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Meanwhile, the US military is planning how to deal with so-called "terrorists," many of whom were peasants sold to warlords to collect bounties, to die of old-a

Meanwhile, the US military is planning how to deal with so-called "terrorists," many of whom were peasants sold to warlords to collect bounties, to die of old-age in Gitmo. Also, ripping children from their parents in migrant and asylum-seekers concentration camps. Pot, meet kettle.

tomohawk 7y ago
China: let's lock up these people because of their race or beliefs US: we need to lock these people up because (gitmo) they're terrorists, or (border) they committed a felony. Yep - they're completely equivalent!
- jvanderbot 7y ago
  They'll bury it from HN front-page just by making adversarial comments, and that's the goal.
  - tepidandroid 7y ago
    That's not how the voting system works.
jvanderbot 7y ago
Its a story needing coverage, regardless of relative severity.
kennywinker 7y ago
While I agree both of those things are repulsive - the scales do not match up. There are 3 million people in camps in china, vs about 1000 at the height of gitmo. The border camps come a little closer in raw numbers - somewhere around 0.5 millions people per year, but they are detained for short periods of time. Estimates vary but we’re talking a few days. Scale matters. Don’t try to downplay how completely fucked up these camps are.
- freeflight 7y ago
  > There are 3 million people in camps in china That's what the US government claims, as such I'd take that number with a massive grain of salt because they have a vested interest in making China out as the "worse baddie" just like with surveillance, to make itself look like "the good guys" or at least "not as bad as China guys". > vs about 1000 at the height of gitmo That's quite a dishonest claim because Gitmo is only ONE out of many prisons like that, it ended up getting most of the spotlight due to geographical proximity to the US. But that doesn't mean that Gitmo was, or is, the only place like that, far from it [0]. And that doesn't even account for the thousands of drone victims, all just deemed "combatants" on the virtue of being "able-bodied" and too close to the "splash" [1]. With targets selected trough quite questionable methods [2]. In that context, China can't even compare to the US if China tried to. If you want to evade becoming a victim of these Chinese methods there's a very simple solution: Don't go to China. The same doesn't work if you end up on the crosshairs of the US, as the US is applying these methods on a global basis through the most sophisticated global surveillance network in human history. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_prison_abuse_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_prison_abuse_scandals [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-o... [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-n...
- tepidandroid 7y ago
  You're absolutely right: scale matters. The camps are not really comparable to gitmo. They are perhaps more akin to the U.S prison system were thousands upon thousands of blacks and latinos are held, sometimes in isolation, sometimes for years, without charge. Pretty fucked up.
  - kennywinker 7y ago
    I hear you and agree. Two wrongs don’t make a right, so the fact that the US has done and does do very messed up things does not make what us happening to Chinese muslims any less disturbing.

tomohawk 7y ago

China: let's lock up these people because of their race or beliefs US: we need to lock these people up because (gitmo) they're terrorists, or (border) they committed a felony. Yep - they're completely equivalent!

jvanderbot 7y ago
They'll bury it from HN front-page just by making adversarial comments, and that's the goal.
- tepidandroid 7y ago
  That's not how the voting system works.

jvanderbot 7y ago

Its a story needing coverage, regardless of relative severity.

kennywinker 7y ago

While I agree both of those things are repulsive - the scales do not match up. There are 3 million people in camps in china, vs about 1000 at the height of gitmo. The border camps come a little closer in raw numbers - somewhere around 0.5 millions people per year, but they are detained for short periods of time. Estimates vary but we’re talking a few days. Scale matters. Don’t try to downplay how completely fucked up these camps are.

freeflight 7y ago
> There are 3 million people in camps in china That's what the US government claims, as such I'd take that number with a massive grain of salt because they have a vested interest in making China out as the "worse baddie" just like with surveillance, to make itself look like "the good guys" or at least "not as bad as China guys". > vs about 1000 at the height of gitmo That's quite a dishonest claim because Gitmo is only ONE out of many prisons like that, it ended up getting most of the spotlight due to geographical proximity to the US. But that doesn't mean that Gitmo was, or is, the only place like that, far from it [0]. And that doesn't even account for the thousands of drone victims, all just deemed "combatants" on the virtue of being "able-bodied" and too close to the "splash" [1]. With targets selected trough quite questionable methods [2]. In that context, China can't even compare to the US if China tried to. If you want to evade becoming a victim of these Chinese methods there's a very simple solution: Don't go to China. The same doesn't work if you end up on the crosshairs of the US, as the US is applying these methods on a global basis through the most sophisticated global surveillance network in human history. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_prison_abuse_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_prison_abuse_scandals [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-o... [2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-n...
tepidandroid 7y ago
You're absolutely right: scale matters. The camps are not really comparable to gitmo. They are perhaps more akin to the U.S prison system were thousands upon thousands of blacks and latinos are held, sometimes in isolation, sometimes for years, without charge. Pretty fucked up.
- kennywinker 7y ago
  I hear you and agree. Two wrongs don’t make a right, so the fact that the US has done and does do very messed up things does not make what us happening to Chinese muslims any less disturbing.