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Sometimes we forget that getting disappeared in china is not just a meme. Police will show up to arrest you just for posting comments online: https://www.youtu

Sometimes we forget that getting disappeared in china is not just a meme. Police will show up to arrest you just for posting comments online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCOAbkTs_a4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCOAbkTs_a4

dekhn 7y ago
i certainly don't forget. I've been watching Russia and China from a very safe position of privilege in the US for many years. The last time I really worried was when I used to post dumb stuff on usenet in college, but in retrospect, I was never really at risk.
- StaticRedux 7y ago
  It's not privilege. It's a right the country has fought and died for for over 200 years. It's a principle the country was founded on. "Privilege" has lost all meaning in today's world. It's just a word to throw around to slow how "woke" you are. Calling our rights "privilege" is throwing out the struggle and sacrifice of everyone that fought for those rights. You may have been Lucky to have been born in the US, but not Privileged
  - dekhn 7y ago
    I understand where you're coming from and I thought twice about using that word. I certainly appreciate the work done to give me freedoms, and I agree luck had a big part of it. But the reality is that as a white middle class male in the US, I do have the privilege to say things and do things in public that people who aren't white or middle class can't. The freedoms we have aren't equally distributed due to systemic racism and sexism. I'm pretty anti-woke, actually, I hate the term.
    - Konnstann 7y ago
      Can you give me an example of something a non-white, non-middle class person can't say or do in public? Maybe it's my limited world-view, but I can't think of anything specific.
      - dekhn 7y ago
        Sure, if you (10 years ago) smoked a joint on the street, and you were black, you carried a far far higher risk of being imprisoned.
        Konnstann 7y ago
        Where's the parallel between doing something illegal (10 years ago) and being able to comment on the political climate without fearing for your life/livelihood?
        cblades 7y ago
        The unequal application of the law based on race. Equal treatment under the law is just as much a fundamental right as freedom of expression is and, arguably, equal treatment prevents the subtle and slow erosion of other rights.
        munk-a 7y ago
        The fact that African Americans are the most likely people by race to be stripped of their right to representation and political expression by a wide margin. To clarify - this is via them losing access to representation by being deemed a felon, and a lot more African Americans are sentenced with drug possession or intent to distribute than any other racial group proportionally.
        laheyBro 7y ago
        lol What an awful example.
      - notduncansmith 7y ago
        Depending on where you are, simply leaving the house. Black people are more likely to be "randomly" stopped, more likely to be searched at a stop, and more likely to be arrested at a stop. Other statistics highlight similar issues faced by other minorities. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/black-people-more-likely-be-stopped-cops-study-finds-n616546 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/black-people-more...
    - eli_gottlieb 7y ago
      Yes, but there's still a pretty hard distinction between material privileges and actual constitutional rights. For instance, we don't criticize racialized police brutality because it's some maldistribution of police attention, but because it violates rights that are supposed to be inviolate.
    - klagermkii 7y ago
      I think the main issue is that the choice of the words "privilege" or "right", when used by enough people, has the power to set societal expectations. Why should a privilege ever be extended to more people, the people who have them should just consider themselves lucky they aren't taken away. And I think there are plenty of things that are "privileges", but it's based on the idea that it is impossible to extend it to everyone. Being admitted to a top school is impossible to extend to everyone by the definition of a top school. Being believed in a court of law when it's just your word over someone else's, but being more trusted because you belong to a particular group is a privilege. Being let off with a warning at a traffic stop because you have the right face is a privilege. Living in the "good" part of town is a privilege. Surviving a traffic stop without being shot by the cop should not be called a privilege. Being able to receive a competent education should not be called a privilege. These are things that can be extended to everyone and the words should reflect it, so that it's clear which things we should be fighting for, vs the things that are impossible for everyone to have.
      - akiselev 7y ago
        Wouldn't the privilege be in the ability to exercise rights without paying a price like so many groups have had to in our history? This all sounds like a confusing semantics game.
        klagermkii 7y ago
        Every right has been resisted at some point. It doesn't drift in and out of privilege status depending on how must resistance is being applied at any one moment. A right gains its power from people's belief that it should be universally granted, and that they will stick up for others when that right gets breached. Once a thing gets redefined as a privilege there is no expectation for people to stand up for other privilege.
        beerandt 7y ago
        A privilege is something granted/gifted to fewer than everyone, while not harming those that are excluded. The left has tried to redefine harm to include "unequal result or outcome," which makes the entire principle meaningless.
    - merpnderp 7y ago
      We're definitely in the crazy years. A conversation about a Chinese crackdown on freedom, a country that literally throws minorities in jail for being minorities, devolves into a squabble over people in the US not feeling entitled to express their opinions, even though the letter of the law, every single politician, billions in private funding amongst corporations, banks and non-profits, does everything possible to ensure people feel entitled to express their opinion.
  - grievances 7y ago
    Many brave people have fought and died for their countries and rights. Its easy to forget that minorities and “unlucky” people fight too; knowing that you’re safe expressing your points of view is something that many have earned, not all have received. That very much sounds like privilege to me.
    - gonational 7y ago
      We fight to make this country what it is so that we can all stand together as one people, not so we can whine like little babies about who’s more privileged or marginalized than everyone else.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - danharaj 7y ago
        you specifically didn't fight shit, buddy
      - cblades 7y ago
        Acknowledging that rights are more readily and equally given to some people than others is not whining.
      - danso 7y ago
        Which marginalized group, when fighting "to make this country what it is", hasn't been opposed and mocked (e.g. "whiny little babies) by the status quo at the time of their fight?
    - joelx 7y ago
      We need to avoid getting lost in minor internal debates. I agree some classes of people in America have had more difficulty exercising their rights, but they always had those rights and the courts enforced them usually. What we are talking about with China and Russia is totalitarian dictatorships that come and take you from your home and beat you and murder you for making a comment on the internet they didn't like or even sharing a Winnie the Poo meme. We need to all band together to fight this or we will lose all of our privileges and rights.
  - azangru 7y ago
    > Calling our rights "privilege" is throwing out the struggle and sacrifice of everyone that fought for those rights. But isn't it the very definition of privilege, when through no effort of your own you get to enjoy the benefits for which others have "fought", "struggled", and "sacrificed"? How is it different from the privilege of being born into a rich (or just functional) family? > You may have been Lucky to have been born in the US, but not Privileged It looks like the word "privileged", through all these fights on social media, has got a bad rep :-) How is being privileged different than being lucky?
    - IllogicalLogic 7y ago
      > Calling our rights "privilege" is throwing out the struggle and sacrifice of everyone that fought for those rights. Next South Park should do an episode that shows how greedy western leaders running opium/heroin for the better part of now two centuries, turned the most populous country into a paranoid dictatorial hellhole for the Chinese people. US introspection would be too on the nose? You ever ask yourself what percentage of the heroin/opium supply would be pulled off the market if China could extradite people from HK? More than 50%... and who gets hurt by that?
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      > But isn't it the very definition of privilege, when through no effort of your own you get to enjoy the benefits for which others have "fought", "struggled", and "sacrificed"? How is it different from the privilege of being born into a rich (or just functional) family? The reason this framing is despicable is that rights and privileges are not the same. Being able to afford a Lexus is a privilege. Not everyone has it and that's OK. Having access to clean water is a right. Not everyone has it and that's not OK. Free speech is a right. Everyone should have it even if some people currently don't.
      - tdb7893 7y ago
        I think that this distinction isn't widely understood as the definition of privilege. If you look it up in a dictionary privileges you'll see a lot of definitions where privileges are defined as a special case of rights so they are most definitely not mutually exclusive https://www.dictionary.com/browse/privilege https://www.dictionary.com/browse/privilege
  - davidw 7y ago
    > "Privilege" has lost all meaning in today's world. It's just a word to throw around to slow how "woke" you are. It gets thrown around a lot, but it absolutely has a meaning. Ever know anyone who says that "they ignore politics"? In many cases, those people come from a place that they can do that because it doesn't affect them that much, and certainly not as much as other people. For instance: today the supreme court in the US is deciding whether it's ok to fire people for merely being gay. To not have to worry about that is 'privilege'.
corodra 7y ago
Well, lets not forget their detention camps for ethnic minorities they don't like: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/23/china-footage-reveals-hundreds-of-blindfolded-and-shackled-prisoners-uighur https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/23/china-footage-... I mean at this rate, I seriously think in a decade or two, we're going to find a Holocaust level event has been going on in China that's going to make the Nazis look like amateurs. But instead, we're focused on stupid left/right political differences and figuring out whether gender binary bathrooms cause anxiety.
- elliekelly 7y ago
  I don’t think it’s even a find out a decade or two from now thing. Despite our best effort to shield our eyes from the evidence we can say with reasonable certainty that China is currently committing all of the same atrocities as the Nazis.
  - corodra 7y ago
    My speculation, the problem is the huge dependency the USA has on Chinese manufacturing and now on investments (Hollywood, Silicon Valley, etc). Like, as much as these tariffs are going to hurt us in the short term, I'm not fully against them. It's just like an business, you cannot have a large portion of your income come from one client or rely on just one supplier. You become far too dependent on them and are not willing to cross them, even if their demands don't align with you or really isn't advantageous for you in the long term. But you'll always move that goal post a little for short term happiness until you did it so much, you realize your goal post is in a whole different country. I'd personally like to see far more diversification in USA imports and exports. A 21.5% dependency on Chinese imports... when I did freelance years ago I panicked over the fact I had a customer that made up 12% of my yearly income. I quickly did a reach out to obtain new customers so I could drop that to roughly 6%. While I understand geopolitics is a different ball game... it's really, really dangerous to have a 20%+ reliance on a supplier. Being shut off that easy on that much of goods and materials, that easily, is pretty scary.
  - ddrdrck_ 7y ago
    Brainwashing millions of people is a terrible thing to do, but I don't believe it is on the same level of atrocity than genocide and mass murdering. Nazis did not try to "assimilate" Jews by forcing them to reject their religion and traditions, and by forcing weddings between aryan and jews (could you imagine that ?).
dabei 7y ago
Thought Police caught in action.
a0zU 7y ago
Nobody's forgotten that it isn't a meme.
jimclegg 7y ago
Looks similar to what happens in the UK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF_rvhsGjBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF_rvhsGjBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Xr4nfKsWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Xr4nfKsWk Wonder what she typed.
- jdm2212 7y ago
  One is a country with rule of law enforcing its laws. The other is an autocracy enforcing the whims of the current ruler.
  - threwawasy1228 7y ago
    This is such a ridiculous framing, so in your opinion by this logic, if Xi was democratically elected by a free and fair election, and then proceeded to ban memes via a legislative branch that would be perfectly fine? I think what the UK is doing is equally shameful. This kind of "its ok when the west does it" type of narrative is why when I talk to Chinese students about censorship issues they can consistently point to Western censorship of topics with smugness. "Oh but those things we ban here are anti-PC, so we are offended by them", sounds eerily similar to, "Oh but those things we ban here are anti-CCP, so we are offended by them".
    - jdm2212 7y ago
      There are two separate issues with China banning memes: 1. it's symptomatic of Xi's government being able to do anything it wants to (including killing people to harvest their organs) without any checks and balances 2. it violates our ideal of freedom of speech One of those is a far more serious problem than the other. A democratic society can fix laws that don't live up to its ideals. A lawless, autocratic society cannot.
      - jimclegg 7y ago
        >A democratic society can fix laws that don't live up to its ideals. A lawless, autocratic society cannot. China has mechanisms to change laws but they have to be routed through the proper channels. From what I understand, individuals can complain all they want, as long as they don't organize outside of these designated channels. This definitely pisses off the % of western governments that use "grassroots" movements as an attack vector to undermine unfavorable foreign governments.
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
This is true of all countries. Try posting threats about federal employees and you will also get arrested.
- goatlover 7y ago
  Threatening someone's life is a bit different from a cartoon, and it should get anyone arrested in any country, with some consideration of context, of course.
  - greedo 7y ago
    I was under the understanding that words generally don't rise to the legal definition of assault (at least in the US).
    - munmaek 7y ago
      "words" doesn't mean anything. Making a death threat isn't just "words". [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/threats-of-violence-against-individuals https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/t...
munk-a 7y ago
And so taking a stand like this is a privilege for those with status - a dude working in a newspaper stand wouldn't get away with this - but Trey Stone & Matt Parker have survived the worst the Scientologists could throw at them... they'll weather this one or, if China decides to throw pressure at ComedyCentral or whoever their corporate overloads are, then they can be ready to greet the Streisand effect. I applaud them for doing this even though it'll mean nothing but trouble for them, any positive PR they're getting this will be drowned out by pressures coming out of China and the loss of a giant market - still, good on ya mates.
- sgt101 7y ago
  I expect that they need their self respect a lot more than they need the Chinese market. What will they do with another $10m each? or $100m... they don't strike me as G5 and coke fellas... Maybe more divorces?
  - bena 7y ago
    They have been known to drop acid from time to time.
    - ev0lv 7y ago
      That's not an expensive hobby
      - KnMn 7y ago
        Depends how much acid you do
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
stebann 7y ago
Oh and in Argentina Pro-US-"Freedom" Party make disappear protesters or poor people claiming for their rights, and I don't see that in CNN or in Twitter. If you post something in Twitter against the actual administration they ban you from using some services or even finding a job.

dekhn 7y ago

i certainly don't forget. I've been watching Russia and China from a very safe position of privilege in the US for many years. The last time I really worried was when I used to post dumb stuff on usenet in college, but in retrospect, I was never really at risk.

StaticRedux 7y ago
It's not privilege. It's a right the country has fought and died for for over 200 years. It's a principle the country was founded on. "Privilege" has lost all meaning in today's world. It's just a word to throw around to slow how "woke" you are. Calling our rights "privilege" is throwing out the struggle and sacrifice of everyone that fought for those rights. You may have been Lucky to have been born in the US, but not Privileged
- dekhn 7y ago
  I understand where you're coming from and I thought twice about using that word. I certainly appreciate the work done to give me freedoms, and I agree luck had a big part of it. But the reality is that as a white middle class male in the US, I do have the privilege to say things and do things in public that people who aren't white or middle class can't. The freedoms we have aren't equally distributed due to systemic racism and sexism. I'm pretty anti-woke, actually, I hate the term.
  - Konnstann 7y ago
    Can you give me an example of something a non-white, non-middle class person can't say or do in public? Maybe it's my limited world-view, but I can't think of anything specific.
    - dekhn 7y ago
      Sure, if you (10 years ago) smoked a joint on the street, and you were black, you carried a far far higher risk of being imprisoned.
      - Konnstann 7y ago
        Where's the parallel between doing something illegal (10 years ago) and being able to comment on the political climate without fearing for your life/livelihood?
        cblades 7y ago
        The unequal application of the law based on race. Equal treatment under the law is just as much a fundamental right as freedom of expression is and, arguably, equal treatment prevents the subtle and slow erosion of other rights.
        munk-a 7y ago
        The fact that African Americans are the most likely people by race to be stripped of their right to representation and political expression by a wide margin. To clarify - this is via them losing access to representation by being deemed a felon, and a lot more African Americans are sentenced with drug possession or intent to distribute than any other racial group proportionally.
      - laheyBro 7y ago
        lol What an awful example.
    - notduncansmith 7y ago
      Depending on where you are, simply leaving the house. Black people are more likely to be "randomly" stopped, more likely to be searched at a stop, and more likely to be arrested at a stop. Other statistics highlight similar issues faced by other minorities. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/black-people-more-likely-be-stopped-cops-study-finds-n616546 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/black-people-more...
  - eli_gottlieb 7y ago
    Yes, but there's still a pretty hard distinction between material privileges and actual constitutional rights. For instance, we don't criticize racialized police brutality because it's some maldistribution of police attention, but because it violates rights that are supposed to be inviolate.
  - klagermkii 7y ago
    I think the main issue is that the choice of the words "privilege" or "right", when used by enough people, has the power to set societal expectations. Why should a privilege ever be extended to more people, the people who have them should just consider themselves lucky they aren't taken away. And I think there are plenty of things that are "privileges", but it's based on the idea that it is impossible to extend it to everyone. Being admitted to a top school is impossible to extend to everyone by the definition of a top school. Being believed in a court of law when it's just your word over someone else's, but being more trusted because you belong to a particular group is a privilege. Being let off with a warning at a traffic stop because you have the right face is a privilege. Living in the "good" part of town is a privilege. Surviving a traffic stop without being shot by the cop should not be called a privilege. Being able to receive a competent education should not be called a privilege. These are things that can be extended to everyone and the words should reflect it, so that it's clear which things we should be fighting for, vs the things that are impossible for everyone to have.
    - akiselev 7y ago
      Wouldn't the privilege be in the ability to exercise rights without paying a price like so many groups have had to in our history? This all sounds like a confusing semantics game.
      - klagermkii 7y ago
        Every right has been resisted at some point. It doesn't drift in and out of privilege status depending on how must resistance is being applied at any one moment. A right gains its power from people's belief that it should be universally granted, and that they will stick up for others when that right gets breached. Once a thing gets redefined as a privilege there is no expectation for people to stand up for other privilege.
        beerandt 7y ago
        A privilege is something granted/gifted to fewer than everyone, while not harming those that are excluded. The left has tried to redefine harm to include "unequal result or outcome," which makes the entire principle meaningless.
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    We're definitely in the crazy years. A conversation about a Chinese crackdown on freedom, a country that literally throws minorities in jail for being minorities, devolves into a squabble over people in the US not feeling entitled to express their opinions, even though the letter of the law, every single politician, billions in private funding amongst corporations, banks and non-profits, does everything possible to ensure people feel entitled to express their opinion.
- grievances 7y ago
  Many brave people have fought and died for their countries and rights. Its easy to forget that minorities and “unlucky” people fight too; knowing that you’re safe expressing your points of view is something that many have earned, not all have received. That very much sounds like privilege to me.
  - gonational 7y ago
    We fight to make this country what it is so that we can all stand together as one people, not so we can whine like little babies about who’s more privileged or marginalized than everyone else.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - danharaj 7y ago
      you specifically didn't fight shit, buddy
    - cblades 7y ago
      Acknowledging that rights are more readily and equally given to some people than others is not whining.
    - danso 7y ago
      Which marginalized group, when fighting "to make this country what it is", hasn't been opposed and mocked (e.g. "whiny little babies) by the status quo at the time of their fight?
  - joelx 7y ago
    We need to avoid getting lost in minor internal debates. I agree some classes of people in America have had more difficulty exercising their rights, but they always had those rights and the courts enforced them usually. What we are talking about with China and Russia is totalitarian dictatorships that come and take you from your home and beat you and murder you for making a comment on the internet they didn't like or even sharing a Winnie the Poo meme. We need to all band together to fight this or we will lose all of our privileges and rights.
- azangru 7y ago
  > Calling our rights "privilege" is throwing out the struggle and sacrifice of everyone that fought for those rights. But isn't it the very definition of privilege, when through no effort of your own you get to enjoy the benefits for which others have "fought", "struggled", and "sacrificed"? How is it different from the privilege of being born into a rich (or just functional) family? > You may have been Lucky to have been born in the US, but not Privileged It looks like the word "privileged", through all these fights on social media, has got a bad rep :-) How is being privileged different than being lucky?
  - IllogicalLogic 7y ago
    > Calling our rights "privilege" is throwing out the struggle and sacrifice of everyone that fought for those rights. Next South Park should do an episode that shows how greedy western leaders running opium/heroin for the better part of now two centuries, turned the most populous country into a paranoid dictatorial hellhole for the Chinese people. US introspection would be too on the nose? You ever ask yourself what percentage of the heroin/opium supply would be pulled off the market if China could extradite people from HK? More than 50%... and who gets hurt by that?
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > But isn't it the very definition of privilege, when through no effort of your own you get to enjoy the benefits for which others have "fought", "struggled", and "sacrificed"? How is it different from the privilege of being born into a rich (or just functional) family? The reason this framing is despicable is that rights and privileges are not the same. Being able to afford a Lexus is a privilege. Not everyone has it and that's OK. Having access to clean water is a right. Not everyone has it and that's not OK. Free speech is a right. Everyone should have it even if some people currently don't.
    - tdb7893 7y ago
      I think that this distinction isn't widely understood as the definition of privilege. If you look it up in a dictionary privileges you'll see a lot of definitions where privileges are defined as a special case of rights so they are most definitely not mutually exclusive https://www.dictionary.com/browse/privilege https://www.dictionary.com/browse/privilege
- davidw 7y ago
  > "Privilege" has lost all meaning in today's world. It's just a word to throw around to slow how "woke" you are. It gets thrown around a lot, but it absolutely has a meaning. Ever know anyone who says that "they ignore politics"? In many cases, those people come from a place that they can do that because it doesn't affect them that much, and certainly not as much as other people. For instance: today the supreme court in the US is deciding whether it's ok to fire people for merely being gay. To not have to worry about that is 'privilege'.

corodra 7y ago

Well, lets not forget their detention camps for ethnic minorities they don't like: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/23/china-footage-reveals-hundreds-of-blindfolded-and-shackled-prisoners-uighur https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/23/china-footage-... I mean at this rate, I seriously think in a decade or two, we're going to find a Holocaust level event has been going on in China that's going to make the Nazis look like amateurs. But instead, we're focused on stupid left/right political differences and figuring out whether gender binary bathrooms cause anxiety.

elliekelly 7y ago
I don’t think it’s even a find out a decade or two from now thing. Despite our best effort to shield our eyes from the evidence we can say with reasonable certainty that China is currently committing all of the same atrocities as the Nazis.
- corodra 7y ago
  My speculation, the problem is the huge dependency the USA has on Chinese manufacturing and now on investments (Hollywood, Silicon Valley, etc). Like, as much as these tariffs are going to hurt us in the short term, I'm not fully against them. It's just like an business, you cannot have a large portion of your income come from one client or rely on just one supplier. You become far too dependent on them and are not willing to cross them, even if their demands don't align with you or really isn't advantageous for you in the long term. But you'll always move that goal post a little for short term happiness until you did it so much, you realize your goal post is in a whole different country. I'd personally like to see far more diversification in USA imports and exports. A 21.5% dependency on Chinese imports... when I did freelance years ago I panicked over the fact I had a customer that made up 12% of my yearly income. I quickly did a reach out to obtain new customers so I could drop that to roughly 6%. While I understand geopolitics is a different ball game... it's really, really dangerous to have a 20%+ reliance on a supplier. Being shut off that easy on that much of goods and materials, that easily, is pretty scary.
- ddrdrck_ 7y ago
  Brainwashing millions of people is a terrible thing to do, but I don't believe it is on the same level of atrocity than genocide and mass murdering. Nazis did not try to "assimilate" Jews by forcing them to reject their religion and traditions, and by forcing weddings between aryan and jews (could you imagine that ?).

dabei 7y ago

Thought Police caught in action.

a0zU 7y ago

Nobody's forgotten that it isn't a meme.

jimclegg 7y ago

Looks similar to what happens in the UK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF_rvhsGjBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF_rvhsGjBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Xr4nfKsWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Xr4nfKsWk Wonder what she typed.

jdm2212 7y ago
One is a country with rule of law enforcing its laws. The other is an autocracy enforcing the whims of the current ruler.
- threwawasy1228 7y ago
  This is such a ridiculous framing, so in your opinion by this logic, if Xi was democratically elected by a free and fair election, and then proceeded to ban memes via a legislative branch that would be perfectly fine? I think what the UK is doing is equally shameful. This kind of "its ok when the west does it" type of narrative is why when I talk to Chinese students about censorship issues they can consistently point to Western censorship of topics with smugness. "Oh but those things we ban here are anti-PC, so we are offended by them", sounds eerily similar to, "Oh but those things we ban here are anti-CCP, so we are offended by them".
  - jdm2212 7y ago
    There are two separate issues with China banning memes: 1. it's symptomatic of Xi's government being able to do anything it wants to (including killing people to harvest their organs) without any checks and balances 2. it violates our ideal of freedom of speech One of those is a far more serious problem than the other. A democratic society can fix laws that don't live up to its ideals. A lawless, autocratic society cannot.
    - jimclegg 7y ago
      >A democratic society can fix laws that don't live up to its ideals. A lawless, autocratic society cannot. China has mechanisms to change laws but they have to be routed through the proper channels. From what I understand, individuals can complain all they want, as long as they don't organize outside of these designated channels. This definitely pisses off the % of western governments that use "grassroots" movements as an attack vector to undermine unfavorable foreign governments.

SomeOldThrow 7y ago

This is true of all countries. Try posting threats about federal employees and you will also get arrested.

goatlover 7y ago
Threatening someone's life is a bit different from a cartoon, and it should get anyone arrested in any country, with some consideration of context, of course.
- greedo 7y ago
  I was under the understanding that words generally don't rise to the legal definition of assault (at least in the US).
  - munmaek 7y ago
    "words" doesn't mean anything. Making a death threat isn't just "words". [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/threats-of-violence-against-individuals https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-1/t...

munk-a 7y ago

And so taking a stand like this is a privilege for those with status - a dude working in a newspaper stand wouldn't get away with this - but Trey Stone & Matt Parker have survived the worst the Scientologists could throw at them... they'll weather this one or, if China decides to throw pressure at ComedyCentral or whoever their corporate overloads are, then they can be ready to greet the Streisand effect. I applaud them for doing this even though it'll mean nothing but trouble for them, any positive PR they're getting this will be drowned out by pressures coming out of China and the loss of a giant market - still, good on ya mates.

sgt101 7y ago
I expect that they need their self respect a lot more than they need the Chinese market. What will they do with another $10m each? or $100m... they don't strike me as G5 and coke fellas... Maybe more divorces?
- bena 7y ago
  They have been known to drop acid from time to time.
  - ev0lv 7y ago
    That's not an expensive hobby
    - KnMn 7y ago
      Depends how much acid you do
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

stebann 7y ago

Oh and in Argentina Pro-US-"Freedom" Party make disappear protesters or poor people claiming for their rights, and I don't see that in CNN or in Twitter. If you post something in Twitter against the actual administration they ban you from using some services or even finding a job.