• Vodulas [they/them]@beehaw.org
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    11 months ago

    I am not a fan of the Guardian, but according to the subject of the article (they call him Li), he is a dissident and was under active investigation. I don’t think they would have just let him leave

    • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      thats fair, but from an outside perspective (from either country) it looks exactly like how the US treats its dissidents. i doubt someone like julian assange would get better treatment.

      also, i dont know how they defined “dissident” in this case but its vague enough that i wont judge too hastily.

      • raccoona_nongrata@beehaw.org
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        11 months ago

        While I personally don’t think Julian Assange did anything ethically or morally wrong, and the US government’s dogged pursuit of him was unjust, he did leak military intel which is much more serious and legally significant than what people often get jailed and harassed for in China. Like, I would not expect to leak info about the military in any country and just walk away as if nothing happened.

        People have literally been jailed for making Tweets in China, people have been punished as retaliation against someone in their family being a dissident, we really shouldn’t be comparing the two countries as if they’re the same, regardless of the numerous major issues the US has. And even if they were the same, it doesn’t make anything China does even slightly more justifiable.

        • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          people have been jailed for making tweets in the uk.

          and probably the us too, im just too lazy to look it up.

          communists are considered dissidents in the us, ask one of them how would they be treated if they got singled out.

          you dont even have to get that far, look at how all the recent big protests went…

          also assange exposed american war crimes, thats what this is truly about.

        • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          why is the us torturing him then?

          do you think they would let him up and cross the border?

      • Vodulas [they/them]@beehaw.org
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        11 months ago

        Just because one state is also shitty to dissenters does not mean another state isn’t. They don’t cancel each other out.

        Dissident is pretty vague, probably on purpose. As much as I dislike the US government, I can say the government here is shit and not get hauled to jail for the most part. The same is not necessarily true in China

        • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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          11 months ago

          is it?

          how is the us treating communists, smaller trade unionists, palestine supporters, blm people and such over there? those people have sharp criticism and are the true dissenters to varying degrees.

          ask one of those what could happen to them if they get singled out as a leader or something. i judge by actions not words.

          e: immigrants too

          • Vodulas [they/them]@beehaw.org
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            11 months ago

            I think you 100% missed the point. No matter how the US treats people, China can also treat people terribly. They are not mutually exclusive.

            • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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              11 months ago

              You were saying the US is better, all I said is that it isn’t.

              One of them never sponsored a coup in my and most of my neighbouring countries.

              • Vodulas [they/them]@beehaw.org
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                11 months ago

                I did imply the US is better, and I probably should not have. And even in that I did not mean the government doesn’t do horrific things. Probably should not have made the comparison TBH. That doesn’t mean China doesn’t also do horrific shit, even if the way they do it is different

      • SLfgb@feddit.nl
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        10 months ago

        yes.

        The US tortures its dissidents. Just look at how they treated War on Terror whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Even the UN special rapporteur on torture spoke up about her treatment. She was driven to attempt suicide in prison multiple times. Including when she refused to cooperate with the secret Grand Jury investigating WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

        Julian Assange is about to be buried in a US prison and get a taste of that same medicine. Where are the Guardian outrage-articles on that? Oh, wait, that’s right. They threw him under the bus as soon as he’d given them access to the best scoops of the century (US diplomatic cables). The Guardian journos divulged the pass phrase to the unredacted cables in their book giving anyone who could locate the files online access. Cryptome published the unredacted cables before WL did while Assange called the State Department trying to warn them of the bad news. The Guardian then tried to make out like WL had acted irresponsibly in publishing the unredacted cables, when in reality the cat was already out of the bag and WL was doing harm-minimization. The Guardian’s blame-shifting makes my blood boil.

        The ‘Guardian’ has no ethics and can’t be trusted on anything political imo.