SUPERTHREAD: 2020 United States Elections

[Ziggy Stardust]

Buddy, trace the sources where they get this information from. Go on, do some work for once. Most of them comes one way from another from the US either from their department or NGOs funded by the US state department. Your own link you stupid shit for brains talks about the "U.S.-based Uyghur Human Rights Project." Do you seriously think just because numerous outlets repeat the same thing, the original source is different? After the WMDs in Iraq I would have thought people just have a little bit of scepticism, but no. I am not saying no human rights violations go on in China, but when you have serious accusations, you have to provide a whole heap of evidence.

It is a really tricky situation to analyze, really. China has done such a good job locking down the region that we really have little to no documentary evidence to go off of, so all we have are the competing propagandas from the US and China, neither of which is particularly trustworthy. Most likely the US claims are either heavily exaggerated or fabricated, and most likely China is also using an unnecessarily heavy handed approach to the region (and there is certainly some power imbalance between Han settlers and Uighur natives), but who knows what the actual extent of any of it is.

The US claims certainly deserve little benefit of the doubt, though, given the World Uyghur Congress is essentially a CIA-sponsored far-right terrorist group trying to incubate a Uyghur Mujahideen to destabilize China.

[loomer]

I'm going to dissent on this one. There is sufficient independent testimony and accounts emerging for me to accept the claims of a cultural genocide (which, technically, isn't genocide but merely a crime against humanity because of how its being carried out) of the Uighurs of Xinjiang as being factual rather than not determinable at this point. That said, skepticism towards certain narrators is still merited - I'm not taking anything either the US or China (or their various puppets and propaganda arms) say without a grain of salt on this one.

[The Romulan Republic]

Indeed. Regardless of whether one believes a specific claim or source is valid, there's enough there that the overall picture cannot (honestly or morally) be ignored.

Buddy, trace the sources where they get this information from. Go on, do some work for once. Most of them comes one way from another from the US either from their department or NGOs funded by the US state department. Your own link you stupid shit for brains talks about the "U.S.-based Uyghur Human Rights Project." Do you seriously think just because numerous outlets repeat the same thing, the original source is different? After the WMDs in Iraq I would have thought people just have a little bit of scepticism, but no. I am not saying no human rights violations go on in China, but when you have serious accusations, you have to provide a whole heap of evidence.

It is a really tricky situation to analyze, really. China has done such a good job locking down the region that we really have little to no documentary evidence to go off of, so all we have are the competing propagandas from the US and China, neither of which is particularly trustworthy. Most likely the US claims are either heavily exaggerated or fabricated, and most likely China is also using an unnecessarily heavy handed approach to the region (and there is certainly some power imbalance between Han settlers and Uighur natives), but who knows what the actual extent of any of it is.

The US claims certainly deserve little benefit of the doubt, though, given the World Uyghur Congress is essentially a CIA-sponsored far-right terrorist group trying to incubate a Uyghur Mujahideen to destabilize China.

No, in fact, we are not just reliant on "the competing propaganda from the US and China"- we have testimony from actual eyewitnesses and survivors, presented in multiple sources including Congressional testimony. I previously posted this, and will post again until people stop pretending that its just "US propaganda" or "there's no evidence" (though I'm sure the committed denialists will insist than any witness or anyone who believes them is a US agent/terrorist):

https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/201 ... -humanity/

Elizabeth M. Lynch is founder and editor of China Law & Policy.

Sitting in a hearing room in Congress, in a gray plaid hijab, her dark blond hair poking out, Mihrigul Tursun begins to cry. She is there to share the plight of her fellow Uighurs in Xinjiang. Her translator reads aloud Tursun’s prepared statement about her three separate detentions by the Chinese government in Xinjiang’s internment camps. As the translator recounts Tursun’s first detention — upon her release, she learned that one of her 4-month-old triplets had died — Tursun struggles to hold back tears. But when the translator recounts the torture — little food, a tiger chair, electric shock treatment and a liquid that stopped her menstrual cycle and likely resulted in her sterilization, which has been confirmed by U.S. doctors — Tursun can’t hold back any longer. She starts to sob.

As Tursun’s translator, Zubayra Shamseden, who is also the outreach coordinator for the U.S.-based Uyghur Human Rights Project, wrote in an essay back in April, the Chinese government “wants to erase Uighur culture and identity by remaking its women.” Shamseden’s take — that if you want to eradicate a people, you must destroy its women — was not lost on the drafters of the Genocide Convention or the lawyers who shaped the doctrine of crimes against humanity. Both include nonlethal atrocities that are disproportionately perpetrated against women. Acts designed to prevent births and forcibly transfer children from their families could constitute genocide. Similarly, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization and sexual violence each constitute a crime against humanity.

Though international law recognizes the gendered nature of mass atrocities, the world has paid little attention to the gender disparities of China’s campaign against the Uighurs. While women likely make up only an estimated 27 percent of the 1.5 million Uighur and other Turkic Muslims detained in Xinjiang’s internment camps, their treatment has an outsize impact on Uighur culture. By targeting women, China is attempting to dilute the Uighur population and destroy its culture.

Tursun’s testimony was the first time the international community heard that women in Xinjiang’s camps were forced to undergo treatment that disrupts their menstrual cycles. Since then, others have said the same thing. Gulbahar Jelilova, a businesswoman and another Uighur internment victim who was held in a cell with 40 other women, also stated that female inmates were injected weekly with a substance that stopped their periods.

Allegations of rape in the camps have surfaced, too. Sayragul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh who was forced to work in one of the women’s camps in Xinjiang, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that every evening, the guards would take the pretty inmates with them, returning them in the morning. She also saw incidents of gang rape, including of one female inmate while other inmates were forced to watch. Shamseden told me that she too has heard that rape is common in the camps — as well as outside of the camps, where Uighur women are forced into situations where sexual harassment and sexual assault by their Han Chinese male bosses are prevalent.

In 2018, the government ramped up a program for Communist Party cadres to stay with a Uighur’s family home for five days every two months to “teach” the Uighurs about national unity. But this is another opportunity for Han Chinese men to take advantage of Uighur women. When I told Australian genocide expert Deborah Mayersen about these home visits, she immediately likened the situation to Ottoman Empire soldiers staying in Armenian homes prior to the Armenian genocide, where they were able to rape Armenian women with impunity.

Then there are the Chinese government’s efforts to minimize Uighur births and remove their children from their care. As gender studies expert Leta Hong Fincher highlighted in her recent book, the government has offered incentives for Uighur couples to have fewer children and for Uighur women to marry outside of their race. A large number of Uighur children have also been removed from their families and placed in boarding schools, according to a recent report, leaving the Chinese state to raise them.

The sexual violence against and forced sterilization of Uighur women and removal of Uighur children constitute crimes against humanity. So why isn’t the international community taking a stand? Why isn’t more attention paid to eyewitness accounts from women held in different camps that are eerily similar and mounting up? Especially since China has resisted international attempts to freely investigate what is happening in Xinjiang.

The United States is one of the few countries trying to do something. Last month, in a rare show of bipartisan support, the Senate passed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, and this month the administration issued a flurry of sanctions on Chinese companies and citizens. But there has been no mention of the stories of rape, forced sterilization or sexual harassment in any of these responses.

Even if the camps are disbanded, China’s gendered policies would remain. In addition to demanding that the Chinese government close the internment camps, the U.S. government — and the rest of the world — must insist that the government end the abuse of Uighur women as well.

[Ziggy Stardust]

EDIT: Oops, accidental post

[Ziggy Stardust]

I'm going to dissent on this one. There is sufficient independent testimony and accounts emerging for me to accept the claims of a cultural genocide (which, technically, isn't genocide but merely a crime against humanity because of how its being carried out) of the Uighurs of Xinjiang as being factual rather than not determinable at this point. That said, skepticism towards certain narrators is still merited - I'm not taking anything either the US or China (or their various puppets and propaganda arms) say without a grain of salt on this one.

What independent sources? All of the information I have seen comes from the SAME sources. That's the point. All of the Western newspapers are reporting information from Radio Free Asia and NGOs that are funded by the State Department. We next to no reliable and independent information on this, in part because China has done such a good job locking the region down to outside observers.

Indeed. Regardless of whether one believes a specific claim or source is valid, there's enough there that the overall picture cannot (honestly or morally) be ignored.

You're missing the point. This isn't a case of, "Oh, we have 100 different accounts from different sources, and 1 is bad", this is a case of "We have 100 different accounts from the SAME source, and this source may not be reliable." That's very different. That's what mr. friendly guy was calling you out on, you keep posting different articles from Western newspapers as if they counted as separate pieces of evidence, but if you do 5 minutes of Googling you see they are getting their information from the same source, and that source is questionable. That's not how evidence works.

No, in fact, we are not just reliant on "the competing propaganda from the US and China"- we have testimony from actual eyewitnesses and survivors, presented in multiple sources including Congressional testimony. I previously posted this, and will post again until people stop pretending that its just "US propaganda" or "there's no evidence" (though I'm sure the committed denialists will insist than any witness or anyone who believes them is a US agent/terrorist):

We have testimony from people that we cannot verify are eyewitness or survivors, and we have little to no physical evidence to corroborate. And when we see that some of this testimony is demonstrably false - e.g. the testimony of Rushan Abbas, who is a CIA operative that worked at Guantanamo Bay during the Bush era - we have to be at least be WARY of the other testimony, especially with the dearth of physical evidence.

And the article you cite makes a number of claims without any corroboration or citation. For example, the "1.5 million Uighur and other Turkic Muslims being detained in Xinjiang's internment camps", a figure whose only source is the work of Adrian Zenz, a far-right Christian evangelist who literally thinks he is on a mission from God and frequently spouts racist rhetoric, and who derived those numbers literally based on guesswork (it's from estimating how many people could theoretically be fit into detention centers based on their square footage estimated from satellite imagery, without any actual evidence of the number of people in them). Here is one well-sourced and thorough article that shows some of the inconsistencies in the claims that the article you posted repeats.

(And I know you are probably going to play the game of just dismissing this article because it's not from a major news source and thus isn't reliable, but note that the only reason I even share this specific article is because it is aggregating a variety of sources, including major news outlets and government reports, so if you check it please take the time to actually see the sources it is linking from, rather than just looking at the URL and saying "not New York Times so not true lol")

This isn't about "denialism". You frequently beat your own chest about how committed you are to the rule of law and "innocent until proven guilty", and literally all I am saying is that we don't have enough physical evidence to say that China is guilty. All we have is hearsay, and at least some of that hearsay has been proven to be false, and we have evidence of a CIA-sponsored anti-Chinese propaganda campaign.

I'm not even saying we need to dismiss out of hand the possibility that China is committing these acts. I am literally saying that we don't have a lot of information to go off of, because the region is locked down to outside observers, so all we have are two competing propaganda campaigns. This is all demonstrably true, and you posting articles that are literally just quoting a propaganda campaign do nothing to change that fact. My only point, as I said in the first fucking sentence of my post, is that this is a difficult situation to analyze. So please, I beg you to actually understand what my point is and to respond to it on its face, instead of your usual "YER JUST A DENIALIST GRRR" routine.

[loomer]

I'm going to dissent on this one. There is sufficient independent testimony and accounts emerging for me to accept the claims of a cultural genocide (which, technically, isn't genocide but merely a crime against humanity because of how its being carried out) of the Uighurs of Xinjiang as being factual rather than not determinable at this point. That said, skepticism towards certain narrators is still merited - I'm not taking anything either the US or China (or their various puppets and propaganda arms) say without a grain of salt on this one.

What independent sources? All of the information I have seen comes from the SAME sources. That's the point. All of the Western newspapers are reporting information from Radio Free Asia and NGOs that are funded by the State Department. We literally have zero other sources on this, in part because China has done such a good job locking the region down to outside observers.

How about - though they admittedly need something of a grain of salt at times - HRW*? Kayrat Samarkand, Omar Bekali, Gulzira Mogdyn? Please note that if you intend to debunk said victims, you'll need to be able to do so without reliance on China's state-controlled media if we're being consistent, and virtually every debunk I see is reliant on CGTN.
(**: HRW's actual researchers are by and large scrupulous, dedicated, and serious. The bigger issues lie at the editorial level and in selection biases that skew pro-American, but where HRW brings detailed information, it's usually reasonably reliable. AI is somewhat less so.)

[Dalton]

This thread is a fucking cesspool. What the fuck is happening here? Three separate reports in this thread?

[Mr Bean]

In uncesspool related news
Biden picks Kamala Harris as VP

Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he has chosen Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as his running mate — the first Black woman to be named to a major-party U.S. presidential ticket, and potentially the first woman vice president if Biden defeats President Trump.

The big picture: Harris was probably the safest choice Biden could have made among his running mate finalists. She has a national profile and experience with elected office, was vetted and tested in the Democratic presidential primaries and can boost Biden's fundraising.

To get to the decision, Biden had to move past residual tensions and make peace with a fierce primary competitor.
The decision elevates Harris among the next generation of Democratic leaders and could give her a big advantage in 2024, if Biden were elected and decided not to run for a second term.

What he's saying: "I need someone working alongside me who is smart, tough, and ready to lead. Kamala is that person," Biden announced in a statement.

"I need someone who understands the pain that so many people in our nation are suffering. Whether they’ve lost their job, their business, a loved one to this virus. This president says he “doesn’t want to be distracted by it”. He doesn’t understand that taking care of the people of this nation -- all the people -- isn’t a distraction -- it’s the job. Kamala understands that."
"I need someone who understands that we are in a battle for the soul of this nation. And that if we’re going to get through these crises -- we need to come together and unite for a better America. Kamala gets that."
"I first met Kamala through my son Beau. They were both Attorneys General at the same time. He had enormous respect for her and her work. I thought a lot about that as I made this decision. There is no one’s opinion I valued more than Beau’s and I’m proud to have Kamala standing with me on this campaign."
"Her record of accomplishment -- fighting tooth and nail for what’s right -- is why I’m choosing her. There is no door Kamala won’t knock on, no stone she’ll leave unturned, if it means making life better -- for the people."

What's next: Biden's campaign said he and Harris will deliver remarks in Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday on "working together to restore the soul of the nation and fight for working families to move the country forward."

Between the lines: The pick gives Biden a running mate with strong prosecutorial skills, as Harris has proven at Senate hearings and during her strongest debate moments. That could help them make the case against Trump in the fall.

But some Democrats will be watching her political skills closely, after her presidential bid fizzled and a New York Times piece depicted a campaign full of bad decisions and backbiting.
She has also faced public and private questions from some Democrats about whether she'd be too focused on running for the presidency again, although other Democratic operatives have said the questions about her ambitions have been sexist and inappropriate.

The backstory: Harris, who at 55 is more than 20 years younger than Biden, is a former prosecutor and has been a senator from California since 2017.

She solidified her national profile when she grilled Trump administration nominees and administrators, including Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 2018.
President Obama recognized her talent early on, in 2013 famously calling her "brilliant," "dedicated" and "tough."

She had been seen as a front-runner when she announced her presidential campaign in January 2019, but she was never able to capitalize on the early momentum — except for a brief spike in public attention after her confrontation with Biden over federally mandated school busing at a June debate.

Harris dropped out of the race in December, saying she didn't have the funds to continue.

As a presidential candidate, Harris campaigned on a $500-a-month tax credit that she called "the largest working and middle-class tax cut in a generation." She started out as a supporter of Medicare for All, but then switched to an alternative that would have preserved a role for private insurance.

In an October interview with "Axios on HBO," she explained her decision: "I heard from people, 'Kamala, don't take away my choice if I want a private plan. Please don't take away my choice.' And I said, you know what? That is fair."
"I said to my team, I know we're going to take a political hit for it. ... I knew I'd be called a flip flopper for that."
She also said in that interview that "of course" it's different to run for president as a Black woman because in Americans' experience there is "not a reference point for who can do what, there is a lack of ability or a difficulty in imagining that someone who we have never seen can do a job that has been done, you know, forty-five times by someone who is not that person."

Harris has also faced some criticisms based on cases she argued and policies she enacted as California's attorney general:

She defended the death penalty as attorney general, despite being personally against it.
She didn't take a position on Proposition 47, approved by voters, that reduced some felonies to misdemeanors.
She opposed a bill that would have required her office to investigate police shootings.

Reality check: It will be Biden who sets the policies if he wins — but Harris's record will be relevant if she's elected vice president, especially if she takes ownership of specific issues and projects as Biden did when he was Barack Obama's vice president.

It will be also be relevant to her own political future.

What's next: Harris's speech accepting the nomination at the Democratic convention will be her chance to introduce herself to an audience of general election voters — and to show how well she and Biden will be able to work as a team.

[Darth Yan]

I’m not exactly enthused by the choice.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytime ... e.amp.html

Google Kevin Cooper and George Gage in particular

[The Romulan Republic]

Harris is basically the safe, popular (within the party) choice for Biden. She's not the best pick necessarily, but far from the worst he could have made.

[Gandalf]

Harris is basically the safe, popular (within the party) choice for Biden. She's not the best pick necessarily, but far from the worst he could have made.

Yeah, this does not appear to be an "electrify the electorate" style pick. But on the upside, safety and predictability looks good next to Trump's circus.

[Darth Yan]

Maybe but I'll be holding my nose.

[Gandalf]

Maybe but I'll be holding my nose.

A nose holding vote counts exactly the same as an enthusiastic one.

[FireNexus]

The choice is fine. My only real concern with it is that there could be some looming “declined to prosecute a cop who murders someone between now and November” that couldn’t exist with many of the other choices. I’m sad it’s not Liz Warren, but after Floyd it had to be a woman of color.

I am excited that a pick, any pick, makes the chance that Bernie Sanders somehow falls ass backwards into the Oval Office as close to zero as any bad outcome can be in 2020.

[The Romulan Republic]

The choice is fine. My only real concern with it is that there is some looming “declined to prosecute a cop who murders someone between now and November” that will shake shit up.

It would be almost criminally negligent if they didn't carefully vet her record for that.

I’m excited that a pick, any pick, makes the chance that Bernie Sanders somehow falls ass backwards into the Oval Office as as close to zero as any horrible turn of events can be in 2020.

Can you just let it fucking go? He's not going to be President, he wasn't going to be President before this. Even if Biden had dropped dead without picking a VP candidate, Bernie would almost certainly not have gotten the nomination, though it might have meant a viciously divisive contested convention that would fuck the whole party (which I'm sure you would consider preferable to Bernie as nominee).

There was literally no reason to take a shot at Sanders here other than to troll Sanders supporters because you're petty and vindictive.

[Gandalf]

Why can't one take a shot at Sanders? Nobody would mind if we took shots at varied Republican politicians, or the massive cast of Democratic also-rans.

[Jub]

The DNC is nothing if not predictable running the safe boring VP next to their safe boring candidate. If they lose again due to low turn out this will be partially to blame.

[The Romulan Republic]

Why can't one take a shot at Sanders? Nobody would mind if we took shots at varied Republican politicians, or the massive cast of Democratic also-rans.

Because its really tired, and because it serves no purpose other than to increase bad feeling and divisiveness.

The primary is over. Biden's the nominee. And I'd be just as happy never to hear about the primary again.

[FireNexus]

There was literally no reason to take a shot at Sanders here other than to troll Sanders supporters because you're petty and vindictive.

Perhaps, I could be shitting on Bernie Sanders without giving a fuck what you or any of his other braindead fans think about it. Which is exactly what happens, incidentally. Not everything is about you.

[The Romulan Republic]

Progressives (including myself) may not have been giving Harris enough credit. While she tacked Rightward a bit in the primary supposedly, her voting record is pretty damn progressive. In the 2017-18 Congressional session, for example, she voted with Bernie Sanders 93% of the time, breaking with him on 42 votes including 2 "major" ones:

https://projects.propublica.org/represe ... anders/115

Voting record-wise, she's about as Left as Warren.

This is... not a bad thing.

[The Romulan Republic]

Dems just flipped a South Carolina House district by a twenty point margin:

https://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/Charlest ... 02.255596/#/

[Gandalf]

Progressives (including myself) may not have been giving Harris enough credit. While she tacked Rightward a bit in the primary supposedly, her voting record is pretty damn progressive. In the 2017-18 Congressional session, for example, she voted with Bernie Sanders 93% of the time, breaking with him on 42 votes including 2 "major" ones:

https://projects.propublica.org/represe ... anders/115

Voting record-wise, she's about as Left as Warren.

This is... not a bad thing.

Yeah, Senator Harris isn't a bad pick. AG Harris is.

[Darth Yan]

There was literally no reason to take a shot at Sanders here other than to troll Sanders supporters because you're petty and vindictive.

Perhaps, I could be shitting on Bernie Sanders without giving a fuck what you or any of his other braindead fans think about it. Which is exactly what happens, incidentally. Not everything is about you.

Considering that Bernie already conceded it comes off as petty regardless. Kamala has a lot of dodgy shit in her prosecutorial record.

And considering that Bernie has better policies than Biden you come off as far more brain dead

Bernie’s the way of the future and his policies would do more than Biden’s mediocrity

[Gandalf]

Bernie's the way of the future? Democratic socialism has legs, but Sanders not so much I think. His moment was in 2016, and he blew it.

[Dalton]

Man every fuckin time I step foot in this forum it’s because the usual cast of jackasses is starting shit. You all have no idea how close I am to banhammer time.

Keep it civil. Or else.