amn't is absolutely a word. It's the standard contraction of "am not" in Hiberno-English. Wiktionary says it's used in Scotland as well: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/amn't
Post about US funded biological weapons labs in Ukraine. I've seen half a dozen Twitter accounts banned and subreddits quarantined/banned over posting on that issue alone.
I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the claim myself, though Victoria Nuland's "denial"[1] certainly raised a few eyebrows. She said that Ukraine has biological "research facilities" and implied that it would be a very bad thing if any of these "research materials" fell into the hands of the Russian forces. Whether that counts as a "biological weapons lab" or not seems to just be arguing about semantics.
Or they were banned for spreading disinformation, or being traced back to Russian state sponsored agents. You didn’t see anyone get banned for anything specific unless you monitor everything they do including their source IP, because Twitter doesn’t send you a message and say “hey we banned this person because of their anti-American propaganda”.
> I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the claim myself, though Victoria Nuland's "denial"
Yea this tactic is called “simply asking the question” and it’s always done in poor faith.
I’m not saying Donald Trump is a child molester and eats babies, but that photo of him with Jeffery Epstein sure does seem fishy... [1]
[1] Random links that nobody clicks on but appears to give you credibility and creates doubt in the minds of others who scroll by and see it.
> Or they were banned for spreading disinformation
"Disinformation" is a propaganda term. Unless you are Ministry of Truth, of course ;)
In practice, what is labeled "disinformation" is just what those in power do not want published. Or: "News Is What Somebody Does Not Want You To Print".
From personal experience, I have strong sense of deja-vu. I've seen all of this in 80's in my country. Exactly the same, except at the time it was reactionary propaganda.
> or being traced back to Russian state sponsored agents.
You see, for Chinese posting about Tiananmen Square is being traced back to US programs intended to undermine the statehood of independent countries. For them, it is the same thing pushed by state sponsored agents as you claim about Russians.
So either both are fine when censoring it, or neither is. (I personally take option two).
Except I can write all of the following statements and I could speak them publicly, but you cannot write or speak of all of these things publicly in China or Russia.
The US sponsored terrorist biolabs in Ukraine to target Russian citizens.
The US *didn't* sponsor terrorist biolabs in Ukraine to target Russian citizens and it's all fake misinformation.
and I can write:
China has never genocided Uighur Muslims.
Tiananmen Square didn't happen.
The CCP is currently participating in a genocide of Uighur Muslims.
Tiananmen Square did happen and the CCP murdered lots of people.
> For them, it is the same thing pushed by state sponsored agents as you claim about Russians.
This is called a false equivalence. I also demonstrated why it's false here in this very post. Ta-da!
Yes, you can say all of those things in isolation, where nothing is at stake. In practice, a response is triggered when the “wrong” narratives start to gain momentum.
I can say them regardless of whether something is at stake in or outside of isolation, as can others which is evidenced by the fact that people do spread disinformation and misinformation routinely in the United States.
Biolabs in Ukraine? That's just made up bullshit by Russia. Period. And despite the Sovereignty of the United States being very much against Russia, people go on television and broadcast things that are not only wrong but completely against the interests of the Sovereign and not a single bad thing happens.
Covid vaccine misinformation? That resulted in some tens of thousands (maybe hundreds) of dead Americans. I can go on Twitter or down to the state capitol building and hold up signs that say crazy things and not a single thing will happen to me from the government.
I can say anything I want about Donald Trump, or Joe Biden.
Now contrast that with the CCP or Russia. You can't do those things. Period.
So these attempts to try and draw equivalences are, in fact, false. Hence, false equivalence.
yeah, that's the exact wording the Chinese, Russian and other authoritarian regimes use as well. "disinformation"
one would think 2016 should've taught you people that the power you give to the government will eventually end up in the hands of the people you don't like
>>Or they were banned for spreading disinformation,
New to this thread, and I may agree with your stance, but if this is how you defend it, please stop :D
More seriously though: "Spreading disinformation" is such a vaguely-defined, over-used phrase to justify any and all censorship, that any attempt to use it automatically invites suspicion of bad faith; and usually correctly so. Add to that my own personal perspective that censorship on account of spreading disinformation invariably backfires spectacularly .
If under discussion is "everybody censors" and our best defense is "but we do it to combat spreading disinformation", we have lost and catastrophically so. EVERYbody does it to combat "disinformation", however they choose to define it.
(I'm not taking some extreme "all truths are relative" approach here either; I'm merely focusing on this specific justification for censorship as utterly untenable)
My point wasn't "say something conspiratorial ergo get banned from Twitter" because if that were the case there would be far fewer people using Twitter. My point (and certainly I could make this more clear) was that it could be someone who is paid to say things that aren't true, for example, which would fall under this "spreading disinformation" category, but the OP has no idea because they don't have any information.
As an aside, it is also Russian propaganda and disinformation. But that's unrelated to the main point.
I'm sorry, but I don't think it's fair for you to imply that I'm posting in bad faith.
The link I posted is not a "random" link, and whether you click on it or not is up to you, but it's a real video of Victoria Nuland (a high ranking US government official) speaking to the US Congress. It's not Russian propaganda.
I honestly don't really care if the US has biological weapons labs in Ukraine. I don't live in the US, or Ukraine, or Russia. I don't have any skin in that game. When I first saw rumours of it I thought it was a nonsense conspiracy theory. It wasn't until I saw Victoria Nuland's "denial" that I thought "huh, maybe there's something to that".
> I'm always surprised how little interest there seems to be from the international muslim community in the Xinjiang situation, given that at least parts of it really blow up over even minor anti-Islam actions by single individuals quite regularly.
You're not imagining this — Muslim countries support China. See this map of a UN vote to condemn China's treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang[1]. You'll notice that every Muslim country that didn't abstain defended China. In fact the only countries that condemned China are countries that are militarily allied with the United States.
If you look at any of the "NGOs" that push the narrative that China is oppressing Muslims in Xinjiang, every single one of them is funded either by the National Endowment for Democracy[2][3][4] (an arm of the US State Department notorious for pushing regime change in countries the US doesn't like) or the Australian Strategic Policy Initiative, which in turn is sponsored by several US arms manufacturers[5], such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, etc. — all of whom would profit massively from a war with China, for which this narrative is manufacturing consent.
Even the site that spawned this discussion seems to be associated with Adrian Zenz. A lot of the claims in Xinjiang can be traced back to his "work". He's a fundamentalist Christian bigot, is a fellow at the "Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation" and claims to have been sent on a mission by God himself to destroy the Communist Party of China. His "work" has been thoroughly debunked many times over.[6]
Frankly, the narrative is bullshit. The Muslim world that has suffered massively at the hands of US imperialism can see right through it and votes accordingly. China has never invaded or bombed any Muslim country. The US has no credibility in the Muslim world.
Check out XY Tech who build and distribute modified ThinkPads. Xue Yao, the person behind it, intends to build a motherboard that will fit into an X220 case soon, possibly this year.
I bought an "X2100" (a ThinkPad X200 with a 10th-gen Intel CPU) from him in 2020 and it's been fantastic.
China is actually interested in helping people in Afghanistan. They sent aid[1] during the winter crisis and they have called for the return of the assets of the Afghan people that have been stolen by the United States[2].
It's a completely fair question to ask what is the Chinese justification.
I found this documentary[1] by CGTN about the recent history of extremism and terrorist attacks in Xinjiang to be useful in outlining some of the context for this.
These terrorist attacks were a real problem and have resulted in the deaths of over 1000 civilians (including Uyghurs). China's argument is basically their re-education "camps" are an attempt to address the underlying causes of this, which is basically economic under-development, lack of education and job opportunities. So China basically identified the people who were involved in these groups and susceptible to radicalisation by them, and set up these schools for them which would teach them skills, including Mandarin, that would help find decent jobs that could provide for them and their families, which eliminates the underlying material basis of the support from some parts of the population that the terrorists may have had.
Having said that, there is still a huge discrepancy in what China says it's doing and what the west claims it's doing. Western sources claim that these are actually "concentration camps" and that there are as many as one or even two million Uyghurs interred there. These allegations are dubious for a number of reasons, but that's a topic for a different post.
Like I said, your question is the right question: what is the Chinese justification for this? And I think it's fair to say their answer is at least plausible on the surface of things and internally consistent. But it leads us to another question: if the claims of western sources of one million plus Uyghurs in "concentration camps" are true, then how does the west explain China's motive for that? China isn't stupid. Why would it put 10% of the population of an entire province in a concentration camp? Are they just that cartoonishly evil? It doesn't really add up to me.
At end of the day repressing restive frontier minority that accounts for less than 1% of population for domestic security (especially terrorism) is the "correct" political decision for CCP. There isn't any feasible calculus for not taming XJ (or Tibet or HK or TW). The real answer is they were left alone for too long due difficult access (whether by geography or politics), granted privileges in hopes they would not stir up trouble. That didn't work, and now wealthier PRC can build high speed rail into their provinces to forcefully integrate. Something every other Chinese province was subject to post 50s. In short, it's simply their turn.
Even the most pessimistic Zenz estimates of XJ internment at 1/12 of population is roughly lifetime incarceration level of US blacks. And the hit job articles on XJ vocational/reeducational "slave" labour programs still have "inmates" paid dramatically better than US prison labour in absolute terms and substantially better in regional terms. Exceeding ~40% of 600M Han Chinese subsisting on informal wage economy. Han Chinese would lose their shit if they find out the amount of subsidies going into XJ securitization and sinicization. If they the the choice between spending trillions to "tame the savage" in XJ versus 12M bullets for an actual genocide, the amount that would pick the latter would be disturbing.
US tried to nation build and spread western values in Afghanistan - PRC is nation building in XJ and spreading PRC values. Just with less bombs and more infrastructure.
Zenz is literally _the_ source of anti-Chinese propaganda. He's the main person behind "Chinese Tribunal", which... well, a private NGO, operating without any legal basis or oversight, calling themselves a "tribunal", think what you will.
I am not saying that it is the case, but let's assume for a moment that China is "re-educating" the Uyghurs to help them "find decent jobs that could provide for them and their families" and so on. Do you think it is acceptable to force someone to undergo "re-education" against their will?
The whole country is structured so that verification by foreigners is next to impossible:
Foreign journalists cannot freely report from within the country. If the government does not like your reporting, you are forced to leave the country.
Information controls ensure that communication with China & the western world is controlled and subject to scrutiny. People in China cannot legally access most foreign news, or communicate with foreigners on social media. You cannot even access hackernews legally in China!
This creates an environment where it's extremely hard to actually vet any information about China, as there is such a strong communications barrier. Both for professional journalists and regular civilians. There is this immense culture of secrecy and information control that does not exist on the same scale anywhere else in the world.
Unsurprisingly this creates a situation where people distrust the words of the Chinese government. They have created this apparatus that prevents foreigners from verifying Chinese information.
It is widely known that when the new coronavirus emerged in December 2019, the Chinese government downplayed the pandemic threat for several critical weeks. Less commonly known is those same authorities deliberately sacrificed health workers to maintain their lies.
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) calculated cover-up enabled the coronavirus to go global. By silencing doctors, Beijing not only fueled this pandemic but also compromised the world’s ability to spot the next one.
Blaming China is pointless: Western countries had control of their borders and did not act.
Taiwan started its lockdown procedures on people entering from China on December 31st, 2019.
Taiwan knew what was happening, and all governments should have had similar knowledge - they certainly should not have been waiting for China to tell WHO or whatever other lame argument that article makes.
I am sick of the same boring cliché arguments being trotted out about how we think China should act: how we act is what matters.
I agree that the fault also lies with other countries for letting the virus in so easily. But the grandparent poster asked for an example where the CCP lied and I obliged.
The full story there is the local authorities lied initially, then the feds found out and fired them while slamming the red alert button. Mayor of Wuhan and Governor of Hubei sacked in the aftermath. This all happened MONTHS before the virus hit the US.
January 20th, 2020: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
February 11th, 2020: “In our country, we only have, basically, 12 cases and most of those people are recovering and some cases fully recovered. So it’s actually less.”
February 26th, 2020: “When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
March 10th, 2020: “This was unexpected. … And it hit the world. And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
True, those were rather blatant lies, but also obvious lies. In the US, at least the lies of the government are easily exposed. In China, that's a lot harder.
> In review, Foreign Policy covers news related to foreign affairs with minimal bias. Headlines are generally free from loaded words, though at times moderate such as this: Bernie Sanders Still Doesn’t Pass the Commander-in-Chief Test (anti-progressive) and this Trump Doesn’t Want to Play Peacemaker (anti-Trump). Both articles use proper sourcing. In general, Foreign Policy leans slightly right in their news coverage but balanced in reporting and well-sourced.
This is hilarious. I wonder if there's a political group that benefits from attacking both these positions.
yeah, the old clintonites, the sinemas, maybe you can toss mitt romney in there. they're the most powerful political bloc currently, if you're new to politics
Basically the entire national security mainstream.
If you consider "america should be the number one power and do whatever it takes to stay that way" to be an unbiased and neutral statement, then sure, Foreign Policy is unbiased.
I wouldn't go to them for a viewpoint inclusive of American rivals, though.
ok, so is it correct that you're suggesting that mediabiasfactcheck is giving a better rating to FP in order to benefit those groups? Sorry if i'm seeming indirect, but i'm still trying to piece together your actual point
> Writing my own docx parser? Sure, that will be one mythical man century of work.
I'm not sure that's actually a great example. I had a project a while ago where I needed to extract certain information from Word and Excel files, and it was less work to just write my own parser (it's just XML in a ZIP file) that got exactly the information I needed than to figure out all the complexity of using a full-blown docx/xlsx parser. It ended up being 100 lines of Haskell, and half of that was imports.
There is, but if your problem requires just the former, it's faster and better to build it yourself than to pull in a heavy third-party dependency (of which you'll use 1% anyway).
Yes but if it requires the latter you end up with an uncontrollable mess of regular expressions which can accidentally parse the language needed to summon the great elder ones.
The media wiki parser is a perfect example of what can go wrong with simple solutions.
Okay, I think we can all agree this guy is an asshole, and surely doesn't represent the views of most techies in San Francisco, right?
Obviously it's fucked that so many people are homeless in San Francisco. Everybody blames us (techies with loads of money) for the homeless problem because we gentrifying the shit out of the place with all our money. And then this guy comes out and says this shit, and that only reinforces the narrative that we're the problem. And that's shit for us.
But why don't we do something about it? We don't want to be seen as the cause of the homeless problem, and surely we don't want assholes like this speaking for us. But people are right that we are rich compares to most people. Why not use this as an opportunity to show people that we can be part of the solution? Being rich doesn't have to make us evil, and anyway what's the point of being rich if we can't use our wealth to help the people who need it?
And it's not just our wealth: what about our skills? Take Homes Not Jails, for example. They're one organisation off the top of my head that does work that directly houses homeless people. They're renowned by squatters all over the world for the work they do to get homes for homeless people in San Francisco. But I just checked, and it looks like their website (http://homesnotjailssf.org/) is down? Surely one of us techies could get in contact with them and offer to help fix their website, or even just pay their hosting costs and domain name renewal for a few years? I've been involved in organisations like that and that kind of stuff can be a real hassle.
I'm sure there are countless grassroots organisations like this that are already working to help homeless people that probably don't even have proper websites and shit, that desperately need money. Fuck this guy, it's not worth wasting our time arguing over his stupid words. Let's show people that he doesn't represent us with our actions!
Have you ever heard the term "social primate"? If not, or if you do not accept that human beings belong into that category, there is not much of a discussion to be had.
> What's your basis for saying this? Do you have any way of verifying this claim?
A leader always emerges.
If you know of a counter-example, I'd love to hear it. But even in the smallest experiments I've run (group of friends trying to agree on where to have dinner), a leader always emerges and then consensus is reached.
