Here is November 7th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Here is November 8th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
I strategically retreated from doing an update on Wednesday (and I always perform tactical update withdrawals on Thursdays and Sundays) so this next one covers a bit from those two days.
Here is November 11th's update! TLDR? Here's the summary.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists, for the “buh Zeleski is a jew?!?!” people.
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map, who is an independent youtuber with a mostly neutral viewpoint.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict and, unlike most western analysts, has some degree of understanding on how war works. He is a reactionary, however.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ ASB Military News, banned from Twitter.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster - crowd-funded U.S journalist, mostly pro-Russian, works on the ground near warzones to report news and talk to locals.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
With the entire western media sphere being overwhelming pro-Ukraine already, you shouldn't really need more, but:
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
I'm actually reading the UN report on China's anti-extremism policy in Xinjian, and like many UN documents it's very weird. The UN report is discussing all these extremely high-minded ideas of human rights like "Not being subject to arbitrary and indefinite detention" and "having criminal acts clearly defined in law so people know what's actually illegal" and shit and it's like... What country actually conforms to any of this? Like if you're a white person in America sure, you get a bunch of this stuff, but if you're brown all bets are off. Europe has a bunch of cool human rights laws, unless you're a migrant. A lot of countries don't even pretend.
Idk, it's just weird to be reading all this high minded concern about arbitrary arrest and detention and profiling and punishing people based on things that could just be religious or cultural preferences after like 20 years of the GWOT, which was pretty much a continual period of incredible human rights abuses perpetrated by countries all over the world, both within their own borders and without. Like obviously that's not the UN Human Rights people's fault, but how do you take your job seriously when you are taking a report back to a body where most of the most prominent representatives openly and unapologetically engaged in torture, arbitrary murder, mass murder, arbitrary and indefinite detention, and basically every other violation of human rights imaginable? That's got to suck. Like that must be absolutely demoralizing and miserable.
Lol. People are rotting in Rikers for years at a time without trial, but that's okay because they got to see a judge who rubber-stamped their pre-trial detention without bail for stealing a piece of candy so it's not a grotesque violation of human rights.
Spending two months being taught "Hey the Salafi's are fucking psychos and their version of Islam is a significant innovation if it doesn't actually constitute apostasy" sounds better than having a JDAM dropped on your family.
Man this document is wild. You mean there's some kind of international standard against heavily armed cops breaking your doors down, holding you at gunpoint, beating the shit out of you, and stealing all your shit?
Like don't get me wrong, a lot of the things this report alleges are concerning and bad, like arresting people because they have beards or wear hijabs, or making people sing patriotic songs for hours a day (what is that supposed to accomplish?)
But none of this really stands out from the normal practices of the US Justice system, and the US doesn't even have the excuse of trying to prevent Salafist extremists from destabilizing Arizona.
Also, there's that big contrast - Their anti-terrorism program is spying on, arresting, and detaining lots of people on questionable charges.
Our anti-terrorist program was murdering tens of thousands of people because they used a cell phone to call someone we thought might be related to a terrorist organization, maybe.
Man wait until the UN Human Rights office finds out about US Sheriffs. And City police. And State Police.
Like none of this is good, and I certainly wouldn't want to live with the Chinese authorities breathing down my neck or sending me to prison to sing God Bless America over and over again, but compared to the allegations being freely made by the US, and compared to the normal, everyday abuses of human rights that the US freely commits against it's own people and abroad, this all seems kind of trivial. Like yeah it's bad, but it's not like the US has a moral leg to stand on here. It's certainly not genocide. idk
Here's the link. Give it a read
I read it when it came out a while ago, and I pretty much agree. Most of the things they're pointing out, I'm like "yeah, seems like a reasonable critique and I hope the CPC takes it to heart and kicks the local governments ass when they've misused their authority", but also, show me a country that doesn't do that exact same thing, only much worse. I mean, fuck, here in Denmark, cops routinely put people in jail, pre-trial, for anywhere from 3x24 hours to 4 weeks to indefinitely. There is literally no upper bound on pre-trial detention, as long as it's less than the sentence for what you're accused of. People have been in jail for years without ever being convicted, sometimes just because of waiting times at the city courts.
So yeah we know we have arbitrary, vague, long-term detention that can include isolation (which is torture), in a Western Democracy (tm), but hey, look over there at the sneaky asiatics!
:big-cool:
And instead of admitting they couldn't make a case, the prosecution will offer time served if you plead guilty. Still claiming that you're innocent? Well, then we'll need another four weeks of pre-trial detention to figure out what to do next. Maybe you'll want to relieve your guilty conscience by then?
The 90+ % convinction rates has nothing to do with this though, they're all about cops and prosecutors being really good at solving crime. And by the way, there's a judge rubber-stamping pre-trial detention so it's impossible to abuse.
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In 2015, the government removed all remaining one-child limits, establishing a two-child limit. In May 2021, this was loosened to a three-child limit, in July 2021 all limits as well as penalties for exceeding them were removed.
wild how China's forcibly sterilizing their Uygur population by telling them there's no limit to how many kids they can have.
Also one child policy was never applied to any minorty races, only han chinese. And it was removed in 2015 in all china except xinjiang which removed it in 2017. Uyghurs, like all other minorities, were never restricted on how many children they can have
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Absolute losers couldn't wait even one more year before posting the sloo
This kind of response would be great in the context of a US-China interaction/confrontation, lord knows we need to smother any further escalation before it starts. But in the general context of human rights and the UN, this trivializing of rights abuse isn't a great place to start.
Ok so tldr yes to a heavy-handed police crackdown against Islamic extremism and separatism (which are not very distinct movements) with some inmates anecdotally reporting abuse at the hands of police and administrators (ACAB even in China sure I believe this is likely true) but a huge big fucking no to forced labor camps a huge big fucking no to millions imprisoned (perhaps 40-55k over the entire years long period of the strike hard campaign in reeducation camps) and a giant fucking no to genocide. Shocking it’s not even mentioned actually, surely they looked into it. It seems to deserve a repudiation given the severity of the accusation.
The claims made in this doc aren’t very bad. I mean it sounds like some instances of non-systematic abuse which doesn’t surprise me because pigs will be pigs but overall it sounds like a relatively kinder and more integrative campaign than even the regular everyday treatment of ethnic minorities in many parts of the west with the strike hard campaign mixing swift semi-judicial action against extremism with extensive efforts to reintegrate former religious extremists or those adjacent to it. It doesn’t sound like a summer camp but it does sound a hell of a lot better than a regular western prison for example, without doubt.
Also the document reads like a hit piece with references to places like Bellingcat and an effort to incorporate Zenz’s “muh sterilizations” by misrepresenting the distribution of birth control for free to women as a human rights abuse.
All things considered, this is a nothing burger and I’m sure the BBC will soon apologize for their efforts to instigate ethnic and religious tensions in Xinjiang.
The UN was commissioned to do a report on le ebil genocide but all they found was that all cops are bastards.