7 ms·

Have you? Find it very hard to believe that there's such a disproportionate number of criminals in the US. China is locking up huge numbers of Muslims simply f

by A2017U1 7y ago

Have you? Find it very hard to believe that there's such a disproportionate number of criminals in the US. China is locking up huge numbers of Muslims simply for having a religion and it still comes no where near the number of Americans incarcerated today without even having faced trial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

smsm42 7y ago
Three words: war. on. drugs.
cronix 7y ago
Which would you rather be in? A US prison with basic rights, healthcare, etc, or a Chinese labor/reeducation camp, or Soviet era Gulag? The systems are incomparable, whether or not the numbers are the comparable, which is what I was talking about. Yes, I've read the Gulag Archipeligo and watched several Solzhenitsyn interviews, and had relatives suffer through that era. Not close to the same thing. At all.
- A2017U1 7y ago
  This is just silly. I prefer to be in none, like a free human being treated with some basic rights. You won't find that in the US or China. As much as it hurts some people's sensibilities think that's a fair thing to say. I'd be terrified to be a black person in many places in the United States. Hilariously think China is actually more free for the average human. Spent fair amount of time in both and as an outsider is my honest opinion. Where is best to be a political dissident is obviously a very different story. If certain people want to repeat ad nauseum their respective propaganda media talking points fine. But the world is watching. History will judge you no matter how salty you get on the internet. Survivorship bias is a very real phenomenon, does anyone disagree that the United States has both the most people incarcerated along with per-capita rates of prisoners? The numbers are right there, are Americans just bad people in general and deserve to be locked up en masse? Don't think that's the case, would love to see anyone defend the status quo as it exists.
  - waste_monk 7y ago
    >Hilariously think China is actually more free for the average human Until you're critical of the party leadership, or have forbidden religious beliefs, and then you get whisked away to a concentration camp (if you're lucky!) or get surgically parted out for organ transplants, often without anaesthetic. The US has plenty of problems, but to say China is more free is a very distasteful and not particularly funny joke.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - A2017U1 7y ago
      Is that not right there in my comment? Y'all need to take a serious fucking step back and evaluate the words said here. I love America and everyone in it. People stateside are incredibly nice people on the whole and sometimes you need a rude foreigner to say some blunt stuff for the sake of honesty. Get a grip on these criticisms mate. I stand by everything said above. It's fucking true and challenge you to prove otherwise. I wouldn't care nor be commenting if I didn't like you guys, leave the nationalism at the door please. China is far more free. 100% stand by that statement. Have you tried living there lately? Its astounding how many people are willfully ignoring what's happening in the biggest country on Earth for the sake of some sort of nationalist pride matter. Do so at your peril. Honestly. The media is straight up lying to you about what's happening there and yet people lap it up.
      - Frondo 7y ago
        I spent a bit of time living in one of the post-Soviet central asian states, and after a while there this was a conclusion I came to, too. Living in a dictatorship, but feeling more personal freedom than I ever had in the US. On a day-to-day basis, there's significantly more curtailment of personal freedom in the US than there was in one of the stans. The one thing I wouldn't feel safe doing there? Openly speaking against the government. Here, however, if I were part of a movement that was gaining any strength or public good will against the political and capitalist powers that run the US, I'd still be afraid for my life. Like how nearly every leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, MO, has been killed over the last few years. That's not a coincidence, not a random series of killings.
- ilyich 7y ago
  Did you know that Solzhenitsyn was successfully treated from cancer by evil communist doctors while being in Gulag that did not have any healthcare? Did you also know that while being in Gulag Solzhenitsyn was a "stukach" who reported of his fellow prisoners to the camp's authorities (he writes about it himself in one of his novels)?
tasubotadas 7y ago
Have you? [1] "The emergent consensus among scholars who utilize official archival data is that of the 18 million who were sent to the Gulag from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million perished there or as a result of their detention." yeah... prisons in the US are definitely worse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
- kragen 7y ago
  You seem to be saying that some 91% of GULAG prisoners survived their imprisonment, with some 67000 deaths per year on average; while GULAG population varied greatly during this time, if we assume an average of 1 million prisoners, we will not be far wrong. (The peak was officially 2.7 million, near the end of that period, slightly more than the current US incarcerated population.) This works out to a death rate of some 6700 deaths per 100'000 people per year, very roughly; this is clearly worse than the US prison system's mortality rate of 264 deaths per 100'000 people per year, by a factor of 20 or 30. (This figure does not include people who died as a result of their detention, but it seems safe to say that the number would be lower even if they were included.) But many, perhaps most, of those deaths were during the German invasion, which killed about 25 million of the 169 million subjects of the USSR (most of them not in GULAG). It remains to be seen how well the US cares for the populations of its prisons and concentration camps if it suffers an invasion that kills an eighth of its population. Hopefully such an event will remain safely in the realm of speculation.

smsm42 7y ago

Three words: war. on. drugs.

cronix 7y ago

Which would you rather be in? A US prison with basic rights, healthcare, etc, or a Chinese labor/reeducation camp, or Soviet era Gulag? The systems are incomparable, whether or not the numbers are the comparable, which is what I was talking about. Yes, I've read the Gulag Archipeligo and watched several Solzhenitsyn interviews, and had relatives suffer through that era. Not close to the same thing. At all.

A2017U1 7y ago
This is just silly. I prefer to be in none, like a free human being treated with some basic rights. You won't find that in the US or China. As much as it hurts some people's sensibilities think that's a fair thing to say. I'd be terrified to be a black person in many places in the United States. Hilariously think China is actually more free for the average human. Spent fair amount of time in both and as an outsider is my honest opinion. Where is best to be a political dissident is obviously a very different story. If certain people want to repeat ad nauseum their respective propaganda media talking points fine. But the world is watching. History will judge you no matter how salty you get on the internet. Survivorship bias is a very real phenomenon, does anyone disagree that the United States has both the most people incarcerated along with per-capita rates of prisoners? The numbers are right there, are Americans just bad people in general and deserve to be locked up en masse? Don't think that's the case, would love to see anyone defend the status quo as it exists.
- waste_monk 7y ago
  >Hilariously think China is actually more free for the average human Until you're critical of the party leadership, or have forbidden religious beliefs, and then you get whisked away to a concentration camp (if you're lucky!) or get surgically parted out for organ transplants, often without anaesthetic. The US has plenty of problems, but to say China is more free is a very distasteful and not particularly funny joke.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - A2017U1 7y ago
    Is that not right there in my comment? Y'all need to take a serious fucking step back and evaluate the words said here. I love America and everyone in it. People stateside are incredibly nice people on the whole and sometimes you need a rude foreigner to say some blunt stuff for the sake of honesty. Get a grip on these criticisms mate. I stand by everything said above. It's fucking true and challenge you to prove otherwise. I wouldn't care nor be commenting if I didn't like you guys, leave the nationalism at the door please. China is far more free. 100% stand by that statement. Have you tried living there lately? Its astounding how many people are willfully ignoring what's happening in the biggest country on Earth for the sake of some sort of nationalist pride matter. Do so at your peril. Honestly. The media is straight up lying to you about what's happening there and yet people lap it up.
    - Frondo 7y ago
      I spent a bit of time living in one of the post-Soviet central asian states, and after a while there this was a conclusion I came to, too. Living in a dictatorship, but feeling more personal freedom than I ever had in the US. On a day-to-day basis, there's significantly more curtailment of personal freedom in the US than there was in one of the stans. The one thing I wouldn't feel safe doing there? Openly speaking against the government. Here, however, if I were part of a movement that was gaining any strength or public good will against the political and capitalist powers that run the US, I'd still be afraid for my life. Like how nearly every leader of the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, MO, has been killed over the last few years. That's not a coincidence, not a random series of killings.
ilyich 7y ago
Did you know that Solzhenitsyn was successfully treated from cancer by evil communist doctors while being in Gulag that did not have any healthcare? Did you also know that while being in Gulag Solzhenitsyn was a "stukach" who reported of his fellow prisoners to the camp's authorities (he writes about it himself in one of his novels)?

tasubotadas 7y ago

Have you? [1] "The emergent consensus among scholars who utilize official archival data is that of the 18 million who were sent to the Gulag from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million perished there or as a result of their detention." yeah... prisons in the US are definitely worse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

kragen 7y ago
You seem to be saying that some 91% of GULAG prisoners survived their imprisonment, with some 67000 deaths per year on average; while GULAG population varied greatly during this time, if we assume an average of 1 million prisoners, we will not be far wrong. (The peak was officially 2.7 million, near the end of that period, slightly more than the current US incarcerated population.) This works out to a death rate of some 6700 deaths per 100'000 people per year, very roughly; this is clearly worse than the US prison system's mortality rate of 264 deaths per 100'000 people per year, by a factor of 20 or 30. (This figure does not include people who died as a result of their detention, but it seems safe to say that the number would be lower even if they were included.) But many, perhaps most, of those deaths were during the German invasion, which killed about 25 million of the 169 million subjects of the USSR (most of them not in GULAG). It remains to be seen how well the US cares for the populations of its prisons and concentration camps if it suffers an invasion that kills an eighth of its population. Hopefully such an event will remain safely in the realm of speculation.