I can't remember when the US built concentration camps specifically for a remote Muslim minority, or when they built islands to falsely stake territorial claims, or ...
Your arguments have been cherry-picked in a such a way, that "bad faith" comes to mind.
And many of America's own citizens criticize the US government for running it. What happens to Chinese citizens when they comment negatively on the Uighur camps?
The fact that the US does not always live up to the ideals its espouses is no knock against those ideals.
The American system, for all of its faults, at least manages to select correct at times to point closer to its ideals. Maybe I don't follow closely enough, but I generally don't see anything like that happening. Perhaps a bit of 'de-Maoification' of his personality cult at one point?
The embrace of a more market economy wasn't a good accepted for its own sake, but more for its practical benefits, so I wouldn't count that.
In some ways, that is the genius of Pax Americana. Give people the idea that they have a voice to criticize and to change policy, and forever hold the moral high ground over regimes that don't bother to make that pretense.
Then have politicians run for office promising to address that. Once they're in office, they drop it completely, blaming bureaucracy and 'lack of political will'. Then voters start all over again, with heads held high on the belief that what they want could theoretically be possible with the next candidate. Or the one after that.
The Obama administration came into office on a promise to close Guantanamo, and offer a public option on healthcare. Neither came anywhere close to fruition.
> The Obama administration came into office on a promise to close Guantanamo, and offer a public option on healthcare. Neither came anywhere close to fruition.
For the first, talk to Congress (at least partially):
It's simple. The US has amassed such immense power through violence that there are very few US citizens that can actually threaten it. But when they crop up, they do get assassinated.
I had explicitly written "remote Muslim minority" to point exactly at the Uyghurs, while avoiding connotations like Guantanamo, or the Japanese internment camps in WW2, to undermine the sloppy argumentation of the post I replied to.
You could argue that the treatment of Native Indians is just as bad if not worse - hundreds of thousands have been killed directly, and their descendants suffer because US has nearly entirely eradicated their culture and identity. And sure, there are no concentration camps, but putting an entire ethnic group inside a reservation without means to support themselves is not exactly great either.
And US didn't build islands, sure - it just gets CIA to overthrow governments and replace them with ones much friendlier to their business.
Of course, no one is saying that the countries are equivalent. Just that superpowers are going to do evil superpower shit.
Native Americans are still suffering as an ethnicity in the US - while they are free to leave the reservations and won't be punished for doing so, many don't have the means to do so because those means have been taken from them and their ancestors in the past. They suffer from much higher drug use percentage, huge unemployment, and increased crime rates where they live, and that's something that was and is forced upon them.
So no, maybe Native Americans aren't being actively prosecuted for who they are - but they definitely haven't been made whole by the American people.
Again, it's apples Vs oranges. Native American reservations aren't as bad as Uighur concentration camps, but just because it's in the past it shouldn't be ignored. Germany pays wartime reparations to this day, even though they could easily say that Nazi crimes are in the past now.
> I can't remember when the US built concentration camps specifically for a remote Muslim minority
I think the internment of Japanese in America during WWII is similar in concept. [0]
You could cherry-pick situations for nearly any country to suggest they are good or evil. Reality is that most countries have done a lot of good and a lot of bad. I’m not sure that we’ll reach a conclusion to the discussion topic “is China worse than America” just by giving examples of how they are each bad!
> US built concentration camps specifically for a remote Muslim minority
Thought experiment: place a teleporter from Xinjiang to just south of the US border. Suddenly it's possible for the oppressed Uighurs to escape and cross the border into the US. What happens to them?
I suspect they'd simply end up in a different internment camp.
What's wrong with them claiming asylum in Mexico? International law requires asylum seekers to request it at the first available country. It doesn't let them "shop around".
I believe the link you shared contradicts your previous statement that "International law requires asylum seekers to request it at the first available country." From the linked article:
"""Neither the 1951 Refugee Convention nor EU law requires a refugee to claim asylum in one country rather than another.
There is no rule requiring refugees to claim in the first safe country in which they arrive."""
Regarding "This isn't the US's responsibility..."
There are two answers to the "This isn't the US's responsibility" assertion.
One is that it's everybody's responsibility, and the US has the resources to shoulder a disproportionate burden (to say nothing of a bit of causal history creating the need to shoulder a burden in the first place; the US has intervened in South American politics for decades, sometimes with the express goal of disrupting the will of the people and local governance). Where others say "Why?" we should instead say "Why not?"
The other is that the country that has a statue in one of its largest harbors declaring "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" ... has declared it their responsibility quite openly.
Your argument is also cherry picked. You care about Muslims? Name me the Top 5 countries which are responsible for Muslim deaths in the last 10 years. Spoiler alert, China is not on that list, guess who is though.
My point was that the parent (to which I replied) was some serious cherry picking, and I replied to show one could reverse the argument by applying the same argumentation.
BTW, holding the US responsible for "muslim deaths" in Iraq and Afghanistan is a bit weird. In 2016, US-led forces were responsible for 1200 deaths (the peak over the last decade), while the ISIL accounted for almost 9000. Check iraqbodycount.org.
Did you see any proof showing there is concentration camp in Xinjiang? Or you just read it from news and have you doubted whether the news is fake or not?
Thousands? Pretty much every article that I have read about concentration camps, I have tracked down to unreliable sources like CIA-funded propaganda organizations.
I don't see articles from amnesty international going viral in western media. The last big China bad news story in HN was [1], which was literally funded and assisted by a CIA-funded organization. An article which uses a few blank spots in a map to make up just crazy conclusions?? And people in HN just seem to buy it without any of the usual skepticism you see HN show about the most boring science articles showing the most obvious results. It's like that in pretty much any western social media site. Makes you think you're living in some alternate reality.
Your arguments have been cherry-picked in a such a way, that "bad faith" comes to mind.