Typical British reptile, too much of a bloodless coward to admit he's an imperialist:
In response to some people responding to this quite bizarrely claiming that I supported the West's war in Libya - no, I did not
You posted it the day after the bombing started.
https://twitter.com/bot_nabq/status/1352409294357090309
Hi! I opposed the Western war on Libya, well done on finding a tweet supporting the initial uprising though!
If Gaddafi was a "savage dictator", the rebels the West helped were good and them overthrowing Gadaffi was something to be desired, it made no sense to oppose the West assisting their effort. Half the arguments in that article could just as easily be arguments for more interventions
here's an article about these class traitors: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2021-01-22/lessons-iraq-libya-syria-cheer-war/
Owen is obviously being a dork, but it is possible to take a critical stance on Xinjiang without fostering support for some sort of western intervention. To do so, you'll need to put in twice as much effort to reframe the discussion outside of the "China bad america good" narrative that's been driven by the American right wing of course. You'll also want to be very selective about your audience: a chapo struggle sesh is probably fine, but Twitter doesn't allow for nearly enough context.
Just my 2¢
You can have a critical stance of Xinjiang only first when you've acknowledged that China has a legitimate terrorist and security concern in that region with a number of terrorist attacks and separatists funded by USA
And secondly you can have that conversation when you've acknowledged that the one of the three reasons the US is in Afghanistan "is to impact power on China and have the CIA run arms and funds to groups like the ETIM (East Turkestan Islamic Movement) who are jihadis and have fought all over the ME for Al Qaeda/ISIS/Al Nusra and the US was bombing ETIM as early as 2 years ago
Thirdly we can have that conversation when it's recognised the US supports separatists in Xinjiang
No one should take anything the Americans or British say about human rights without them being laughed off the face of the planet. The same people have dropped depleted uranium on fallujah where birth defects are worse than Hiroshima, that have dropped bombs on muslims for literally 3 decades straight, caused untold suffering to the world forcing them to flee their homes and countries, set up "black site" rendition centres to torture people. Left them langusihing in prisons like Guantanamo for decades with no right to a trial
When all this has been acknowledged we can maybe discuss how whether China has been heavy handed in doing things like "forcing people to attend trade schools so they can get jobs and lead productive lives instead of languishing in poverty and being susceptible to being radicalised by Wahhabist (a Saudi/American export) islamist ideology)" instead of outright murdering, displacing them and torturing them like the West has done
Theres gonna need to be more examples than just "Destruction of culture", "denial of right to cultural practices/religious freedoms" and especially "cases of arbitrary murders", you cant just make generalized statements here.
Clicked your first link and its same old horseshit propaganda Cgtn did an entire show debunking this "destruction of grave sites"
Traditional Uyghur graves were built poorly (little more than dirt mounds) and dogs were getting at the bodies so they rebuilt pristine beautiful graves in the same area and respectfully moved the bodies
Im not inclined to believe anything you say
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXBIeKpUq_c
There you go. You can see the pristine graves that were built for them and the shambolic conditions they were originally were in (the "dust grave mounds").
Ironically this isn't even news in Western countries. There are many cases where local authorities will move grave sites to make way for railway lines or roads. What the local authorities did here wasn't even for purposes of infrastructure but for purposes of public health and provided pristine, decent and solid graves for the people to pay their respects to instead of unmarked "dust mounds". They were made of mud and wear away in wind and rain whilst cats and dogs would get at the bodies.
You should honestly do some self-crit ("no investigation no right to speak") before propagating a wall of imperialist propaganda you yourself haven't done the thread barest to investigate
Eyewitness reports are frankly not something to take seriously in any case of the west promoting a story, there needs to be hard evidence before any eyewitness reports should be taken into account purely because of how long the record of atrocity propaganda is. There are some who tell a "consistent" story with others but then there are also others who flat out change their stories entirely months after first speaking.
Some sources would be awesome besides "I totally know someone". Phrases like "right to cultural practices" are straight out of a reactionaries toolkit, especially when you repeatedly bring up "foot binding" which isn't even a Uygher practice!!!
I'd like to re-use this, can I ask would you mind fixing the link at the end of paragraph two
What is that group you linked? It looks like a rip-off of the qiao collective, but with more shit takes.
Edit: That article you linked is literally a Nation article and the only one published by that author who I can't seem to find anything else about. You just posted Honk Kong apologia cringe bro
Literally ad hominem cringe bro. I don't really care about getting dunked on, but try and do it with actual substance.
How is that ad hominem? I'm just pointing out that you shared a very biased article while claiming that it's neutral...
I didn't say it was neutral, there's no such thing. Of course there is going to be some bias as there is in all journalism, I'm willing to have a discussion about what biases may exist and we can use it to color our understanding of the author's viewpoint, but the conversation doesn't seem to be heading that way. I didn't see anything in the article that would make me want to throw it in the bin, and your post isn't particularly convincing to me
You're making an attempt to discredit the author/publication without tying it back to the actual content of the article. It just comes across as low effort, as though you read the domain, headline, and byline and started working from there.
The author brings up good points, but argues from a position that the camps are what western "researchers" say they are. At best this could be useful for reframing the current narrative without totally undermining it, but it's not a realisting look at the reasoning behind the re-education centers and their actual operation.
The criticisms of Chinese industrialists exploiting the people of Xinjiang is good, but that's a problem wholly removed from the CPCs re-edication program. If anything, the current involvement of the CPC in Xinjiang is lessening the power those capitalists hold over the region by developing infrastructure and allowing for locals to seek work elsewhere. Ideally they'd just shut down or nationalize the offending factories (as they have done in some cases).
There's also the claim of the CPC being Islamophobic and repressing religion in the region, but if you look up videos of people in the region, there are mosques and calls to prayer everywhere. It doesn't look like a region that's being repressed religiously.
I really want to know what they think should be done. Should the CPC not have gotten involved after ETIM tried to assert control over the region? Should the CPC not gotten involved in trying to expand transportation and education infrastructure in the region and allowed the capitalists who had settled there to continue exploiting the people?
The situation is messy of course, but it always is. Nothing is going to be perfect, but you can tell that the CPC is genuinely trying to improve living standards in the region. Improving those standards will inevitably come with a cultural shift, this isn't some enigma or forced thing, it's just how culture works. As material conditions change, culture will shift with it.
Lausen.hk are the nerds that projected "tankie" onto the Chinese cosulate in Hong Kong. These are the useful idiots who were spamming their pro-Hong Kong protests all over leftists circles when it was the hottest topic in corporate Western media. Even when it was becoming obvious that the left in the protests were miniscule and the protests were being dominated by pro-Western Hong Kong Chuds, these Lausen.hk dorks just told their readers to ignore the Chuds. When it was impossible to ignore the dominace of the HK Chuds in the protests, Lausen.hk started crying about how the Chuds infiltrated the "pro-democracy" movement, lol HK Chuds were the biggest and most active group from the beginning!
The last time checked Lausen.hk, they were doing a seminar NovaroMedia and DissentMagazine on the "China question". Owen Jones is associated or close with NovaroMedia. But DissentMagazine is a CIA/NED OP.
The first time I checked out DissentMagazine was watching on of their youtube vids, they were interviewing some DissentMagazine podcaster, found it interesting so I decided to check Dissentmagazines website. The first and main arcticle on their website was written by some Eastern European academic about the fall of the Eastern Bloc. It was about how the upper Communist Party apparachik had all sorts of privileges and sending their kids to elite Western universities. Interesting article so I decided to google the author's name. The first hit from google was the Eastern European Academic's page on the NED website!
If Lausen or NovaroMedia/Owen Jones aren't at least secretly getting paid by the CIA/NED, they are useful idiots, because they are doing State Department propaganda for free.
Thanks I obviously wasn't aware of that cause most of that is lame as hell. It was just an article that I found, and I still think the article makes some decent points, but obviously that needs to come with a heaping mound of criticism along with it at best.
The Lausan article casually cites the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which is an organization founded by the Australian government and is funded by the US State Department, the Australian Department of Defense, and military contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
Lausan then cites Critical China Scholars, which admits to using Chuang (which has ties to the National Endowment for Democracy (a CIA cutout) and Radio Free Asia through its reliance on Han Dongfang/China Labor Bulletin) and New Bloom (run by Brian Hioe, who was a fellow at the Taiwanese government’s “Taiwan Foundation for Democracy”, which is one of the largest donors to the right-wing Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation) as top resources.
It also cites Darren Byler who is a fellow at Center for Asian Studies and China Made, which are financially supported by the Henry Luce Foundation, which also funds anticommunist organizations like the Atlantic Council (a NATO cutout), the Asia Foundation (was heavily funded and originally established by the CIA) and the Council on Foreign Relations. The Henry Luce Foundation had been established by the vehemently anticommunist media tycoon Henry R. Luce, who helped shape US foreign policy during the Cold War. Byler is also a fellow at the Kissinger Institute.
The article then bemoans that "Trump ignored calls to sanction China" for its Xinjiang policies while referencing a New York Times article that cites Rushan Abbas, who has boasted of her “extensive experience working with US government agencies, including Homeland Security, Department of Defense, Department of State, and various US intelligence agencies.” Abbas was a National Endowment for Democracy grantee, worked for Radio Free Asia, and even worked for the US State Department in Guantanamo Bay, which had imprisoned Uyghurs.
They then cite an AP article that relies extensively on the dodgy work of the far-right evangelical Adrian Zenz from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and the neoconservative Jamestown Foundation. His work, which he claims is "led by God", relies on wild unfounded assumptions, misrepresenting statistics and taking figures out of context to build dubious narratives, blatant misunderstandings of how Chinese family planning policies even work, North Korean defector-style questionable testimonies that have inconsistencies, and ignoring the impact of massive improvements in education, poverty alleviation, and economic development.
Also worth mentioning that Wilfred Chan, who is a founder of Lausan, worked for the hawkish and vehemently anti-China United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission of the US government and was one of the many who helped produce their 2011 Report to Congress, which recommended a more hostile foreign policy against China. After working for CNN for years, he managed to even get the hawkish 2019 Report to Congress to cite one of his articles. He also interned at the White House. Despite Lausan's claim to be "decolonial", they've engaged in blatant colonial apologism with their bizzare condemnation of India for liberating Goa from white Portuguese colonizers.
Nevertheless, there are still some very real problems with China's counter-terrorism measures which can get overzealous. I know from even pro-China sources that mass-surveillance is still very much a reality in Xinjiang years after the Salafi terrorist attacks and that even regular Uyghurs can unfortunately get profiled pretty hard at airports. De-radicalization programs will always be a source of controversy and it does not appear that the Xinjiang regional government had a solid system of due process in place. There's also an asinine restriction on beard length in Xinjiang just because having a very long beard is commonly associated with foreign Salafi jihadist influence and is supposedly not part of traditional Sunni Uyghur culture. The more religious aspects of Uyghur society could be potentially marginalized as a consequence of heavy-handed enforcement of "anti-extremism" measures. The CPC did at least finally ban Islamophobic speech on the internet and social media after the surge in Islamophobic rhetoric on social media in China after some of the terrorist attacks.
Social Imperialist just want a welfare state for them and rutless imperialism for the rest of the world
human rights? his country had its undercover cops have children with environmental activists, essentially rape by the state. maybe prioritize fighting your British COINTELPRO they are giving immunity to Owen
ETA: extra context https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/undercover-police-spycops-law-crime-b1760898.html
For the last 5 years OJ has been on the run of his life... to the right!!!!
But socialist critique of China shouldn’t be ILLEGAL and BANNED on the left. If we are to have a scientific and rational approach to marxism we must be willing to discuss criticisms of what is going on in Xinjiang without kneejerk calling those who raise them all imperialists who want to invade.
They're enforcing unions in the factories, but I think the CPC should be doing more in terms of forming worker co-operatives in Xinjiang. They also need to work on developing more localized workplaces so people aren't displaced by having to go to a different city to work. I like that they've run high speed rail to some of the bigger cities at least so the trips back home are quick.
They also need to work on developing more localized workplaces so people aren’t displaced by having to go to a different city to work
Yeah. This is one of the areas I'm critical on China about. If they want to demonstrate their commitment to the preservation of the cultures and equitable economic success of ethnic minorities, they need to make sure they can share in the success with their people and not get funneled into coastal cities as migrant laborers.
For real, this is the primary criticism of the CPCs handling of Xinjiang, and I feel like it's not really talked about. It's always glossed over for alarmist/bullshit "human rights concerns".
Don't underestimate how many people just don't know about how the consent machine goes.
