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The US condemns the use of forced labor to produce cotton.

kthxbye123 6y ago
So much so that we fought a titanic war with hundreds of thousands if not millions of casualties to end it!
Zhenya 6y ago
What's your point? Slavery was abolished a long time ago in the US. Any pressure to stop enslavement or forced labor of humans should be celebrated.
- branweb 6y ago
  Don't forget forced sterilization: https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c The attitude of someone who reacts to this with "what about the antebellum south!" is beyond my understanding.
  - Aperocky 6y ago
    So China had a one child policy that only applied to Han Chinese, which is the dominant ethnic group of the country. Now they relaxed the requirement to 2 and applied it to everyone. Of course it's now immediately a genocide. The previous one, despite harsher limits and usage of the same methods, is evidently not.
    - branweb 6y ago
      From the linked article: "The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands" Maybe the article is mistaken? It seems like quite a bit more than just applying a one-child policy.
      - Aperocky 6y ago
        > abortion on hundreds of thousands There are 10 million Uyghurs in China. Abortion on hundreds of thousands is quite literally the abortion of the whole population. And hundreds of thousands will be able to attest to this. I have no doubt that China violated a bunch of human rights to enforce the 2 child policy, but calling it a genocide of the Uighur, and then exaggerating or filling in the data by imagination is rich given that it was harsher before and nobody voiced a peep just because it didn't apply to minorities. I don't like what China is doing, it's probably entirely justified to sanction Xinjiang and the camps. Nobody should have their freedom restricted just because they were born different and believe in different things. But at the same time propaganda outlets manufacturing consent is also disgusting.
        branweb 6y ago
        It's not inconceivable that Uighur human rights abuses are being used for political purposes. Certainly a healthy dose of skepticism is not uncalled for. Yet the people who respond to such reports with outraged knee-jerk accusations of hypocrisy against the US because it had slavery in the 1860s or because it has forced labor in some prisons today--I don't understand that.
        Aperocky 6y ago
        I didn't bring up slavery or any US internal issues at all - it's entirely worthless to this discussion. What I'm trying to say, is that truth matters. We can't just level unfounded claims because it's convenient, that's how you devolve into a nationalist flame war, with the military industrial complex giggling in the background.
        branweb 6y ago
        Totally agree that "US internal issues" bring nothing valuable to this discussion. Also agree that truth matters. I don't think that can be said enough these days. My comment about the discussion of slavery/prison inmates was referencing the root post of this thread, and some of the other responses.
- vkou 6y ago
  The thirteenth amendment explicitly permits subjecting prisoners to forced or unpaid labor, and this aspect of it is used extensively in the United States. Slavery didn't end in 1865. It's still with us - just a bit out of sight, out of mind.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Slavery was abolished a long time ago in the US No, it wasn't. Chattel slavery was converted almost overnight into penal slavery, with largely pretextual criminalization of the exact same group previously subject to chattel slavery, a long time ago in the United States.
  - Zhenya 6y ago
    You're right. We can go buy slaves today in the US. /s Yes, criminalization of legal acts to recapture the free labor is abhorrent. However, passing the 13th amendment and then fighting a civil war to enforce it at least creates an incredibly strong legal footing for defending people from forced labor. Criminals paying back their debt to society is a different conversation in terms of the length and harshness of the penality.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > We can go buy slaves today in the US No, slaves you can buy as an individual is what you have with chattel slavery. Slaves whose labor you can rent, or the product of whose labor you can buy, from the state who holds them as convicts (or that the state uses directly for it's own purposes under the same conditions) is what you have with penal slavery. > However, passing the 13th amendment and then fighting a civil war to enforce it That...didn't happen. In fact, the Republicans, despite being an ideologically abolitionist party, didn't pursue abolition as a policy, merely limiting (not even stopping) the geographic expansion of slavery, specifically to avoid splitting the union and provoking a civil war.
  - refurb 6y ago
    I love these pendantic HN comments. Everyone else in the thread is referring to chattel slavery when they use the word "slavery", but you feel a need to point out how it isn't technically correct. Great. We're all still talking about the same thing still.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Everyone else in the thread is referring to chattel slavery when they use the word "slavery" And here I thought everyone was referring to an American practice analogous to the Chinese state forced labor of those who have been deemed harmful to society; while chattel slavery is, I suppose, loosely analogous there, I'd say penal slavery is actually a closer analogy.
- wonnage 6y ago
  This is not stopping any enslavement or forced labor, in China or elsewhere.
- excalibur 6y ago
  > What's your point? It is ironic and amusing. </point>
elil17 6y ago
Perhaps more relevant is the fact that there have been over a thousand instances of slavery in Florida tomato farms in the past decade
- branweb 6y ago
  I dislike internet flamewars with glib calls for "source pls", but this seems like a pretty extraordinary claim to make with no substantiating evidence. Over 1000? According to who? I found this wapo article from 2012: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fair-food-program-helps-end-the-use-of-slavery-in-the-tomato-fields/2012/09/02/788f1a1a-f39c-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fair-food-program-he... It says the justice dept prosecuted 7 cases since 1997. It says over 1000 people were affected. Are you counting each person as an instance?
  - matthewdgreen 6y ago
    Why wouldn't you count a human being held in slavery as an instance of slavery? I'm genuinely confused what you're getting at here.
    - branweb 6y ago
      I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm just trying to get some clarification on the original statement. The source I was able to dig up is from 8 years ago, and was reporting on incidents stretching back 23 years ago. The op mentioned 1000 instances in the past 10 years. I just want more info on what they meant.
      - matthewdgreen 6y ago
        Ok, but you easily dug up an article that confirmed it. Even down to the number of people who were affected and the time period. But instead of just posting the source (which I do appreciate), you seem to now have a problem with the definition of the word "instance" as used to refer to the enslavement of a single human. What definition would you prefer that is more standard or appropriate? ETA I am now reading article after article about this issue, and the fact that this particular industry seems to have cleaned up its act in 2012 doesn't make me feel better about any of it.
IIAOPSW 6y ago
The US has consistently fought against using forced labor to produce cotton since 1861.
- piiswrong 6y ago
  blacks are vastly overrepresented in the prison population and NYC just forced them to bury COVID bodies with scarce protection.
  - jjcon 6y ago
    No source, not relevant anyway
    - piiswrong 6y ago
      https://theintercept.com/2020/03/31/rikers-island-coronavirus-mass-graves/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/31/rikers-island-coronaviru...
      - jjcon 6y ago
        Your source directly contradicts your claim > prisoners have been digging graves on Hart Island for years This isn’t really COVID related. Additionally, they are digging graves not necessarily burying bodies. > is offering prisoners at Rikers Island jail $6 per hour... and personal protective equipment So they get paid and have personal protective equipment.
jonathannat 6y ago
When folks bring up China of today, other folks like to deflect by bringing up US of 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, or 200 years ago. And use the same social and moral context from those era to judge.
- jjcon 6y ago
  I have found too that people get mad if you happen to bring up Germany of 50 years ago though
everdrive 6y ago
And it's right to. We fought a civil war over this. (and other issues, of course.) Please don't trivialize this topic with infantile tu quoque arguments.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

So much so that we fought a titanic war with hundreds of thousands if not millions of casualties to end it!

What's your point? Slavery was abolished a long time ago in the US. Any pressure to stop enslavement or forced labor of humans should be celebrated.

branweb 6y ago
Don't forget forced sterilization: https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c The attitude of someone who reacts to this with "what about the antebellum south!" is beyond my understanding.
- Aperocky 6y ago
  So China had a one child policy that only applied to Han Chinese, which is the dominant ethnic group of the country. Now they relaxed the requirement to 2 and applied it to everyone. Of course it's now immediately a genocide. The previous one, despite harsher limits and usage of the same methods, is evidently not.
  - branweb 6y ago
    From the linked article: "The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands" Maybe the article is mistaken? It seems like quite a bit more than just applying a one-child policy.
    - Aperocky 6y ago
      > abortion on hundreds of thousands There are 10 million Uyghurs in China. Abortion on hundreds of thousands is quite literally the abortion of the whole population. And hundreds of thousands will be able to attest to this. I have no doubt that China violated a bunch of human rights to enforce the 2 child policy, but calling it a genocide of the Uighur, and then exaggerating or filling in the data by imagination is rich given that it was harsher before and nobody voiced a peep just because it didn't apply to minorities. I don't like what China is doing, it's probably entirely justified to sanction Xinjiang and the camps. Nobody should have their freedom restricted just because they were born different and believe in different things. But at the same time propaganda outlets manufacturing consent is also disgusting.
      - branweb 6y ago
        It's not inconceivable that Uighur human rights abuses are being used for political purposes. Certainly a healthy dose of skepticism is not uncalled for. Yet the people who respond to such reports with outraged knee-jerk accusations of hypocrisy against the US because it had slavery in the 1860s or because it has forced labor in some prisons today--I don't understand that.
        Aperocky 6y ago
        I didn't bring up slavery or any US internal issues at all - it's entirely worthless to this discussion. What I'm trying to say, is that truth matters. We can't just level unfounded claims because it's convenient, that's how you devolve into a nationalist flame war, with the military industrial complex giggling in the background.
        branweb 6y ago
        Totally agree that "US internal issues" bring nothing valuable to this discussion. Also agree that truth matters. I don't think that can be said enough these days. My comment about the discussion of slavery/prison inmates was referencing the root post of this thread, and some of the other responses.
vkou 6y ago
The thirteenth amendment explicitly permits subjecting prisoners to forced or unpaid labor, and this aspect of it is used extensively in the United States. Slavery didn't end in 1865. It's still with us - just a bit out of sight, out of mind.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Slavery was abolished a long time ago in the US No, it wasn't. Chattel slavery was converted almost overnight into penal slavery, with largely pretextual criminalization of the exact same group previously subject to chattel slavery, a long time ago in the United States.
- Zhenya 6y ago
  You're right. We can go buy slaves today in the US. /s Yes, criminalization of legal acts to recapture the free labor is abhorrent. However, passing the 13th amendment and then fighting a civil war to enforce it at least creates an incredibly strong legal footing for defending people from forced labor. Criminals paying back their debt to society is a different conversation in terms of the length and harshness of the penality.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > We can go buy slaves today in the US No, slaves you can buy as an individual is what you have with chattel slavery. Slaves whose labor you can rent, or the product of whose labor you can buy, from the state who holds them as convicts (or that the state uses directly for it's own purposes under the same conditions) is what you have with penal slavery. > However, passing the 13th amendment and then fighting a civil war to enforce it That...didn't happen. In fact, the Republicans, despite being an ideologically abolitionist party, didn't pursue abolition as a policy, merely limiting (not even stopping) the geographic expansion of slavery, specifically to avoid splitting the union and provoking a civil war.
- refurb 6y ago
  I love these pendantic HN comments. Everyone else in the thread is referring to chattel slavery when they use the word "slavery", but you feel a need to point out how it isn't technically correct. Great. We're all still talking about the same thing still.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Everyone else in the thread is referring to chattel slavery when they use the word "slavery" And here I thought everyone was referring to an American practice analogous to the Chinese state forced labor of those who have been deemed harmful to society; while chattel slavery is, I suppose, loosely analogous there, I'd say penal slavery is actually a closer analogy.
wonnage 6y ago
This is not stopping any enslavement or forced labor, in China or elsewhere.
excalibur 6y ago
> What's your point? It is ironic and amusing. </point>

elil17 6y ago

Perhaps more relevant is the fact that there have been over a thousand instances of slavery in Florida tomato farms in the past decade

branweb 6y ago
I dislike internet flamewars with glib calls for "source pls", but this seems like a pretty extraordinary claim to make with no substantiating evidence. Over 1000? According to who? I found this wapo article from 2012: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fair-food-program-helps-end-the-use-of-slavery-in-the-tomato-fields/2012/09/02/788f1a1a-f39c-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fair-food-program-he... It says the justice dept prosecuted 7 cases since 1997. It says over 1000 people were affected. Are you counting each person as an instance?
- matthewdgreen 6y ago
  Why wouldn't you count a human being held in slavery as an instance of slavery? I'm genuinely confused what you're getting at here.
  - branweb 6y ago
    I'm not saying you shouldn't. I'm just trying to get some clarification on the original statement. The source I was able to dig up is from 8 years ago, and was reporting on incidents stretching back 23 years ago. The op mentioned 1000 instances in the past 10 years. I just want more info on what they meant.
    - matthewdgreen 6y ago
      Ok, but you easily dug up an article that confirmed it. Even down to the number of people who were affected and the time period. But instead of just posting the source (which I do appreciate), you seem to now have a problem with the definition of the word "instance" as used to refer to the enslavement of a single human. What definition would you prefer that is more standard or appropriate? ETA I am now reading article after article about this issue, and the fact that this particular industry seems to have cleaned up its act in 2012 doesn't make me feel better about any of it.

IIAOPSW 6y ago

The US has consistently fought against using forced labor to produce cotton since 1861.

piiswrong 6y ago
blacks are vastly overrepresented in the prison population and NYC just forced them to bury COVID bodies with scarce protection.
- jjcon 6y ago
  No source, not relevant anyway
  - piiswrong 6y ago
    https://theintercept.com/2020/03/31/rikers-island-coronavirus-mass-graves/ https://theintercept.com/2020/03/31/rikers-island-coronaviru...
    - jjcon 6y ago
      Your source directly contradicts your claim > prisoners have been digging graves on Hart Island for years This isn’t really COVID related. Additionally, they are digging graves not necessarily burying bodies. > is offering prisoners at Rikers Island jail $6 per hour... and personal protective equipment So they get paid and have personal protective equipment.

jonathannat 6y ago

When folks bring up China of today, other folks like to deflect by bringing up US of 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, or 200 years ago. And use the same social and moral context from those era to judge.

jjcon 6y ago
I have found too that people get mad if you happen to bring up Germany of 50 years ago though

everdrive 6y ago

And it's right to. We fought a civil war over this. (and other issues, of course.) Please don't trivialize this topic with infantile tu quoque arguments.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]