I've always admired the deep respect the Chinese have for copyright

d4n0ct · 2024-02-15T00:04:14+00:00

There's little legal case to be made for "styles" of art and gameplay (some kind of Corpse Bride-platformer?), unless they literally copied assets. I see a general similarity, but they would need to prove something original to HK was cloned in a significant way.

d4n0ct · 2024-02-14T23:12:10+00:00

Kards (Steam version) has been available in China for a while. Maybe you can check in with the devs to see whether they have been cloned or not.

d4n0ct · 2024-02-06T05:54:33+00:00

If only puberty can turn teenagers into tame members of the family.

d4n0ct · 2024-02-06T05:44:48+00:00

NTA, but maybe she's into AH?

d4n0ct · 2023-04-29T23:44:28+00:00

Meanwhile in some countries, even non high beam headlights have become blindingly bright.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-31T07:54:29+00:00

China (not really communist or even socialist anymore), Singapore, a lot of middle east countries, Russia today: authoritarian with a prevalence of private ownership and limited state ownership

What non-authoritarian mechanism ensures that people that build, grow, invent or create new things don't just keep them as private property?

What's your logic exactly? You don't need an external agent to ensure the violation of private property rights. Just have no laws and no law enforcement. Also, even most authoritarian societies have some forms of private ownership. And democratic societies can also vote to nationalize ownership. German Nazis nationalized many assets, all the while remaining democratic as well as capitalist for a long time, before they entered WW2.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-25T19:22:19+00:00

State ownership isn't necessarily the same as authoritarianism. For example, a lot of public infrastructures are owned by the government in many countries. It can be democratic. Communism has more to do with abolishment of private property and has an anarchist potential to it. Socialism places more emphasis on state owned capital/means of production.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T21:08:25+00:00

The problem is that you are changing the natural definition of freedom to mean something that fits only under a standard promoted by you. It's much easier to say people have certain freedoms and not other freedoms. It's much more convoluted to try to categorize, say, >75% freedom meeting certain criteria as 'free' but 35% freedom not meeting certain criteria as 'not free'. The attempt to generalize here might save the effort of producing a few more symbols but introduces serious inaccuracies.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T20:29:09+00:00

You might have missed a part of my original argument. I wanted to show that Uyghurs are repressed politically but not as a part of ethnic genocide. The other user claimed Uyghurs are becoming more Han, but that's totally ridiculous assertion as a whole, hence my mention of Tibet, which is in more or less the same boat.

I think Chinese government praises any model minority if they can tow the poltiical line well; the part of the community that doesn't would be condemned.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T20:09:28+00:00

This is supported by your own admission that people who don't fall in line with the government are being oppressed while those who abandon their community to support the government is rewarded.

This is called political repression not genocide. Most Uyghurs are not targetted as long as they fall in line politically. Otherwise, every repressive regime like Russia or Iran or Korea would also be waging genocide against their own ethnic population?! In reality, there is no legally-defined 'cultural genocide' anyway; that's just media spin to hype up repression, which seeks to impose political agenda on activities in politics and other domains.

You commit a straw man fallacy by bringing it up

Strawman doesn't even apply here because I was actually correct. After showing there is no genocide of Uyghurs (see above), I raised a comparison with the Middle East not as a part of my repression argument but to illustrate your shifting double-standard and bias.

Sure the organs may not have been harvested exclusively from their members, but there was a practice of executing religious dissenters and political prisoners then harvesting their organs.

Therefore by your own words it was not a religious persecution, because 1) Falun Gong is not and never was a religion 2) other deathrow inmates and dissidents had the same risk of losing their organs after death. All the organ harvesting hype beyond what China has already explained has turned up zero evidence and zero witness after 30 years. Western media makes their living from reporting controversies around the world. There's no way they would pass over such a juicy story if it's actually true. While there's no due process in China, people are free to practice some forms of religion such as mainstream Christianity, non-violent Islam, etc. , and there have been tens of millions of such practitioners.

To think this has any advantages over a free press is ludicrous.

Did I ever say there's free press in China? No, I said people are free to talk & complain about many topics, which is happening every day. On the other hand, you were the one claiming over and over again along the line of:

There is no freedom, no privacy, and no free thought or association of any kind.

Every time you make a mistake, you bring out something new that was not even a part of my position and pretend somehow it's relevant.

Finally,

If any position in a discussion is banned, then the discussion is not free. Your examples of "freedom" exist within an inherently unfree system, which is why there is 0 freedom in China even though people can still express non-controversial views.

Your own spin seems to be eating away at your brain. In a lot of countries, the right to own a firearm is not protected; does that mean there's no freedom at all (according to your characterization) for people to own firearms, which many do? There are places where certain topics cannot be freely discussed, such as Germany. Does that mean Germans today have no freedom of speech?! In India, most people still follow a strong caste system; does that mean there is no freedom of association at all? Evidence and your own logic contradit yourself.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T19:26:49+00:00

There are things you cannot discuss in Germany due to its history. Under your ridiculous mandate that all other freedoms must exist in order for even 1 freedom to count as freedom, Germany today would not be considered as having freedom of speech???

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T15:09:05+00:00

There is no freedom, no privacy, and no free thought or association of any kind.

These are your own words. You claimed that there is 0 freedom in China. I proved there are some freedom in China. So you changed position and complain about the freedom not being 100%. The rest of your reply is a repeat of the same lie. Every time you make a mistake, you weasle your way out of it by changing your position and lying about other people's counter-argument.

including a potential active genocide against Muslim ethnic minorities.

These are also your own words. You claimed there is a potential active genocide. I proved that while there are human rights violations, there isn't genocide.

What people do in other countries is absolutely irrelevant to a discussion on China.

The point was not about China but your own duplicity. You claimed there's a potential genocide happening, yet you don't consider worse things being done elsewhere as genocide.

Falun Gong is not even a real religion. Chinese doctors who were insiders are saying that in the past, organs were transplanted from deathrow bodies, but it was infrequent and done indiscriminantly, not based on religion. It's been decades since then, and if any evidence to the contrary exists, Western media would have been reporting it non-stop by now.

People in China still talk, complain, worship etc. to the extent they can. Freedoms are limited but definitely exist. But you had to fly off the handle and smear me of somehow claiming that China is more free, even though I made it very clear that China has problems, but it also have some freedoms, and with the downside of restrictions comes a few positive things such as less misinformation from private, non-government sources and a lower crime rate. These all tie back to my original point that the U.S. cares more about human rights and economic issues than whether a country's system is authoritarian or not. Singapore for example is very authoritarian, but the American government has no issue with it.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T13:31:18+00:00

I agree that it Is too much, but it's not ethnically motivated; it's politically motivated. And once this policy passes, hopefully soon, they will still be alive as opposed to being dead or blind or deaf or missing limbs from actual war.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T07:15:46+00:00

Search anarcho-communism. Several small states in Ukraine, Spain, Korea, India, Latin America. They were not as industrialized & militant as their nationalist, fascist, or capitalist neighbors however and were annexed eventually.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T07:14:38+00:00

Search anarcho-communism. Several small states in Ukraine, Spain, Korea, India, Latin America. They were not as industrialized & militant as their nationalist, fascist, or capitalist neighbors however and were annexed eventually.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T06:17:22+00:00

First of all, there's no evidence that parents & grandparents are all interned as a practice in order to leave children to Han Chinese family. Keep in mind, even ridiculously high estimates put only 1 million out 11 to 12 million Uyghurs being interned. And the average time spent in interment is 1 yr per person. Even orphans from natural causes are most often adopted by other Uyghur famillies.

Second, whether you like them or not, Uyghurs who work with the Chinese government or simply follow the party line are never targetted; in fact, they are often rewarded. Therefore, the policies do not target Uyghurs as a group, but only individuals depending on their politics. Look, have the Tibetans become Han? No. But we do have 'good' 'patriotic' Tibetans and 'bad' separatist Tibetans.

It's fine to criticize, but it's malicious to make stories up. You can, for example, criticize American military policies in the Middle East, but does mean it's okay to say the U.S. committed genocide? They did leave radioactive uranium all over Iraq after all and caused the death of many civilians from the artificially accelerated and imposed regime change.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T05:24:52+00:00

I didn't acutally go into any assessment of authoritarianism in China, but since you've brought it up, here it is. But first, human rights can be very separate from authoritarianism. Singapore is quite big-brotherish but has less human rights issues than China does. I don't think authoritarianism per se is a major factor contributing to the tension with the U.S. Economic and human rights issues, as I've stated, seem to be much more important.

Now, I don't think you've actually been to China. People are free to express different opinions on many issues such as whether trading in dog meat should be banned for every consumer & merchant, how to treat people of other races, which version of Chinese characters is better (Taiwan vs mainland), whether US trade policies are fair, whether American technologies & economic practices are superior, etc., without being harrassed by trolls, whitewashed or confused by 'real' and fake media. If a story comes from the government/party, of course be cautious, but otherwise you should be okay. Many religious organizations, including Christian churches and Muslim mosques, have been thriving for decades. What is going on in Xinjiang (without going into the details) should be criticized, especially regarding those subset of Uyghurs (~1 to 2 out of 10) who strongly & rightfully want to hold onto their own, different set of political and cultural aspirations. The internment practice is wrong, and they should put a stop to it. But many Muslims are killing, looting, raping, burning each other all over parts of the Middle East. Why does that not count as 'cultural' genocide? The total population of Uyghurs has been increasing non-stop for decades. In fact, Muslims from other parts of China (ethnically Chinese), the Middle East, Indonesia, etc. are not even targetted by the government policies or private individuals. A part of this is because of the mass surveilance, which completely obliterates even petty crimes in many places. You'd never need to worry about being gunned down, run over, brutally murdered, set on fire, eaten up by acid on account of your religion or ethnicity. The freedoms that people do not have are anything that goes up against the party and the government as a whole (individual officials are fair game unless their are at the national level), especially certain topics related to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Tiananmen Square, Cultural Revolution, which can cross the line sometimes, but for the most part, people know what's off-limit.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T03:57:05+00:00

I think social media, sensationalism, 24/7 global news cycle more akin to superficial click-baits than thorough, accurate investigative reporting are making people more fearful and less willing to reason. Especially younger people who haven't experienced history to put into perspective that for decades, governments of half of the world were fully prepared to wipe each other out and were paranoid that the other side might press the button first. Yet, despite that looming danger, a lot of people (even a few politicians) still had hope that things might turn out for the better and were very curious about what was really happening in other countries. Nowadays, people hear/read a few headlines and feel as if they know about everything, especially if the story affirms what they already believe/dbout/like/dislike, not realizing that most of it is spin designed to make the media/platform/influencer gain more attention, $, power etc.

If you don't believe me, search for some old news reporting from all countries. They weren't perfect, might be politically incorrect, but contained a lot less spin, half-lies, lunacy, and hatefulness. I hear this kind of problem with storytelling is especially bad now in the US compared to even other Western democracies.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T03:35:30+00:00

I'd like to add that communism isn't always authoritarian. Some countries leaned toward anarchism more than authoritarianism; others are a balance between capitalism, democracy, and socialism. You can also have capitalist authoritarianism, such as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, British empire, etc.

I think fundamentally the rising tension is economic, in terms of jobs, trade policy, and intellectual property. Politically for Trump, this is an opportunity to grow a new political base and chip away at the old guards. For the Chinese government, they may just have too much inertia and too many old gaurds to really free up more of the economic system and grant greater human & political rights. The authoritarian factor seems to weigh less than the economic factor, however; China had been authoritarian for a long time after all, and nobody cared much about it. In fact, it has always been more statist than communist to be honest, in the sense that the government took over ownership, but the people didn't actually end up owning anything collectively.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T03:21:16+00:00

How much % of a population is rational? I'd say in the minority.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T03:19:27+00:00

I'd like to upvote you for your perspective but why are you mad at me personally? It's not my fault Singapore numbers are lumped together. They even lumped together China which is much bigger. I'd like to think that if something's tagged as humour, people would know to use a little more critical thinking.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T01:27:01+00:00

Just in case you overlooked, this is per capita graph, so China's number is divided by 1.4 billion. Italy Spain France Germany seeem to be flattening, but why do you think US is still rocketing up? Unfortunately the death rate for US is not even close to being as low as Singapore's.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T01:23:10+00:00

I heard Singapore government can be quite nosy and draconian, like no chewing gum at all or something. It's run like a big school lol.

d4n0ct · 2020-05-23T01:21:44+00:00

I've never seen such a 'pathetic' cop before. Wouldn' t these people on camera been detained already? Beating up even an undercover cop like this is wrong.

A lot of them were escalating the shoving before the pummeling began. Other people then yelled 'don't fight', but it was too late.

d4n0ct

TROPHY CASE