un-vaccinated? or just politically correct
| causes?
| cafard wrote:
| If you have ever attended a college in the US, you must have
| had to submit a list of vaccinations, with their dates. I
| remember digging through files to to find my son's list.
|
| And for a little context: Mitch Daniels is a Republican, twice
| governor of Indiana. The form of political correctness you have
| in mind (which I think is improperly taken to include
| vaccination requirements) does not flourish in Republican
| circles.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| > _451: Unavailable due to legal reasons_
|
| A touch over dramatic, verging on smug given that it's a nerd in-
| joke.
|
| (If you didn't know, this HTTP status code is a tongue in cheek
| reference to the dystopian sci-fi novel _Fahrenheit 451_ where
| information is outlawed.)
|
| I could elaborate but unfortunately due to our safety and
| security policies I am unable to comment further. Your wellbeing
| is my number one priority.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Hah, this is funny. I didn't put that together, thanks for
| pointing it out.
| oasisbob wrote:
| > A touch over dramatic, verging on smug given that it's a nerd
| in-joke.
|
| I don't see how it's dramatic or smug at all.
|
| 451 is an improvement on the vague 403 forbidden status code,
| and is specified in RFC 7725, a standards track document:
|
| https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7725
|
| This isn't an inside joke that someone just made up, other than
| someone (Timothy Bray?) choosing this particular constant out
| of the remaining unused 4xx series.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| For me, the spirit of 451 was as a form protest, not some
| sort of blanket arse-covering.
|
| In other news, a friend of a friend's mom's tennis partner's
| cat sitter knew someone whose website was taken down by
| socialist European lawyers, so what harm is there from
| banning them from the village? It's not like we want them
| here anyway!
| e_proxus wrote:
| It's also quite ironic because they seem to claim that because
| their page is full of tracking cookies (what other reason to
| cite GDPR?).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yeah, this is the wrong response code, but I guess there
| isn't one for "we want to harm you, but since this is
| illegal, we prefer to deny you service". Looks like a severe
| overlook from the IETF.
| baxuz wrote:
| "We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a
| country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including
| the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation
| (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For
| any issues, contact help@purdueexponent.org or call
| 765-743-1111."
|
| WOW.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| What you get in the EU: 451: Unavailable due to
| legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access
| this website from a country belonging to the European
| Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the
| General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access
| cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact
| help@purdueexponent.org or call 765-743-1111.
| someguydave wrote:
| lol call them up and ask for a fax
| rob_c wrote:
| It's not legal reasons it's laziness. GDPR compliance really
| doesn't cost a lot despite what a lot of legal shills spout...
| bsjks wrote:
| If it costs more than zero and you don't care about euros not
| visiting your site, it makes sense.
|
| For example if you have ads or external analytics
| (practically 100% of websites) you need a cookie banner. Best
| to restrict access than to annoy your innocent users.
| toxik wrote:
| You realistically don't need to do anything at all. It's
| just spite at this point.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Well, you have to know something about the law to know
| when it does/doesn't apply, and this student newspaper
| apparently decided it didn't care to invest that kind of
| time. I think this is understandable for those of us who
| don't prefer to study other countries' laws. Perhaps EU
| subjects should seek to improve their laws.
| rendall wrote:
| Nah. Speaking as an American ex-pat, it's about Americans
| being offended that foreign laws have heft and import. It
| pierces the sovereignty bubble. The Internet is home-
| grown. How dare other nations dictate to us Americans how
| we run our sites, amirite? We're gonna take our toys and
| home.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| This is a silly, shamefully obvious straw man. No one is
| saying "Americans uniquely shouldn't have to parse other
| countries' laws", the argument is "it's ruggedly
| impractical for ordinary citizens _of any country_ to
| parse the laws of other countries".
| splitstud wrote:
| No its literally about avoiding the morass of legal
| compliance as best you can, whenever and wherever.
| rob_c wrote:
| I didn't say zero.
|
| Imagine they locked out afrika there'd be a huge amount of
| screaming about injustice and isms...
|
| You can identify users by geoip and ASN surprisingly well,
| don't pretend supporting that has to annoy ameri-land, it's
| the same as arguing lock off California, it's a bad
| argument.
| simion314 wrote:
| >For example if you have ads or external analytics
|
| It is not about ads or analytics and about collecting
| private data without consent. Just to remind americans GDPR
| does not specifically target the Internet, it apples for
| real world places with physical paper (like you got to a
| lab and want to do some tests they are forced to tell you
| what they will do with your private data and you have to
| agree or not).
|
| You can have no tracking ads or analytics that do not
| record private data just fine, you can also have non
| tracking cookies without a popup. But honestly it makes
| sense that there is a big rich group that spread a lot of
| FUD about this stuff so many places will just decide not to
| server EU. If you never seen such GDPR popup maybe you
| should try to have a look at some of them, see how many
| "partners" this people share your tracking data with and
| how scummy the UX patherns they use are.
|
| Btw I am 100% fine with some US resources blocking me, I
| can go read soemthing else and for sure not try workaround
| for accessing this people page.
| Miner49er wrote:
| It's a not-for-profit student newspaper. I doubt it's about
| tracking.
| gpvos wrote:
| If they're running, say, Google ads,[0] which track, they
| probably have to do _something,_ even if it isn 't much.
|
| It would be great to have a web page that you could send
| them to that explains what they can do.
|
| [0] I don't know, I can't see the site.
| oytis wrote:
| GDPR is a hundred articles of legalese, and to understand
| what it means to be compliant you probably need an
| understanding of EU legal context as well. Services of people
| who can do that do cost a lot.
| setgree wrote:
| It's also elsewhere, e.g. on reddit
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Purdue/comments/rh81c0/mitch_letter...
|
| I am surprised it's blocked in the EU. My first guess is that
| this student newspaper doesn't have a lot of technical folks on
| staff and didn't see much point in investing in being Europe-
| friendly. Their hosting site, https://townnews.com/, doesn't
| look super legit at a glance but perhaps someone else knows
| more.
| qeternity wrote:
| As an American living in London, I find GDPR blocks extremely
| annoying...but I blame GDPR. It is a well intentioned law but
| horribly scoped. If I were the technical staff at a regional
| university in the US, I wouldn't invest in compliance with a
| law that in theory can issue severe penalties. I would simply
| block that traffic, as they and many others have done.
| Majestic121 wrote:
| Compliance is easy : don't add the code that track users
| and you're compliant.
|
| If you do insist on tracking, make it opt out by default.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Or block access and move on with your day.
| drcongo wrote:
| You mean opt in by default / opted out by default?
| t-3 wrote:
| So, I have to disable logging on my servers to comply
| with your regulations? No thanks.
| Jensson wrote:
| Are the logs permanent? If not then GDPR doesn't cover
| it. Can you use the logs to identify users and their
| behaviour? If not GDPR doesn't cover it.
|
| If you keep permanent logs with information about users,
| then yeah that is a problem. But it should be a problem,
| that is a big potential security/privacy issue.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| This is a student run newspaper. They probably don't
| employ a dedicated IT professional nor a legal
| professional to help them understand what GDPR requires
| of them. It's easy to say "compliance with GDPR is so
| easy" when you've taken the time to understand what it
| requires--why should an American student newspaper have
| to take the time to learn other countries' laws? Blocking
| access is easier especially considering the probability
| of the web site appealing to an international audience.
| C19is20 wrote:
| "...why should an American student newspaper have to take
| the time to learn other countries' laws?".
|
| Students! Learning! (Continents!).
| splitstud wrote:
| Also a good lesson for students: avoid trouble when it is
| easy to do so.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Students! Learning! (Continents!).
|
| I'm not sure how I'm supposed to parse this. Maybe the
| "continents" is meant to be a correction from "countries'
| laws", but that would be a mistake because the EU isn't a
| continent but rather a _union_ of sovereign nations, and
| "countries'" is plural possessive so the original wording
| is correct.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| Since GDPR, I've had to implement a lot of data retention
| policy and "nuke" button type feature in various systems.
|
| But as a general web consumer myself, all I've noticed is
| that nearly every website I visit has a banner at the
| bottom saying "We use cookies, click Accept". Very rarely
| is there some kind of "Please Don't" button. It's just
| tacit acceptance, or else close the browser tab to opt-
| out.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Banners without the option to decline unnecessary cookies
| and still get the content are a GDPR violation.
| gpvos wrote:
| Being GDPR-friendly is easy.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Right, block access and carry on with your day.
| xfz wrote:
| It's blocked in the UK as well, which is not in the EU or EEA,
| although does have the same privacy laws (UK GDPR).
|
| I assume they're blocking it because they don't care about user
| privacy. Their choice, but not a good sign.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| > It's blocked in the UK as well, which is not in the EU or
| EEA
|
| 'members or ex-members of the EU' would be the actual correct
| wording.
| cdot2 wrote:
| or because the student newspaper for an American university
| doesn't care to try to read and comply with foreign laws
| quartz wrote:
| More likely they're blocking it because they're a local
| campus newspaper and they spent money on 1hrs worth of time
| with a lawyer who, well informed or not, told them if they
| just block the EU/UK they won't have to spend any more money
| to figure out if they're GDPR compliant or not.
| [deleted]
| rendall wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20211217145121/https://www.purdu...
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I don't quite understand how EEA GDPR regulations can extend to
| entities with no European footprint at all, such as this
| student newspaper. Can't they just issue cookies and give the
| EU the finger?
| gpvos wrote:
| Chances are basically 100% that the EU won't go after a
| student newspaper, so in practice yes. But in theory no.
| tephra wrote:
| We'll also because they would not fall into the scope of
| the GDPR.
| gpvos wrote:
| Possibly. They don't seem to have Europeans as the
| audience, but I don't know about the details of how the
| rules work exactly.
| tephra wrote:
| Recital 23 is the primary source that could help (on
| mobile and no time to find the exact text)
| tephra wrote:
| This newspaper would not fall under the jurisdiction of the
| GDPR since they do not come under the targeting provision.
|
| They have just fallen (or not bothered to look into) for FUD.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Someone was presented with an issue that was both technical
| and legal in scope and just punted. The contact info was
| added by minions who knew it was a stupid decision.
| grenoire wrote:
| I guess I'll have to keep pursuing my education within the EU.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| This is a student newspaper, not actually a property of the
| university itself. Moreover, we're you seriously considering
| ponying up tuition for a US university (most of which goes to
| fund a bloated administration apparatus)?
| [deleted]
| dangerface wrote:
| I guess not tracking their users just wasn't an acceptable
| compromise. I wish eu google would just drop results like this.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| They probably just don't have the legal and technical
| resources to navigate GDPR in a manner more sophisticated
| than "geoblocking" and frankly I don't blame them--how often
| do they get legitimate traffic from Europe, especially
| without the benefit of hindsight from this incident. I like
| the spirit of GDPR, but blaming the entire world for not
| understanding your own country's laws is the pinnacle of
| navel gazing.
| Msw242 wrote:
| Or they could just track their eu readers and not comply
| because they aren't in the EU?
| ekianjo wrote:
| > pursue their education somewhere
|
| So is it just a fake threat or are they really taking action?
| Verdex wrote:
| Normally, I would think that this is a fake threat. However,
| it's written by Mitch Daniels who is also the same guy who
| froze Purdue's tuition for at least 7 years.
|
| So, I figure there's a chance he means it. Time will have to
| tell for sure though.
| chernevik wrote:
| Daniels is the rare serious public servant.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Get serious. It's only talks, no actions will follow. Money are
| more important.
| gumby wrote:
| This same phenomenon has been a problem in Australia since the HK
| protests began a couple of years ago.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| This happens in Canadian universities as well, Tibetan or Chinese
| students are harrased. Doesn't look like anything is done to
| prevent it.
|
| [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/china-tibet-student-e...]
| beloch wrote:
| Money is the root of the problem. Canadian universities depend
| heavily on tuition paid by foreign students. A huge proportion
| of those students are from China.
|
| If Canadian universities take too tough a stance against this
| kind of behaviour they could find themselves, either
| individually or collectively, on the Chinese government's
| naughty list. Perhaps the degrees they confer might lose their
| recognition in China, or perhaps students will be discouraged
| from attending "naughty" universities.
|
| If you look at Daniels' response, note that it deliberately
| skirts around the fact that this kind of targeted harassment is
| directly encouraged by the Chinese government. Even just
| mentioning China by name in his statement is flirting with
| trouble.
|
| It's chilling to observe that academic freedom of North
| American universities can be so negatively impacted by a
| foreign power.
| quacked wrote:
| Daniels is a classic GOP leader, as are many of the people
| beneath him. Use vaguely patriotic rhetoric to take over an
| American institution, sell out all possible assets to foreign
| powers for personal profit, retire to country estate. It's
| been the Republican playbook since the end of WWII.
|
| The pattern of leadership is the same everywhere; the
| "academic freedom being negatively impacted by a foreign
| power" you mention is a rot that pervades nearly all American
| instutions, be they academic or commercial. Have you ever
| read the biography of Phil Knight, founder of Nike? His
| incredible business insight was to take shoes made cheaply
| elsewhere and undercut American labor with it. We're led by
| Phil Knights in every sector.
| vmception wrote:
| Getting the actual opinion of anyone in China (or Hong Kong if
| you're a worker and well integrated) is very difficult.
|
| There is a lot of reading between the lines necessary because of
| the network of reporting from other Chinese that's worldwide.
|
| Note: those actual opinions are not necessarily "life is baaaad
| what a niiightmare", they can be quite nuanced just like anywhere
| else. Something as simple as "I kind of liked that unsanctioned
| rendition of the Chinese national anthem" could have the same
| consequences for them and their family as a total denouncement of
| the Party.
|
| Single party control, coupled with a constitution with articles
| that undermine all the other parts of the constitution, can
| really impact the experience to express anything.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Getting the actual opinion of anyone in China ... is very
| difficult.
|
| Is it really that different in America (or the "west" in
| general)? Most of us have become _very_ guarded in what
| opinions we share in the past few years.
| seneca wrote:
| That's not a coincidence. The same tactics that lead China
| where it is now are being used here.
| vmception wrote:
| That's because people are aiming for single party control
| right now, in the US.
|
| The difference is that expressing an opinion to another
| American abroad just means you cant sleep with them. It
| doesn't cause the federal or municipal police to track down
| your family for intimidation, or the private sector to
| galvanize excision of them either. For the individual that
| voiced there is just a small risk of being disassociated with
| the person you said something to, and if it was digital there
| is a small risk of getting fired or disassociated from
| institutions you were a part of. Very small risk. Maybe
| greater over the following decade, for something you said
| now.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| I've had regular contact with my relatives in FJ during the
| pandemic and there's no lack of complaints. So I don't know
| what you're talking about.
| rackjack wrote:
| Most Americans who do not have relatives in China think it is
| almost literally 1984.
| theduder99 wrote:
| oh you mean like this?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
| vmception wrote:
| Everything I could possible write about that is covered
| on that page, especially the Misconceptions section.
|
| The nearly non-existent line between public and private
| sector in China really derails all possible discussion
| and comparison to equivalences outside of China, but
| regardless I just don't find what goes on in China to be
| different _enough_ when we tolerate the same things from
| the private sector that runs our daily life. It isn 't
| different enough for me to draw the line at "but our
| _government_ isn 't doing it".
| fsckboy wrote:
| when they came for the CCP, I didn't say anything because I was
| not in the CCP.
|
| then they came for antifa, BLM(r), BDS, and... oh, no they
| didn't, I guess deplatforming is still safe on campus
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Here's a thought: the CCP is trying to provoke a response. A
| measured response that puts the onus of discipline on the
| governance system reinforces the rule of law. A knee-jerk
| dismissal of students is, I believe, what you are looking for,
| but that would be the offensive response that the CCP wants.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| For Chinese students studying in the US in the time after
| Tiananmen Square massacre this is nothing new. I was in grad
| school before and after the event and there were a large number
| of Chinese students in my department, geoscience. At my
| university it was probably true at the time that around half of
| the grad students in geosciences were Chinese.
|
| I came to know several of them, though not to the point of
| knowing any of them well. Tiananmen was such a serious event for
| these students. I know there was pressure on them to avoid any
| discussions related to the event and especially to to avoid any
| statements supporting the students who protested and died.
|
| I had a conversation with one of these men that I knew best and
| whom I studied with and after all the geoscientific things had
| been beaten down until we felt we had achieved a deeper
| understanding of the topic, talk turned to world events. I didn't
| steer it in that direction, he brought it up after looking around
| to make sure that we were alone and especially that there were no
| other Chinese students in the room that might overhear. We
| discussed Tiananmen Square for a few minutes and at the
| conclusion he mentioned the fear that he had of discussing that
| subject with anyone. He had to be careful who he studied with and
| talked with as some of his fellow students were known to be
| strong supporters of the Chinese Communist Party and they would
| report anyone they determined to be supportive of the dead
| students. He told me that their families back home might suffer
| as a result. His absence of trust in those with whom he had the
| most in common - language, culture, etc really drove home the
| depth of the fear that he felt. Discussing that event with any of
| them was just not going to happen since he feared for his family
| back home.
|
| You had to be there. There was so much positive change in the air
| back then with dictatorships under threat, communism being
| exposed and challenged, young people full of the knowledge that
| they could effect meaningful change in their lives if they were
| willing to take a stand or to fight for it.
|
| Thirty years is a long time. It has certainly been plenty of time
| for the Chinese Communists to rise to their current status by
| adopting the things most useful in other systems while imposing
| an iron hand of control over the parts of the system that
| maintain their own power.
|
| A number of these students stayed in the US or moved to the EU
| for employment in the industry after grad school. Others returned
| to China to help develop their domestic oil and gas industry.
| boiler_up800 wrote:
| It's situations like these where I am glad Purdue has a leader
| with political experience.
| reunification wrote:
| As a Chinese-American proud of my heritage, I have to scoff at
| the white man's attempt to again portray themselves as beacons of
| "good" and "freedom". You are not so noble. The open secret is
| that China is the greatest threat to Western hegemony, or more
| specifically, white supremacy. For the last 500 years the world
| has been ruled by white people, and now China offers the colored
| people of the world a glimmer of hope. A rising China will uplift
| all Asians. China will rise and be a great nation, reunify with
| Taiwan, and become the richest country. Then we will see what
| your so-called "freedom" gets you.
| yholio wrote:
| It's a very weak response from Purdue. Zhihao Kong was bullied
| and followed around on campus for commemorating the victims of
| the Tiananmen masacre. He was called a CIA agent by fellow Purdue
| students and was reported to the Chinese state, who attempted to
| silence him by forcefully leaning on his family in Hong Kong.
|
| The identities of the bullies is well known and the extent of
| abuse is borderline criminal. There should be only one remedy:
| imediate expulsion of any agent of repression of the Chinese
| state.
|
| The statement clearly fall short of what is required, it simply
| wants to appease those outraged by threatening with vague
| punishments, without risking the large revenue from Chinese
| students.
| merpnderp wrote:
| It does at least set the stage to expel them if the behavior
| continues. Although it appears you are correct, this is way too
| little way too late.
| criddell wrote:
| I think this is an opportunity to raise the prominence of the
| issue. I wish Purdue had explicitly mentioned the Tiananmen
| Massacre in this notice. We should talk about it. Our
| diplomats should be applying pressure around Peng Shuai's
| status. I'd love to see a debate in Congress about our
| participation in the Olympics and what that says about our
| support of this regime.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I think it is better they didn't.
|
| Students are not being (considered for) expelled for their
| views of the Tiananmen Massacre one way or another. Taking
| any stance on that, in this context, would muddy those
| waters and make Prudue look like it was doing a political
| purge.
|
| The problem that produced the statement was harassment. Not
| political views.
| criddell wrote:
| Is saying the Tiananmen Massacre happened a political
| view?
| merpnderp wrote:
| I would think that a government machining gunning down
| peacefully assembled civilians and then running over the
| bodies with tanks, then shooting any doctors who
| attempted to help the wounded, wouldn't be politicized.
| That we can all agree it is deeply and unquestionably
| evil.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Yes, it would be very nice if we could all understand
| important things without misunderstandings based on
| personal biases or misinformation.
|
| In the meantime, debating without harassing each other is
| the best way forward.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Something being a political view doesn't mean its not
| verifiable fact.
|
| A debate has different facets - political or not
| political - fact or not fact - harassment or not
| harassment.
|
| In this case the problem that needed to be addressed by
| Purdue was the harassment.
|
| Students debating different understandings of Tiananmen
| Square (regardless of either sides merits) was not the
| issue that required intervention by university
| leadership.
| chernevik wrote:
| He can't immediately announce punishment without violation of
| due process.
|
| The perpetrators may be known, but even so that has to be
| formally established before the school can do anything about
| them.
|
| It's unfortunate that there isn't a greater response from the
| student body in defense of free speech.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| It seems like harassment should be enough to expell someone
| even before this statement.
| lazide wrote:
| If you can prove it was harassment and not someone just
| saying something the other party didn't like in a place
| both parties had a right to be.
|
| If we're both at a bar we have a right to be at, and you
| keep saying you think I'm a jerk and should get kicked out
| - is that harassment?
|
| If you follow me there every time I go? Probably. If you
| don't, probably not.
|
| Proving one way or another can be difficult.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Oh, I somehow misread the above comment entirely and took
| it to mean that these rules had to be in place before we
| can prosecute anyone for breaking them. Not sure how that
| happened
| ivalm wrote:
| Maybe, but again a university is not bound by due process
| requirements. I do agree that it might be good practice to
| not violate them. Let's see if Purdue does eventually act.
| vanusa wrote:
| We are all _ethically_ bound to abide by the principles of
| due process in our dealings with others, whether proscribed
| by law or not.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Aside from being arbitrary: Is due process a single, one-
| size fits all?
| netcan wrote:
| I think part of the problem is that the "quarrel" is with the
| CCP itself. Students get into a political argument. Maybe it
| went over a line, into harassment.
|
| The point at which it becomes beyond the pale, as Kong himself
| stated" was when the pro-ccp students "weaponized" the
| CCP/state. IE, called chinese secret police and arranged for an
| intimidation visit to his parents.
| chroem- wrote:
| China has quite a few programs in place to use their students
| and expats for power projection. China United Front Work
| Department [1] tries to place PRC citizens into foreign
| companies in order to gather intelligence and influence them.
| Confucius Institutes [2] are widespread throughout American
| universities and use PRC international students to promote
| state interests.
|
| The reality that Americans are unwilling to accept is that
| PRC nationals are agents of the state _by default_. Even if a
| PRC national doesn 't fall into one of the above programs,
| they are still incentivized by China's social credit system
| to act in the state's interests, even while abroad.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Front_Work_Department
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute
| karaterobot wrote:
| I thought it was a pretty good response.
|
| From the article:
|
| > If those students who issued the threats can be identified,
| they will be subject to appropriate disciplinary action.
|
| It sounds like they don't know who the students are yet, so
| they can't punish anybody. Anyway, I'd rather they say
| "appropriate disciplinary action", because it implies they'll
| actually try to find out the full story, which is how I want an
| administration to behave.
| vaxman wrote:
| What is the end game in allowing PROC nationals into American
| universities?
|
| Even without a kinetic confrontation, current trends indicate
| PROC will dominate the world economy, ocean navigation, the
| African and part of South American continents, near Earth orbit
| and the Moon because of technology they've already stolen,
| downloaded, misappropriated and bought from the West --and
| they're known to be creating bioweapons that kill only non-
| Chinese people while operating concentration camps that harvest
| organs, rape and murder millions of racial minorities!
|
| Let's see Purdue prove they are not feckless by leveraging this
| to terminate Chinese investments and expel all members and
| family members of the CCP that refuse to surrender their
| Chinese citizenship, become naturalized Americans and (civilly)
| agree to lifelong warrantless monitoring of their loyalty to
| America.
| throw10920 wrote:
| "creating bioweapons that kill only non-Chinese people"? I've
| never heard of this before...
| generj wrote:
| How would that even work? There isn't a gene for Chinese
| citizenship that would impact any disease or illness.
|
| ...I'm unfortunately assuming the poster is making a bad-
| faith reference to COVID-19. Some conspiracy theorists have
| been labeling it a bio weapon and ignoring the deaths from
| the initial outbreak.
| deafsquid69 wrote:
| It's not a new concept
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_bioweapon
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _should be only one remedy: imediate expulsion of any agent
| of repression of the Chinese state_
|
| There should be the same remedy that is provided to any other
| bully. These are still kids. There is a learning opportunity.
| If they refuse to learn, yes, expulsion should be in the cards.
| eric_b wrote:
| There is increasing evidence over the last 2 years that low-
| consequence "intervention" doesn't really deter future bad
| behavior. Perhaps there are some specific actions that would
| have a greater success rate, but a slap on the wrist and a
| "don't do that again" isn't going to cut it.
| voakbasda wrote:
| I completely agree that slaps on the wrist do no suffice.
| Expel all 200 and ban Chinese students for five years.
| Anything less will accomplish nothing.
| rectang wrote:
| If you were to read the propublica article, you would not
| blow this off as the actions of "kids".
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-
| china...
|
| > _In a rush of adrenaline last year, the graduate student
| posted an open letter on a dissident website praising the
| heroism of the students killed in the Tiananmen Square
| massacre in 1989._
|
| > _The blowback, he said, was fast and frightening. His
| parents called from China, crying. Officers of the Ministry
| of State Security, the feared civilian spy agency, had warned
| them about his activism in the United States._
| mcv wrote:
| These are not highschool kids; they are legal adults choosing
| to enforce an oppressive policy from a foreign government.
| There's every reason to expel them.
| high_derivative wrote:
| We are not doing adults any favours by infantilising them at
| university. It's a big part of the problem related to
| contemporary college culture.
| bell-cot wrote:
| True. But very often mommy & daddy - who write the checks
| for college tuition - expect the college to change his
| (metaphorical) diapers. And never dish out serious
| consequences for their failure to potty train him.
| lazide wrote:
| And university/college is generally when they hit the
| wall of reality that it can't and won't happen any more.
|
| Agree there is pressure, but the more admins cave, the
| worse it is for everyone.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| This isn't some kids bullying another kid. These are adults
| representing a national government. This is a nation bullying
| someone inside the United States for exercising free speech.
| The message needs to be received in Beijing, not merely
| Indiana.
| [deleted]
| echelon wrote:
| Showing them a kindness that they wouldn't receive back
| home might break through to them, or it might not. The
| situation should definitely carry gravity and have
| consequences for repeat offenses.
|
| I think a bigger problem is two-fold:
|
| 1) Universities are addicted to Chinese student tuition
| funds, and they don't want to rock the boat. I doubt they
| care as much about the students themselves. My university
| totally half assed their program (eg. some Chinese students
| would have questions that went unanswered, professors
| tended to pay them less attention, etc.), and I felt so
| sorry for the students.
|
| 2) Chinese students tend to stick in groups together rather
| than be integrated and mixed amongst the other student
| populations. They're assigned the same dormitory blocks, do
| shopping/dining together, and they don't really get to
| experience America in the same way that other international
| students do. Not sure if this is due to design or
| negligence.
| cloverich wrote:
| It is kind of interesting. At my college, we had large
| batches of students from (Mexican) migrant workers in our
| dorms. With very few exceptions the majority of two
| person dorms were 1:1 matching one of them with a second
| generation (and onwards) citizen. I thought it was a
| great way to expose all of us to both integration and
| diversity. It wasn't smooth for everyone of course, yet I
| thought it was a good balance of culturally jarring
| experiences, while still providing close proximity to
| people from the same background (e.g. several migrant
| worker kids in same hall still). I haven't really thought
| much about that since College but kind of assumed most
| places did something similar. (We also had specific
| classes that highlighted migrant worker issues /
| history).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _adults representing a national government_
|
| Legally adults, perhaps, but I think we have a social
| consensus that most college students are kids. Their brains
| haven't fully developed. If they're coming out of a
| brainwashed environment, they may never have been
| explicitly told that this is wrong; they deserve a second
| chance.
|
| > _message needs to be received in Beijing, not merely
| Indiana_
|
| I agree. My vote would be for a new foreign-student visa
| ban on the children of CCP members until Beijing commits to
| quit being petulant. But hit Beijing, the people commanding
| spooks to harass the parents of a student in a different
| country telling historical stories that scare them.
| nradov wrote:
| There is no such social consensus. People act according
| to expectations. If we expect college students to act
| like adults then they will. I certainly didn't feel like
| a kid when I was in college.
|
| It's bizarre how some societies have lowered their
| expectations of young people over the past couple
| centuries. When Horatio Nelson was that age he was
| captain of a warship, leading hundreds of men in combat
| and doing a pretty fine job of it.
| bubblethink wrote:
| >Legally adults, perhaps, but I think we have a social
| consensus that most college students are kids.
|
| US universities are famously litigious and take a hard
| line stance when it suits them. See Aaron Swartz. So, I
| don't buy the 'they are still kids' line. That is, I
| don't condone it, but I don't agree that universities are
| motivated by this sort of reasoning.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > US universities are famously litigious and take a hard
| line stance when it suits them. See Aaron Swartz.
|
| MIT was not a party to the lawsuit against Aaron Swartz,
| nor was even JSTOR. It was brought entirely by the US
| Attorney for Massachusetts.
| syshum wrote:
| They claim that after the fact, after the bad press, I
| believe neither JSTOR or MIT
| woodruffw wrote:
| You don't have to believe them. You can look at the court
| records yourself, or any number of public case
| summaries[1].
|
| To quote:
|
| > Opting not to pursue a civil lawsuit against him, JSTOR
| reached a settlement with him in the summer of 2011 in
| which Swartz turned over the downloaded data to them. It
| was never released to the public. Neither did MIT take
| any civil action against him.
|
| The lawsuit was a purely Justice initiative.
|
| [1]: https://fija.org/library-and-resources/library/law-
| and-legal...
| yholio wrote:
| > social consensus that most college students are kids.
| Their brains haven't fully developed
|
| If they are mature enough for the Chinese government to
| shoot them in the head for peaceful protesting, then they
| are mature enough to understand that some democratic
| cultures have strong objections against the CCP and those
| who do their bidding.
|
| It's one of those things where the real world is too
| dangerous to allow kids to be kids: you must tell 5 year
| olds that magic capes can't help them fly, and that they
| should run away from strange men who wish to touch their
| peepee, even if, for an ideally happy childhood, you
| shouldn't have to.
| cgriswald wrote:
| > Legally adults, perhaps, but I think we have a social
| consensus that most college students are kids. Their
| brains haven't fully developed. If they're coming out of
| a brainwashed environment, they may never have been
| explicitly told that this is wrong; they deserve a second
| chance.
|
| I really don't think we do have such a consensus. The
| post-high school (for those who graduated) 18-year-olds
| from my old neighborhood who committed offenses didn't
| get this consideration. They went to jail. Knowing their
| home lives growing up, it was no surprise to anyone that
| they committed the offenses they committed. It's
| difficult to see how they could have done otherwise. They
| weren't explicitly brainwashed, but they grew up in an
| environment that warped their world view as thoroughly as
| any Chinese propaganda could have done.
|
| In the United States, we've also tried children as young
| as 11 years old as adults.
|
| I think there is a social consensus to give college
| students a pass.
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| They're old enough to be in the army, so they're old
| enough to be kicked out of the country for spying.
| flenserboy wrote:
| Yes. One has to wonder just how many of these students are
| students, and not "students" -- at Purdue & everywhere
| else.
| ed312 wrote:
| University students are emphatically not kids. The students
| who are US citizens are legal adults expected to vote an
| participate in democracy. At what age do you expect them to
| suddenly "grow up" and be responsible for their actions?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Being a functional adult takes practice. Nobody "grows up"
| until they've been responsible for their own actions for
| several years. Highschools (and to a lesser degree,
| parents) have largely passed the buck on this one.
|
| If it were up to me people would get voting rights a few
| years after they get treated like an adult in all other
| capacities, I don't care if you move one up or move the
| other back.
|
| Universities should treat students like adults but these
| people have no practice being adults so it's gonna be
| messy.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Once they are nominated for the Supreme Court or elected to
| federal office. Everything else is youthful indiscretions
| hindsightbias wrote:
| The day we let them drink.
| oxfeed65261 wrote:
| Perdue President Mitch Daniels said "Those seeking to deny
| those rights to others, let alone to collude with foreign
| governments in repressing them, will need to pursue their
| education elsewhere," but there is no indication that the
| students have been expelled. The statement is bizarre and
| nonsensical if the students are not expelled.
| abruzzi wrote:
| "If those students can be identified..." It sounds from the
| statement that they don't know who they are at this point.
| This sounds to me like an initial statement before a full
| investigation has completed. I would also say that for the
| rights of other students, there should be some kind of fair
| process to ensure that the accused are fairly treated.
| lazide wrote:
| Also it's what they would say if they wanted to look like
| they were taking a hard stance while having an out to avoid
| actually doing anything concrete or with consequences.
|
| Only time will tell what actually is done.
| netcan wrote:
| The student has stated (on reddit) that he has identities
| and proof at ready for police and/or the university.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Why do they need proof of being a foreign entity? Just the
| intimidation should get them expelled.
| netcan wrote:
| Because the most intimidating part is arranging a secret
| police visit to his parents.
|
| Students arguing politics, even if uncivil, isn't something
| you want to be "no tolerance" about. There are lines
| though, and this is one.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Anyone who;s attended a western university has seen how
| ... emotional? the politcals can get. I think this is
| probably a good thing, so it's tough to determine when
| the line is crossed. It sounds like it was definitely
| crossed here but it's still a tough minefield to
| navigate.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| There seems to be a large or loud group who stoke their
| emotions, but not their rationality .. its like the blood
| drains from their head when their heart gets fired up
|
| Emotions are good, but excessive emotions without deep
| understanding is something very different.
| dmix wrote:
| It also sounds like they'd need proof they colluded with a
| foreign entity which is a very high bar.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > Those seeking to deny those rights to others
|
| I'd say harassment falls into this category, so no proof of
| collusion with the CCP is needed.
| lazide wrote:
| If something is harassment or merely exercising their
| right to express their opinion is also a matter for
| subjective judgement and he said/she said type finger
| pointing, and highly dependent on context and frequency
| (which can be hard to find solid concrete evidence for
| without a lot of work).
| simonh wrote:
| It sounds like some of the students not only threatened
| to report him to the Chinese authorities, but told him
| that they had done so, and he has proof who made these
| threats and claims. They didn't try to hide it.
| lazide wrote:
| If they have a right to do that, is that harassment?
|
| I doubt Purdue (up to now) has any policy saying it's
| illegal to report someone to authorities for something
| they did. Even if those authorities are not popular right
| now and the thing they did is ok at Perdue but not at
| home.
|
| Is it a 'dick move' and offend our sensibilities? Sure.
|
| But that doesn't mean it's any different than if a bunch
| of folks from the US were at a French university during
| the 50's and someone called the FBI telling them that Bob
| was saying a lot of scary things about communism and just
| got a Russian Girlfriend and maybe they should look into
| it.
|
| If it's true, then of course the FBI is going to look
| into it. If true, it's also unlikely to count as
| harassment. It's also pretty terrible from 5 different
| angles.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| > But that doesn't mean it's any different than if a
| bunch of folks from the US were at a French university
| during the 50's and someone called the FBI telling them
| that Bob was saying a lot of scary things about communism
| and just got a Russian Girlfriend and maybe they should
| look into it.
|
| I'm sorry, but is this supposed to be a counter point?
| This kind of behavior would have been ridiculous and
| unacceptable as well, unless said US citizen had access
| to state secrets or something of that nature.
| filoleg wrote:
| ^Fully agreed. That period in time is literally referred
| to as "Red Scare" and is considered to be a massive
| failure of an initiative based solely on fearmongering.
|
| And yes, it is taught this way even in semi-rural high
| schools in southern US states as well (I attended a high
| school like that myself in GA about 10 years ago). It's
| like saying "well, US did the whole Trail of Tears thing
| centuries ago, so we can do a soft-genocide in 2021 as
| well with Uyghurs".
|
| That type of an argument doesn't sound convincing in the
| eyes of anyone who doesn't already support what China is
| doing or some very vocal radical left minority (aka
| tankies and adjacent groups) in the west. For an example
| of the latter, just check r/sino, it feels like reading
| into some parallel universe.
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| > _If they have a right to do that, is that harassment?_
|
| Yes. Having the right to say or do something doesn't mean
| it isn't harassment. But more importantly, the 'students'
| making these reports/threats are acting as agents of the
| CCP, projecting the CCP's power into an American
| university, and should be ejected from the country for
| that. What they were doing was espionage.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > If they have a right to do that, is that harassment?
|
| You can harass someone with legal activity, making it
| illegal. If I show up outside your house everyday and
| stand on the sidewalk with a concealed weapon that is
| obviously illegal harassment. Standing on the sidewalk
| might be legal, carrying a concealed weapon may be legal,
| harassing someone with either is not.
|
| > But that doesn't mean it's any different than if a
| bunch of folks from the US were at a French university
| during the 50's and someone called the FBI telling them
| that Bob was saying a lot of scary things about communism
| and just got a Russian Girlfriend and maybe they should
| look into it.
|
| You're right. This is something we will all need to worry
| about in the event that we time Travel to the 50's. When
| that happens, I'll criticize the US government, and
| encourage the French university to expel the American
| students. I guess we will need to settle for dealing with
| today's problems until time travel is possible :(
|
| > If it's true, then of course the FBI is going to look
| into it. If true, it's also unlikely to count as
| harassment. It's also pretty terrible from 5 different
| angles.
|
| Why? I think your false assumption here is that
| everything the university should care about, the FBI
| should care about to, which is simply not true. You can
| outright break the law and the FBI not care depending on
| the law. I don't know that this falls into the category
| of things the FBI would deal with.
| ralmidani wrote:
| People have been expelled from universities for videos
| where they used the N-word. I agree with imposing that
| consequence (unless it was in the distant past and the
| student has since shown genuine rehabilitation).
| Reporting someone to a regime which tortures, kills, and
| harvests the organs of dissenters is orders of magnitudes
| worse than using a racist slur.
| strathmeyer wrote:
| Are you up China's butt or just generally pro-harassment?
| ivalm wrote:
| Purdue certainly has policy against harassment. Other
| students followed and directly harassed, Purdue is not
| the government so it doesn't even need to weigh free
| speech or legality.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Even a public university can decide what they want to do
| when it comes to punishment for students they admit. You
| aren't owed an explanation no matter how much you pretend
| on the internet to care.
| fallingknife wrote:
| A public university has to respect the constitutional
| rights of it's students though. So there would be very
| strong legal protection for pro China students.
|
| Edit: actually not sure if they are foreign nationals.
| Maybe someone knows if same applies?
| jakeinspace wrote:
| The student's citizenship makes no difference legally
| when it comes to First Amendment privileges.
| ivalm wrote:
| > constitutional rights
|
| This is a false statement. The only regulation here is
| title VI and title IX. The administration of a public
| university is not legally part of the government.
| nouveaux wrote:
| Guo You Guo Fa Jia You Jia Gui
|
| The issue is of harassment and continued education at
| Purdue; not constitutional rights. It sounds like the pro
| China students were harassing Zhihao Kong. Purdue can
| decide what constitute harassment. 100% it's part of of
| every contract the student signs and agrees to as a part
| of their acceptance.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| People have no problem bending the rules to punish people
| swiftly if it benefits them. It is only when it would be
| painful to do the right thing that people insist on their
| legal limitations.
| dirtyid wrote:
| At the end of the day, it's a stretch to assume the students
| did anything other than wield their rights to free speech on
| an American (or other western) campus. Anti CCP activities,
| on campus or elsewhere in west makes it way through PRC media
| bubbles with of millions of eyeballs willing to do the dirty
| work, frequently within PRC soil. All it takes is for a post
| to trend. Freedom of speech in west =/= freedom from
| consequences, which applies even less in PRC.
|
| What's nonsensical are the allegations that politically
| engaged pro-PRC/CCP Chinese national students must be state
| agents. And the disproportionate media attention it gets in
| the west whenever there's diaspora drama between PRC students
| and HK/Tibet etc. CCP doesn't need to instruct nationalists
| to behave like nationalists. Rich Chinese kids with social
| media are playing the same cancel culture game against the
| out-group and that just happens to be aligned/exploitable for
| PRC censorship.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > it's a stretch to assume the students did anything other
|
| No, because at least one (edit: two!) incidents like this
| has already repeatedly happened elsewhere. Chinese students
| sabotaged a panel at Brandeis University about Uyghurs
| ("Viewers interrupted a Harvard-educated lawyer as she
| tried to describe her brother's plight in a concentration
| camp, scrawling "bullshit" and "fake news" over his face on
| the screen and blaring China's national anthem." - which is
| pretty clearly harassment), and an Emerson College student
| was subjected to doxxing and death threats[2]. Given these
| incidents, and that the university president released a
| letter about this (so it's not just an unverified social
| media post), the reasonable assumption is that the students
| _did_ engage in harassment.
|
| Moreover, yes, students in a _foreign country_ reporting an
| incident legal in that country to their repressive home
| government is definitely "collusion".
|
| > Freedom of speech in west =/= freedom from consequences
|
| Um, no, that's incorrect. "Freedom of speech" means that
| you have the ability to express the opinions that you want
| to _without consequences_ , by definition (the two
| components of freedom of speech are the ability to express
| opinions and the protection from "consequences" (which is a
| misleading way to say "active retribution") of that
| expression).
|
| In the United States incarnation, the First Amendment is a
| specific instance of a law protecting freedom of speech
| that prevents the federal government from punishing you
| from saying what you want, modulo a few edge cases (most of
| which aren't restrictions on freedom of speech/expression
| so much as restrictions on particular utterances (e.g.
| yelling "fire" in a crowded theater) or knowledge
| (disseminating classified information)).
|
| But, beyond the government (which is the only entity that
| the First Amendment applies to), other organizations or
| individuals can take pro-free-speech or anti-free-speech
| positions, which (again) means _freedom from consequences
| due to that speech_.
|
| The CCP here is clearly taking an anti-free-speech position
| by _threatening the student through his parents due to an
| opinion that he has expressed about Tianamen Square._
|
| > Rich Chinese kids with social media are playing the same
| cancel culture game
|
| Also completely false. "Cancel culture" means that you're
| attacked by _the culture_ specifically, which includes just
| about everything _except_ the government.
|
| [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-
| china...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29593320
| shkkmo wrote:
| > e.g. yelling "fire" in a crowded theater
|
| The legal argument behind that concept isn't that
| "yelling fire in a crowded theater" is about the
| particular utterance but that it was a metaphor for the
| government's legal ability to restrict free-speech when
| it presents a "clear and present danger".
|
| The legal case where the metaphor was introduced was a
| unanimous decision allow charging some under the
| espionage act for pamphleteering against the draft in
| WWI. It considered among the worst Supreme Court
| decisions, has been partially overturned and is an odd
| example to reference when arguing that these "edge-cases"
| don't amount to real restrictions on speech. This
| particular "edge-case" decision upheld the criminal
| prosecution of anti-war activists for their speech.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >Rich Chinese kids with social media are playing the same
| cancel culture game against the out-group and that just
| happens to be aligned/exploitable for PRC censorship.
|
| So? It's a crappy game and we should stop letting them play
| it. Making up accusations of being a CIA agent is not
| better than making up accusations of being a PLA agent.
| simonh wrote:
| There's no assuming going on. These students explicitly
| threatened reporting him to the Chinese government, and did
| so using their registered accounts in online chat so we
| know exactly who it was.
| dirtyid wrote:
| That's called an allegation, an assumption. And alleging
| students said some dumb shit is different than proving
| collusion with PRC gov unless Purdue can dig up files
| from PRC MSS. In the meantime, the parsimonious answer is
| kids playing with PRC cancel culture, because to my
| knowledge there hasn't been a single proven allegation of
| PRC kids directly reporting other PRC nationals on
| western campus. Plenty of yellow journalism alleging
| collusion from the last few years, but zero expulsions
| despite China Initiative cracking down on campus harder
| than ever. That should tell you something. If anything I
| hope Kong / Purdue hits up the proper authorities and
| finally get some clarity on the extends of the issue
| other than non-stop news cycle weasel allegations. IMO
| the likely outcome is dumb kids trigger cancel culture
| drama over social media, and again free speech =/=
| freedom from consequences in other jurisdictions.
| splitstud wrote:
| Two giant paragraphs that are largely irrelevant as well
| as inaccurate. Purdue has a framework to work with to
| adjudicate situations regarding the student experience.
| We will see how it plays out. Your emotional response to
| some trigger doesn't have anything to do with what is
| being discussed.
| ivalm wrote:
| The students followed and threatened, that's harassment.
| Even if it was legal, the campus can still expel them if it
| violates their standards. The campus is not bound by the
| first amendment, as it is not the government.
| 99_00 wrote:
| >reported to the Chinese state
|
| Chinese law requires Chinese citizens and companies to spy when
| asked. It's literally a law.
|
| https://www.canada.ca/en/security-intelligence-service/corpo...
| throw10920 wrote:
| Interesting. Does this make every Chinese citizen in the
| United States an agent of a foreign power? (I suspect the
| answer is yes)
|
| https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/agent-of-a-foreign-power/
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| Only those who follow through with it.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| .. so their parents don't get 'dissapeared'
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| That doesn't mean we should tolerate it happening in America.
| Lambent_Cactus wrote:
| I seems like a lot hinges on "The identities of the bullies is
| well known."
|
| The President's letter says "If those students who issues the
| threats can be identified, they will be subject to appropriate
| disciplinary sanction." Have the threateners been reliably
| identified in, for example, press accounts? It seems very
| possible that in some communities on campus "everyone knows who
| it is" without the administration actually knowing, or being
| able to reliably prove, who it was.
| disabled wrote:
| The thing that the Purdue University President forgot to
| mention: Civil Rights Act of 1964.
|
| Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits
| discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, gender,
| pregnancy, or * _national origin*_.
|
| Honestly, students need to understand that if they are
| perpetrating this violence (yes, harassment and intimidation,
| whether or not it is physical, is a form of violence) they will
| face severe disciplinary action. Also, they need to understand
| that they are breaking federal law.
|
| Unfortunately, Purdue University likely will not be taking this
| as seriously as possible. There are so many other public
| universities that have better formal administrative policies
| towards this kind of behavior.
| golemotron wrote:
| Title VII applies to employers, not students.
| splitstud wrote:
| These are good points, but this isn't a case of
| discrimination.
|
| What is it about Purdue that makes them unlikely to take this
| seriously?
| stickfigure wrote:
| 200 Chinese students have no material financial impact in a
| body of 35,000 students. I'm inclined to take the statement at
| face value, and won't be surprised if more actions come as they
| work out the facts.
| gkop wrote:
| Public universities make their tuition money on the out-of-
| state and foreign students, so your denominator here is an
| order of magnitude too big. Every marginal out-of-state or
| foreign student lost, is one or more in-state students whose
| tuition cannot be subsidized.
| stickfigure wrote:
| 200 out of 3500 is still not enough to care.
| gkop wrote:
| Prices are discovered on the margin, I wouldn't be so
| sure. I believe university administrators do care,
| anyhow.
| exclusiv wrote:
| Those students are meaningless to Purdue financially.
| They can replace those students in a heartbeat.
| gkop wrote:
| Please respond to my points. Prices are discovered on the
| margin, so losing a significant chunk of the students
| that pay full tuition, could certainly destabilize the
| market and cause challenges for university
| administrators.
|
| Ok, say Purdue eats the acquisition cost to replace the
| 200 students. Those new students now need to be replaced
| by whatever school they would have otherwise attended,
| they have to come from somewhere. There exists some
| tipping point at which the system could unravel, maybe
| not 200 students but some number of students.
| exclusiv wrote:
| Acquisition cost is zero at this point - there are wait
| lists and no shortage of talented people from other
| countries that would love to go to Purdue or any other
| comparable school. They can also easily pull from the out
| of state basket. Also, you have to account for financial
| repercussions if they do nothing.
|
| > There exists some tipping point at which the system
| could unravel, maybe not 200 students but some number of
| students.
|
| Perhaps, but again 200 students is inconsequential to
| Purdue as I stated. They have the ability to replace
| instantly and they have a > $2.5 billion endowment.
|
| The system would unravel due to overextension of loans
| and people deciding it's not worth it to take the debt on
| that they have been doing. That's the unravel risk. And
| it would hit the low tier schools anyway.
|
| What Purdue or others with similar challenges cannot do,
| is nothing. Not everyone gives a shit about appeasing
| China. Maybe LeBron, the NBA and some other organizations
| care because it has been all about the $ for them. But
| things are changing. Women's Tennis is standing up. Biden
| making a statement regarding Olympics. Not many examples
| out there but they're becoming more frequent.
| rdiddly wrote:
| 200 students who would be quickly replaced with 200 other
| students from the wait list, I might add.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| At Purdue? absolutely. THis isn't some unknown regional
| school but a globally recognized in-dmeand uni.
| gkop wrote:
| Universities compete for the out-of-state and foreign
| students that pay their bills, they are not trivially
| replaceable. And if you exclude Chinese students from the
| replacement pool, it's even smaller.
| necovek wrote:
| 200 were enrolled _this_ fall. The article says elsewhere
| that "Of the over 45,000 students enrolled at campus, 5,196
| are of Asian ethnicity", though it's not clear how many of
| them are from China.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Keep in mind that 7.2% of the total population of the
| United States identifies as Asian ethnicity. There's no
| reason to expect that most of Purdue's Asian students are
| _from China_.
| sct202 wrote:
| I found a Purdue pdf that states international students
| comprised of 20% of Purdue's student body in 2019. "China
| ranks first (3250) in total enrollment while India (2156)
| is second." Source: https://www.purdue.edu/IPPU/ISS/_Docu
| ments/EnrollmentReport/...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The administration can't ban these students because they need
| the money from these students to keep their jobs.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Imagine educating Americans in America.
| elteto wrote:
| Purdue isn't going to go bankrupt because of 200 students.
| lazide wrote:
| Depending on how they handle it, they could end up
| blacklisted by all Chinese students - which is likely a
| whole lot more than 200 students.
|
| That it could also (in an extreme case) cause many
| employers with Chinese ties to avoid alumni with Perdue
| ties to avoid backlash from China is an outcome they can't
| ignore either.
|
| CCP is not known for rational, reasoned responses in
| situations like this.
| taormina wrote:
| Oh no, Americans would have more spots at an America
| university. Or students from another nation could take
| the opportunity. I don't see why we have to specifically
| import Chinese nationals for those 200 seats when there
| are plenty of qualified candidates both domestically and
| abroad.
| BINGCHILLING wrote:
| you know why $$$
| Nevermark wrote:
| Unfortunately, most of those responses are very rational
| and reasoned. The regime has decided that intimidation is
| a useful tool for defending its narratives, and uses it
| in many contexts.
|
| That global campaigne makes an even handed response for
| Purdue important, both for this context, and helping set
| an example for wider contexts.
|
| We need to maintain/develop a strong and even handed
| culture - standing up for everyone's right of expression
| without harassment.
| lazide wrote:
| You have a good point. As hard as it is to admit,
| 'overbearing insane seeming overreaction' is a useful and
| rational reputation to have in certain circumstances.
|
| It definitely cuts down on the number of sane people
| being willing to be seen doing whatever it is that
| typically causes that response.
| outside1234 wrote:
| This student is a grad student, so if anything, he is the
| exploited one here.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| While it doesn't have the immediate satisifaction of a twitter
| pitchfork mob, I appreciate a measured approach IF there is
| serious (albeit slow moving) action taken. The last thing we
| need is an equally impactful response in the opposite
| direction. He's the head of the school and needs to balance a
| wide range of perspectives and demands. The context has been
| set so now I'm watching to see if the actions back it up. If
| not, you're right in your immediate assessment, but this has
| big geo-political implications and needs to take time. It's
| similar to the Meng Wanzhou extradition fiasco; she was under
| house arrest in a mansion while 2 Canadians languished in a
| Chinese prison. IT was completely unfair and imbalanced but we
| had to go through our process, not stoop to theirs.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>The last thing we need is an equally impactful response in
| the opposite direction.
|
| We need a MORE impactful response form this side, but it does
| not have to be instant.
|
| And you are correct that it has to be carefully investigated,
| soundly based, and measured for maximum effect.
|
| Ultimately, if you are a "student" here and are participating
| in state power projection, spying, or abuse of anyone merely
| participating in protected activities, we need to expel you
| not only from the school but from the country.
|
| Would China tolerate US "students" on their land spying,
| attempting to project US power, or abusing others on their
| land? Not for a second, and we shouldn't either.
|
| Moreover, stronger actions need to be taken to provide
| consequences to the CCP for attempting this kind of nonsense.
|
| The CCP also needs to stop it from home, because the repeated
| spy cases of Chinese ppl in academia have already tainted the
| reputation of ALL Chinese students. I'm sure it is already
| shutting them out of interesting internships that might also
| use even CUI (Controlled Unclassified Data) in unrelated
| parts of the business.
| oceanghost wrote:
| > Would China tolerate US "students" on their land spying,
| attempting to project US power, or abusing others on their
| land?
|
| China is the worlds weird abusive ex-boyfriend.
| toss1 wrote:
| yup, abusive, and stalking. Including on HN - every
| single HN post that opposed CCP actions gets resistance
| from the handful of guaranteed downvotes to verbose
| advocacy. Russia has been the undisputed world champion
| of dezinformatsyia for over a century, but it looks like
| CCP is coming for their title , especially with their
| push into the US academic-military realm (and they are
| shameless about copying US tech, surprising for a culture
| that values face-saving).
| dang wrote:
| > _every single HN post that opposed CCP actions gets
| resistance from the handful of guaranteed downvotes to
| verbose advocacy_
|
| That is so extremely far from the case that I think it
| may be a classic example of the notice-dislike bias (http
| s://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.
| ..).
| kmeisthax wrote:
| China is banking on the hunch that it's impossible to
| rhetorically separate "China" and "Chinese", and that
| western powers or their citizens will fuck up and engage in
| hate crimes or war crimes that...
|
| 1. Unify the country around the People's Republic of China
| generally, and Xi Jinping specifically
|
| 2. Damage or destroy any alliances with western powers that
| China's neighbors might have
|
| The absolute worst thing we can do right now is knee-jerk
| our way into blowback, and a lot of the reaction here seems
| to be that we should. In fact, I even read a report[0]
| stating that a lot of the recent government attempts to
| fish out Chinese spies have devolved into fishing
| expeditions against Chinese grad students in America. I'm
| tempted to say we're doing it wrong, but it could also be
| the case that we're just making the least-worst mistakes
| right now.
|
| [0] which I absolutely wish I could find!
| rkk3 wrote:
| > for commemorating the victims of the Tiananmen Masacre
|
| You realize the 89' protestors were trying to overthrow the
| government (thats how you establish the Democracy). No surprise
| that celebrating failed-revolutionaries is contentious.
| chernevik wrote:
| I contend that those seeking to overthrow tyrannies are to be
| celebrated.
| rkk3 wrote:
| Sounds good until you try to figure out how to classify
| tyrannies.
| vhgyu75e6u wrote:
| The ones that block freedom of the press, block and
| censore the internet, deploy military force against
| civilians, anex peaceful territories by force, push other
| democracies to overwrite their history, and commit
| genocide... So the Chinese government.
| rkk3 wrote:
| And those are all things the US, the UK and most western
| government's have done & will do again.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Nobody is going to show up at your home for saying so.
| Many US citizens will agree with you.
|
| A country which improves its behavior through self-
| criticism from its citizens is not a tyranny. It is just
| a government that makes serious mistakes.
|
| No form of government has managed to avoid that yet.
|
| Democracy and freedom don't guarantee the majority will
| behave well all the time. But they systematically leave
| the door open for improvement - even if it takes a lot of
| effort.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > the US, the UK and most western government's
|
| Ahh, the classic whataboutism prevalent in threads about
| China. No excuse, especially because almost all the bad
| stuff that those governments did are decades in the past,
| whereas China is doing those things now, accelerating
| them, and being defended by its citizens (and people like
| you).
|
| Moreover, you can't just lump together governments like
| that? The UK is a completely different world than the US
| - for instance, their freedom-of-speech laws aren't
| comparable to ours.
|
| And, if we're talking just about the US (which is the
| topic of discussion, not the UK) - the US does not "block
| freedom of the press, block and censor the internet,
| [...] push other democracies to overwrite their history,
| and commit genocide..." and the other things that we have
| (shamefully) committed are an order of magnitude _not as
| bad_ as what China is doing now. The last time the US did
| something remotely similar to the million+ Uyghurs in
| concentration camps was the Trail of Tears in _1850_
| (which, as terrible as it was, involved less than a 10th
| of the number of victims as Xinjiang now).
|
| You're sure making a lot of fallacies and bad arguments
| to try to excuse the behavior of a murderous, tyrannical
| government...
| east2west wrote:
| Do starving its own people and persecuting anyone who
| talks, thinks out loud, researches, or investigates it,
| work for you? The Great Leap Forward and the "Three-year
| Natural Disaster!" There was nothing natural about it and
| we still don't know how many perished.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| They aren't doing it right now.
|
| China, on the other hand, just bashed Hong Kong
| liberties, and to my horror, media already forgot about
| that.
|
| And when you get to name a country that doesn't respect
| human rights, that still doesn't justify you to do the
| same
| quantum_solanum wrote:
| > They aren't doing it right now.
|
| The US most certainly is.
|
| > block freedom of the press
|
| police shot out the eyes of numerous journalists during
| last summer's protests. Assange.
|
| > anex peaceful territories by force
|
| Puerto Rico and Hawaii are active colonial occupations
| (as is the entire country, both those are particularly
| obvious examples)
|
| > deploy military force against civilians
|
| see again the responses to protests last summer, and the
| routine murder of thousands of innocent people abroad.
|
| > push other democracies to overwrite their history
|
| favorite activity of the CIA, besides child prostitution
| and trafficking
|
| > commit genocide
|
| The ongoing erasure of indigenous Hawaiians (with the
| navy literally poisoning people _right now_ with a gas
| leak they have no intent to fix), highest prison
| population in the world, continued suppression of Native
| Americans on the mainland, etc etc
| chernevik wrote:
| One hint is that they don't let you call them "tyranny"
| ch4s3 wrote:
| They were run over by tanks, and the PRC has made it illegal
| to even mention the event. Most nation states allow citizens
| to talk about their own history good and bad.
| Zenbit_UX wrote:
| Run over by tanks doesn't quite cover the brutality of that
| night. The tanks repeatedly drove over and then reversed
| over the same bodies until they were pulp on the streets.
| What happened that night was ni unspeakable, yet we must
| speak of it or we risk it being forgotten in history.
| vhgyu75e6u wrote:
| Turned into a pulp and washed away with hoes down the
| sewers
| widespace_ wrote:
| Could you give me a source for "Run over and the
| reversed". I'd be interested in reading about it.
| rkk3 wrote:
| They were violently suppressed & many people were
| tragically killed. If the protests were successful and
| overthrew the government, it's also likely millions of
| people would have died as a result, look at what happened
| with the Arab Spring.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| The work "likely" is doing a LOT of work there.
| Contemporaneous examples in the GDU, Czechoslovakia, and
| other form Soviet satellites transitioned to democracies
| in a more or less bloodless fashion.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| You seek freedom? You want democracy?! You murderers!
| Don't you know we'll fight back for our authoritarian
| dictatorship and millions will die? How dare you
| challenge the status quo?
| voakbasda wrote:
| Instead, it failed and now you get millions dying through
| oppression and genocide.
|
| Freedom has a price that must be paid in blood. Do you
| think China will magically become free someday? No, it
| will take the blood of millions to overthrown that
| regime.
| rdxm wrote:
| If they were serious about doing anything they'd have already
| expelled the other Chinese students that harassed him/her.
|
| It's long past time to stop accommodating the CCP w.r.t.
| educating their elites kids (which happens because they lack Tier
| 1 institutions at home, go figure...)
|
| But Purdue will not expel them because they pay cash for full
| rack rate tuition. This is true of other countries with
| adversarial relationships with the US as well, and it needs to
| stop.
| [deleted]
| eloeffler wrote:
| For those in the EU (geoblocked):
| https://web.archive.org/web/20211217004434/https://www.purdu...
| gtirloni wrote:
| I worked with people from China at a previous job. They came to
| visit us (South America) and while having dinner I lightly
| suggested things in China are difficult when it comes to freedom,
| right? Their facial expression changed immediately. They said it
| was better not to talk about that. They were who knows how many
| kilometers from home, not a single Chinese national around to
| report them, and they still feared talking about this subject. It
| was a short but eye opening experience for me.
| dudul wrote:
| Reminds me of when I was back in high school in the very early
| 2000's. We had a Chinese girl in our class and during a History
| lesson about Mao she started crying and yelling that everything
| the teacher was saying was wrong, that Mao was the greatest
| leader, etc.
|
| She was not _visiting_ from China, she literally had been in
| Europe for more than a decade, and still.
| Qub3d wrote:
| My family hosted a Taiwanese exchange student when I was in
| high school. One day, he and I were out seeing the town. He
| discovered a Chinese Tea house in an out-of-the-way corner, and
| we stopped in.
|
| The owner, a Chinese expat, greeted us enthusiastically and
| personally sat down to serve us tea. The conversation was
| lovely; she was explaining the source of the tea, the
| preparation and serving method, etc. and I was just enjoying
| the experience when she offhandedly asked where he was from.
|
| When he responded, "Taiwan," she immediately frowned and made
| some terse comment in Mandarin, to which he retorted, also in
| Mandarin. There was a tense exchange, and then she abruptly
| turned to me and started asking me questions again in English,
| changing the subject.
|
| I had not yet learned of the One-China stance, so when we left
| I asked him what happened. He told me that she admonished him
| for not saying he was from "Chinese Taipei", and apparently
| some other nasty remarks he decided not to translate.
|
| It was such a shock to see that level of nationalism exhibit
| itself in real-time. She was genuinely _offended_ and angry,
| not annoyed. I suspect if I hadn 't been there, she'd have told
| him to leave immediately.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This story sounds doubtful to me. It's perfectly OK for a
| Chinese to say that they are from Taiwan, and Chinese, be it
| from the mainland or Taiwan, always say that: They're from
| Taiwan, Beijing, Guangdong, you name it. It's like saying
| which state you're from in the US.
|
| No-one ever says "Chinese Taipei", certainly not among
| Chinese, which is just some political compromise, mostly in
| the Olympic Committee.
|
| The only issue I can think of is if the question was
| specifically about the country of origin, in which case some
| people may indeed object to "Taiwan" and argue that it should
| be "China" instead (but not "Chinese Taipei"...)
| United857 wrote:
| Depends on the context. The term "Taiwan" standalone is
| neutral, but e.g. having "Taiwan" and "China" in e.g. a
| list of countries would not be.
|
| I've been asked many times in mainland China where I was
| from, and I say "Taiwan" without any issues.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| I think you're over-literally interpreting what above
| poster said. Above poster probably doesn't speak Mandarin
| so their retelling might be missing some nuance.
| bllguo wrote:
| Just glossing over "missing some nuance" is a major part
| of the problem. Western understanding of the rest of the
| world is severely lacking.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| It's not glossing over, it's a rebuttal.
|
| > Western understanding of the rest of the world is
| severely lacking
|
| I would wager that Western countries, on average, have a
| better view of the world than non-Western countries, if
| for no other reason than the privileges their wealth and
| liberalism entail. Do you think the average Russian,
| African, South American, Chinese, (Yes, I'm aware some of
| that list is continents, and some is countries) etc. has
| access to a greater wealth of information and experience
| with regard to the Rest of the world?
|
| Keep in mind I'm not saying this as a point of
| superiority or anything, just pointing out your lack of a
| well-grounded point.
| bllguo wrote:
| I find it frustrating that so much discussion about other
| countries is based on hearsay and offhand translation,
| especially in the case of China where it seems few
| Western commenters even understand the language, much
| less the culture.
|
| Sure, if you are comparing populations as a whole, but if
| you are comparing the subsets of educated people from
| each country that are participating in the global
| discourse I strongly disagree. There's no point in
| comparing the average Russian or African or Chinese
| person. Are we ever interacting with them? Do they drive
| any policy?
| mike_h wrote:
| I've worked primarily with Chinese for years, both inside and
| outside of China. They consistently poke fun at and speak
| thoughtfully about the government and policy. It's possible
| they just had learned to avoid being baited by westerners
| looking to confirm a certain narrative.
| [deleted]
| exabrial wrote:
| That's been my experience too. When traveling to China, we were
| given a class and they advised us to not discuss any politics,
| even American ones, overseas. Other items that were "off topic"
| including voting, rights for non-traditional lifestyles,
| abortion, death penalties, taxes, and discussions about world
| conflicts.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Abortion world be on the list of taboo topics when touring
| the US as well.
|
| Not because it's sensitive everywhere, but because it's very
| sensitive in some places.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| May they simply did not want to be put on the spot by getting
| into a political argument. Arguably you brought up a topic not
| suitable for a social dinner with colleagues.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Nobody was arguing, we were interested in their view. You
| don't know how close we were on a daily basis.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Discussing politics is always getting into argument
| territory and always best avoided on social occasions,
| especially if you do not know the opinions of the people
| around you.
|
| For instance, I (in Europe) don't " _lightly suggest_ "
| things in the US are difficult when it comes to
| guns/Trump/abortion/etc to American colleagues because
| these are sensitive political topics and nothing good can
| come out of that. You mentioned it was in South America so
| maybe another example would be to mention drug cartels and
| Pablo Escobar to Colombian colleagues.
|
| I can imagine your Chinese colleagues thinking "here we go
| again..." and politely stirring the conversation to another
| topic.
| gtirloni wrote:
| You're imagining wrong and assuming a lot of things.
|
| "Lightly suggesting" something is "difficult" is a
| conversation starter. Not arguing.
|
| Maybe we're getting into "cultural differences" area and
| we should probably agree to disagree.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I did not say that you were arguing. I just pointed out
| that you were starting a conversation that could lead
| nowhere pleasant for anyone so your guests probably
| wisely stirred away from it.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Or, you're making a ton of conjecture without knowing the
| situation, the people involved, their relationship, what
| was actually said, the emotional context, and are forming
| all of these opinions stated as fact from a few lines of
| text on an HN comment.
|
| I wish people were more charitable on HN, on the
| internet, and in life.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| What was not charitable in simply suggesting an
| alternative explanation that did not involve fear of
| retribution? This is a friendly discussion (or so I
| thought).
| sohdas wrote:
| I think what's uncharitable is assuming that someone is
| 'afraid to speak out' just because they don't want to
| wade into politics.
| zepto wrote:
| He said you are wrong. It's hard to see why you would
| keep trying to undermine him.
| odiroot wrote:
| Maybe it was that specific group of people? All my associates
| from China had no problems discussing these issues (and three
| Ts) with me. Some were supporting the party, some weren't, but
| they still shared.
|
| No one, naturally, would blog about it or openly shout on the
| street but families and friends (from what I've heard) do talk
| about these political issues.
| yololol wrote:
| Not necessary. There's a chance that they support their
| government, and they didn't want to hear the usual western
| stuff about freedom and how bad their country is. I had many
| similar experiences as a student. Western students would start
| this discussion to Chinese students in anticipation of hearing
| how oppressed they feel. What they would often get is an
| irritated Chinese student who will tell them that it's hard to
| control 1.3 billion people and that their government has done a
| lot of them etc. And the western student's brains would
| hardwire unable to accept that answer and conclude "Clearly
| they're brainwashed" :D PS: I'm not taking sides here
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I don't know about those people in particular, but the way
| totalitarian states have worked in the past is to have them
| report secretly on each other. This keeps everyone in a
| constant state of fear and oppression.
|
| Read _Koba the Dread_ by Martin Amis for a powerful, extremely
| well-written account of it.
| pelasaco wrote:
| What I fear on that: The website is unreachable in Europe.
|
| "451: Unavailable due to legal reasons"
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons - omg, did I seek to deny
| those rights!?!
| ilamont wrote:
| In 2019, Frances Hui, a student at Emerson College in Boston,
| wrote an opinion piece for the student newspaper titled "I am
| from Hong Kong, not China" (1) and she was subjected to doxxing
| and death threats:
|
| _The most jarring comment came from a Chinese student at
| Emerson, who made Hui's personal Facebook posts public. In one
| post, he wrote a comment that translates to: "Whomever opposes my
| greatest China, no matter how far they are, must be executed."_
| (2)
|
| The student should have been expelled and Emerson should have an
| unequivocal statement condemning this sort of harassment over
| _any_ topic.
|
| Emerson did nothing.
|
| 1) https://berkeleybeacon.com/person-of-color-column-i-am-
| from-...
|
| 2) https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2019/05/28/frances-
| hu...
| rackjack wrote:
| The Chinese government has seeped its way into nearly every
| facet of American life. This is most visible in Disney movies
| (see: the Mulan and Lion King remakes) but it is happening to
| many companies and universities where they use our own greed
| against us. I hope America will wake up and realize we have
| fighting a hidden war, but we are so divided I doubt we'll
| notice until we've lost, if we notice at all.
| ddoolin wrote:
| On the surface, this seems like FUD or at least exaggerated.
| Anecdotally, Americans across the spectrum are at least weary
| of China if not openly hostile. China does have a lot of
| corporate influence at the upper levels and corporations do
| pull many of the levers of government here, but on an
| individual level, I don't think it's that's dramatic.
| Although this topic has been sensationalized a lot,
| personally I don't think China is as successful as they
| sometimes seem.
| will4274 wrote:
| Most Americans weren't openly hostile to China until Trump
| opened his mouth.
| rackjack wrote:
| That's fair, I'm just concerned about Chinese global
| economic dominance.
| fartcannon wrote:
| On an individual level, it would appear that just being
| from Hong Kong and not China will get you death threats.
| nneonneo wrote:
| I feel compelled to clarify this: Hong Kong _is_ part of
| China, and has been since 1997. Saying that Hong Kong is
| not part of China is like saying that Texas is not part
| of the United States because at one point they seceded.
| These days, Texas has no more right to secede from the US
| than Hong Kong from China, even if there are people in
| both territories who would prefer full independence.
| Consequently, to a Chinese person, hearing "I'm from
| Hong Kong, not China" would be like hearing "I'm from
| Texas, not the United States" as an American.
|
| Granted, someone saying the latter should never be met
| with death threats, just like the former!
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Their PR and media game is superb.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| I would agree.
|
| The British also have excellent game, but they work a lot
| with film and news. The Chinese have managed comparable
| results without.
| gumby wrote:
| This has been the policy of the USA for decades (e.g.
| pentagon script approval, military subsidies for professional
| sports (in exchange for an antitrust exemption) etc. Is this
| really any different?
|
| This comment is not intended to praise or support the CCP,
| but just to provide some context. I think the US government
| should be staying out of content as well.
| edoceo wrote:
| > use our own greed against us
|
| It's terrible but, it's brilliant too. Like, I don't like it
| but it's also amazing. It makes a confounding effect on how I
| should feel about these things.
|
| It's like, don't hate the player, hate the game? I do hate
| the game tho.
| nickff wrote:
| Well, the old saying was that the communists would hang the
| capitalists with rope sold by the latter to the former. It
| seems like the capitalists always seem to keep ahead of the
| communists though.
|
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/02/22/rope/
| jaclaz wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| Only for the record, the message I get from EU:
|
| 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons
|
| We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a
| country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including
| the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation
| (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For
| any issues, contact help@purdueexponent.org or call 765-743-1111.
|
| Maybe it is just me, but the "therefore" is not consequential.
|
| AFAIK, if you don't gather data, you don't have to protect them,
| GDPR or not.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| ...on a page that makes a call to Google Tag Manager.
| teekert wrote:
| Indeed I interpret this as "they were going to extract much
| more data than needed", but it could just be fear.
| mtberatwork wrote:
| Based on their privacy policy, it's data extraction. Also for
| some reason they link out to privacy policies of the Walt
| Disney company and the Washington Post? They also seem to use
| some obscure, third party CMS provider, and perhaps the ads
| are handled by that organization? In either case, I'm not
| sure why a student run, university newspaper needs to have
| such predatory data practices.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| I saw it as the opposite- the website was exposing personal
| info about the man who was harassed.
| vesinisa wrote:
| Can't help seeing the irony that the censored document is a
| declaration by the publisher about how strongly they are
| committed to freedom of expression in international context..
|
| CORRECTION: _As other have pointed out, the publisher is
| actually the student newspaper, which is independent from
| Purdue University itself._
| jmull wrote:
| The letter is from the president of Purdue, while the web
| site is a news site that is independent of the university.
|
| Also, it's not really censorship -- they have to deal with
| the GDPR headache, one way or the other, just like everyone
| else. Simply blocking the EU is a blunt but simple and
| effective way of doing so, and makes decent sense for a site
| where the interest is 99% local.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > they have to deal with the GDPR headache
|
| What headache? A sensible solution: when EU visitor is
| detected, don't set cookies. Purdue solution: when EU
| visitor is detected, block them.
| quartz wrote:
| > What headache? A sensible solution: when EU visitor is
| detected, don't set cookies.
|
| The headache is convincing someone to pay a lawyer to
| agree that this is the solution when serving content to
| the EU is outside your publication's mission.
|
| Also: The Exponent isn't Purdue, it's independent. Purdue
| chose email as their publication medium.
| josefx wrote:
| Not sure if that is enough. They seem to have facebook
| and twitter links and as far as I remember these usually
| come in a JavaScript spyware bundle and those are only
| the obvious ones.
| mikewarot wrote:
| >when EU visitor is detected, don't set cookies
|
| How do you know that somewhere in the stack of things the
| server is running isn't something that would set a cookie
| for some valid reason, and thus trigger the EU's stupid
| laws?
|
| A positive stop, the redirect to a text page, is far
| better than a hope and a prayer.
| PixyMisa wrote:
| Dealing with the GDPR costs money. Blocking the entire EU
| is free.
|
| This started happening even before the GDPR was
| finalised.
| [deleted]
| outside1234 wrote:
| Also, they don't have the money to comply with the EU's GDPR
| from a legal requirement, so this is really a result of the
| EU's laws.
| shuger wrote:
| If you don't collect data on the visitors you don't need to
| do anything to comply.
| [deleted]
| jaclaz wrote:
| >Can't help seeing the irony that the censored document is a
| declaration by the publisher about how strongly they are
| committed to freedom of expression in international context..
|
| Yep, and - also ironically - the root of publisher is the
| same as public, so you want to make something public but you
| restrict the access to a whole subset of the public.
|
| Besides that, if they had written (without recurring to http
| 451[0]) a simple message _like_ :
|
| "We are sorry but we cannot serve this content due to the
| possible non-compliance of this site with EU Laws (GDPR)"
|
| it would have been (IMHO) much more correct/polite.
|
| I read the message "as is" more _like_ :
|
| Hallo, stupid visitor from Europe, you are denied access to
| the contents because you voted stupid people that wrote
| stupid laws that we won't respect.
|
| The page served should be reachable even from non EU
| countries:
|
| https://www.purdueexponent.org/campus/article_aa3e67de-5de9-.
| ..
|
| and it has some interesting html keywords in "base":
|
| <meta name="keywords" content="mitch, daniels, mitch daniels,
| purdue, central intelligence agency, chinese embassy,
| tiananmen square, zhihao kong">
|
| <meta name="news_keywords" content="mitch, daniels, mitch
| daniels, purdue, central intelligence agency, chinese
| embassy, tiananmen square, zhihao kong">
|
| [0] the example on Wikipedia is a good one:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591781.
|
| I did that so the latter could be pinned to the top of the
| thread without being offtopic.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| If you are in the US without any foothold in the EU you should
| not care. I do not understand why these US-only sites care at
| all about EU.
|
| I am French so I do care very much about privacy, just do not
| understand these blocks.
| tapoxi wrote:
| This website is an independent publication about Purdue, not
| Purdue itself.
|
| If you're small and running ads, I'm pretty sure you don't want
| to risk dealing with the significant legal pitfalls of GDPR.
| They EU isn't your audience, and lawyers that confirm you're in
| compliance (or not) are expensive.
| jaywalk wrote:
| If you're an explicitly US website with no operations abroad,
| you shouldn't even give the GDPR a second thought. And if
| that's the case and you _also_ have no operations in
| California, you should give the CCPA the same treatment.
| kube-system wrote:
| I am not sure about Purdue and their affiliation with their
| student newspaper, but many US universities have operations
| abroad to some extent, like a recruiting office or
| something.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _They EU isn 't your audience, and lawyers that confirm
| you're in compliance (or not) are expensive._
|
| The GDPR is one of the easiest pieces of legislation I've
| ever read. And the answer is: no, basically nobody is in
| compliance.
| mcv wrote:
| Everybody who doesn't collect personal data about their
| visitors is perfectly compliant.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Indeed.
| trulyme wrote:
| That's a bit of an exaggeration. Those that try to
| collect as much data as possible data from visitors will
| of course find it difficult to be compliant, but many do
| not do this and are therefore in compliance with GDPR.
|
| I do find the propaganda against GDPR annoying though. As
| an EU citizen (and someone who had to make sure we were
| compliant on multiple projects) I am happy about it. Is
| it perfect? No. But it's still waaaay better than
| nothing.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _but many do not do this and are therefore in
| compliance with GDPR._
|
| Of the parts of the web _I_ frequent? Sure. Most people
| will never leave the GDPR-violating web most months.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| My guess is that there is not enough staff resources to ensure
| that all sites are compliant to the GDPR regulations so a
| blanket block of the EU was the most (only) cost effective
| solution to mitigate risk.
| gambiting wrote:
| If they don't have user accounts and no ads then there's
| literally nothing to do to be GDPR compliant. Literally zero.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| You need to NOT store IP addresses. And the hosters that
| provide you traffic need to also NOT store them
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| You're kidding, right? I was hoping after so many years
| it's clear. GDPR is about personal information. First, if
| you have no way of linking the IP to personal
| information, it does not apply. Second, even if it's
| linked (as in a web store etc.), storing it is perfectly
| fine! You just need to clearly state what information you
| store and for how long.
|
| Everybody, also in the EU, are storing IP addresses.
| Everybody. Even the company who bragged they don't store
| logs for privacy reasons was caught storing them. It is
| important, it is necessary, and in many cases required by
| law.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Why risk getting entangled in weird foreign laws that
| might still have consequences here? The simplest solution
| is the best, just say no thanks in a simple redirect.
| IncRnd wrote:
| People of the EU might want to seriously reconsider the GDPR
| after seeing its affects such as this.
| vidarh wrote:
| I'd rather seriously reconsider dealing with publishers of
| sites who consider it so important to trample all over our
| privacy rights that they'd rather block access than address
| the issues.
| Rygian wrote:
| As an European citizen, yes I am profoundly glad these
| effects exist. Error 418 means, to me, that the website is
| disappointed it cannot exploit my personal data without my
| consent. Good riddance.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| Honest question: How do you feel about your (i)phone being
| a permanent cookie? It aggregates all your information.
|
| Is anything being prepared for that?
| forty wrote:
| Note Gdpr is not only about cookies. It's about data
| collection. Being able to get and erase your personal
| data from any website is quite a nice feature.
| Delk wrote:
| I occasionally run into websites that deny access rather than
| complying with the GDPR, but that's fairly rare and happens
| perhaps a few times a year. Most sites I've seen have gone
| through the trouble of complying and implementing cookie
| consent controls instead.
|
| The added legal complexity from the GDPR for small-time
| operations has made me skeptical at times, but geoblocking
| due to the GDPR seems surprisingly rare and not a reason for
| that skepticism at all. I'd frankly have expected it to be
| much more common than it's turned out to be.
| gambiting wrote:
| Quite the opposite! I'd much rather that the website denied
| me access than treated my private info like their own
| property purely because they are too lazy to be GDPR
| compliant.
| mortehu wrote:
| This could be a client setting, rather than forcing this
| preference on 400 million users because of where they live.
| rvense wrote:
| Yeah, that's not how laws are supposed to work.
|
| I find the use of the 451 status code almost offensive in
| this case. They're invoking one of the most famous
| literary treatments of censorship, when really what's
| happening is that the citizens of the EU are being
| protected from an assault on our human rights.
| adamrezich wrote:
| "HTTP 451 Not available for legal reasons" is an
| established convention
| mcv wrote:
| I would strongly prefer if my browser handled my privacy
| preferences and ensured my personal data isn't shared
| with websites I don't want to share it with.
|
| Because even if a website promises to obey GDPR rules, I
| have no way to verify if they actually do.
| eCa wrote:
| As an EU citizen: Actually, no. Now, if only we could get rid
| of the dark-patterned cookie dialogs..
| rvense wrote:
| Sites in the rest of the world might want to seriously
| reconsider their data collection practices after seeing its
| effects such as this.
| [deleted]
| Miner49er wrote:
| This does kind of raise an interesting question. Where do you
| draw the line between disagreeing and harassing?
|
| If a group follows around a student it seems like harassment, but
| if they follow around a politician it would likely be called a
| protest. What if the group was following a professor? Or the
| president of the university? It seems like it's a matter of how
| much power the person holds if it is a protest or not, but the
| line is still somewhat murky.
| Juliate wrote:
| Disagreement is basic. See something, say something.
|
| Protesting is relevant when it occurs towards someone holding
| an office or a public role/responsibility (even if temporary).
|
| Protesting someone repeatedly or in their private capacity
| (which is the case for any student at the university): that
| becomes harassment.
|
| Threatening: that's a whole other level.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Threatening: that's a whole other level.
|
| And narcing on someone in the hope that whoever you narc'd to
| then goes on to threaten that person's family or friends
| elsewhere is another several levels beyond that.
| [deleted]
| comeonman69 wrote:
| I had a hunch so I searched and lmfao every damn time!
| https://socialistworker.org/2014/01/06/academic-freedom-and-...
| dang wrote:
| All: if you're commenting in this thread, please make sure you're
| familiar with the site guidelines at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, and please
| follow them.
|
| That includes making your substantive points without degenerating
| into nationalistic flamewar, ideological flamewar, partisan
| flamewar, or any flamewar. Edit name-calling and swipes out of
| your comments. Don't attack other users. Comment in the spirit of
| curious exchange, not smiting enemies. The latter is tedious and
| uninteresting, regardless of how right you are or feel you are.
| oxymoran wrote:
| The brainwashing must be strong for students thousands of miles
| away from China in the middle of nowhere Indiana for them to feel
| the need to snitch on dissenters. Or, more likely, they were
| threatened before they left China that they would be watched
| while abroad.
| johncena33 wrote:
| I've heard it from another Chinese student that a lot of
| Chinese students come from families that are blessed by CCP. So
| naturally they are very loyal to CCP. Very few students/people
| in general can make it outside of China without being blessed
| by CCP. Hence very high loyalty to CCP among international
| Chinese students.
| wickedsickeune wrote:
| They ARE being watched abroad, if I'm not mistaken. They keep
| using WeChat to communicate with family/friends so...
| anfilt wrote:
| The network effect is even worse when consider a lot of the
| alternative are banned in china. This makes it difficult
| basically impossible for Chinese abroad to communicate with
| their friends and family back in mainland using some
| alternative service.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Even imagining this is suffocating for someone who hasn't
| grown up in such a system.
| enriquto wrote:
| Ha! What do you think whatsapp is?
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _thousands of miles away from China_
|
| Does this really matter in the age of the internet?
| tgv wrote:
| Since it makes immediate physical repercussion, like
| detention or torture, by the Chinese state less feasible, it
| is remarkable.
| potkettle wrote:
| That's an interesting word right there.
|
| The term was first brought to the English language by American
| anti-communist and alleged CIA asset Edward Hunter to trash
| talk something China was doing to POWs in the Korean war. Prior
| art didn't call it like that. Curiously enough, the term is
| also a transliteration of what Chinese people were calling the
| phenomenon.
|
| So it is actually a sinophobic loanword from the chinese
| language, which is _very_ interesting.
|
| Indoctrination in different countries does different things to
| people. Some people will think nothing of exploding babies into
| pink mist while waging war against abstract concepts for
| decades, some people will make kids believe "freedom" is
| untenable under the system that made them prosperous and which
| totally by coincidence happens to be holding a knife to their
| mum's neck.
|
| No real point here, just felt like reflecting on how words mold
| our worldviews.
| tomp wrote:
| This is the tried-and-tested Stasi technique.
|
| You don't need to be brainwashed, you just need to be afraid.
|
| Afraid of being reported _yourself_ , if you don't report
| others. You never know, if the "other" was just a false flag to
| test your reporting. You never know if your best friend, who
| also witnessed the same thing, reported. He doesn't know if you
| reported. Reverse prisoner's dilemma.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| > You never know, if the "other" was just a false flag to
| test your reporting. You never know if your best friend, who
| also witnessed the same thing, reported. He doesn't know if
| you reported.
|
| I am worried about the authoritarian turn my country (not
| China) is taking. But reading and contemplating these words
| sent a shiver down my spine.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I don't know, I remember a naturalized college classmate of
| mine who came to the US permanently in elementary school (from
| China) going on off the cuff rants about the Dalai Lama
| poisoning people.
|
| I think they do a really good job at creating a narrative of
| victimhood and inculcating a sort of unhinged teenage
| belligerence. Not that threats don't have their role, or that
| they aren't keeping folks under observation, but they get a lot
| of mileage without those tools.
| allemagne wrote:
| The narrative of Chinese international students being
| brainwashed CCP militants or terrified informants is miles away
| from every interaction I've actually had with Chinese
| international students. Even when 'sensitive topics' are
| brought up.
|
| I think there are some bad trends and some very vocal and
| nationalistic exceptions that make for some sensational news
| stories. Like most college students, everyone is mostly just
| concerned with homework and getting along with their roommates.
| telesilla wrote:
| Students, privileged ones at least, are still living in a
| fairly black and white life and have not seen that the world is
| many colours of truth. So defending one broad ideology is
| pretty easy for them, until they live a little longer and
| experience that we are more greys than hard edges.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I get leery of claiming "brainwashing" because I know some
| people in the US who would probably do the same thing... no
| threats or direct government intervention necessary. For some
| people it seems our natural predilection for tribalism only
| needs a little push to get there.
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