[thephyber]

I’m not so quick to write off China’s treatment of Uiygurs as terrible for human rights. My understanding is that Tibetans went through similar issues decades before, so my sense is that it’s likely happening, whether or not the source is CIA.

I just think the USA has done far more to encourage this stupid “love your country or we will treat you as a terrorist” attitude that China seems to have adopted. Also the consequences of my country invading Iraq without a real mission or realistic plan destabilizing the region have caused (far?) more than 200k civilian deaths.

I feel like an American complaining about China (which he has zero influence over) and ignoring the problems in America that he can influence is large hypocrisy and it should be poured out, repeatedly.

[bingbong70]

Wasn't the CIA heavily involved in Tibet too?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program

I'm not sure we can use one CIA scam as an excuse to claim another CIA scam is not a scam.

The average Chinese citizen is less free thanks to these covert/overt foreign interventions.

Are we okay with the idea of well funded Asian intelligence agencies creating, funding, and training terrorist organizations in the USA/UK?

Any reasonable person that has studied the CIAs history in Asia would want it shut down.

[snicker7]

> I just think the USA has done far more to encourage this stupid “love your country or we will treat you as a terrorist” attitude that China seems to have adopted,

In the US, I am free to say "I don't love my country" or "I don't love my government" without going to prison.

[thephyber]

While I won’t argue that your statement is wrong, I think it oversimplies the issue to the point of misdirection.

I find this similar to the expression “generals always fight the last war”. Freer societies have similar controls on outlier citizens, they just do it through different means. Piss off a mayor and you might see more rigorous building inspectors on your property. Piss off the president and you might find yourself defending against an IRS audit. America doesn’t fight it’s citizens with a gun or a sword, it does it with paper cuts.

The USA has 200k+ crimes defined in law just at the national level (according to the author of 3 Felonies a Day). Prosecutors and LEOs are given wide discretion to prosecute, so someone who violates a traffic law may get much more lenient treatment if they express solidarity with Blue Lives Matter (a political stance) than if they express sentiments like Black Lives Matter (generally; obviously lots of variables). I have police in my family; they complain more about people who threat them with a lack of respect than they do the worst criminals they encounter.

And the famous Free Speech case that gave us the “you can’t falsely yell fire in a crowded theater” opinion was about a man handing out flyers trying to convince young American men to avoid the WW1 draft. He was arrested and SCOTUS upheld his conviction about speech that did not directly incite any violence. The USA is not as virtuous on the subject of speech as the myth suggests.

I’m not arguing that China’s laws are good. I don’t want to live there and I suspect I’ve said enough to get arrested there, but I’ve also said enough to likely be arrested in the USA if USA prosecutors were not so overworked.