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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Another factor that contributes to China’s lower incarceration rates is that they often choose not to prosecute “personal” crimes. This would be things like robbery, sexual assault, etc.

    Tons of these crimes aren’t prosecuted in the U.S., either, especially claims of sexual assault. And here are some sentencing guidelines from China that address both those crimes, which they don’t have just for fun.

    You probably don’t understand Chinese law as much as you think you do, and you’re definitely exaggerating the idea that it’s uniquely unfair or arbitrary. Pre-trial incarceration happens all over the world, police telling suspects to confess happens all over the world, collateral consequences of arrest and imprisonment happen all over the world.

    There’s also a ton of context needed to determine whether any of these things are even bad in a given situation. Pre-trial incarceration has all sorts of issues, but if someone goes on a shooting spree and has a history of not showing up to court dates for prior arrests, it’s appropriate.


  • it’s against the law in China to even say you don’t agree with the law

    Your link doesn’t support this, and it’s nonsense on its face, anyway.

    “Do not oppose the basic principles established by the Constitution” is not “you can’t even say you disagree with the law,” as anyone familiar with the difference between a constitution and subordinate forms of laws (e.g., statutes) can tell you. And of course you obviously can say the constitution should be changed; how else do you think they amended it in 2018?


  • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
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    3 days ago

    If you get a DUI and the state orders you to take an alcohol class, is that re-education meant to eradicate your culture?

    If you do a bunch of petty thefts and the state orders you to participate in a re-entry plan that includes job training, is that re-education meant to eradicate your culture?


  • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
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    3 days ago

    the US does not incarerate them just for being black

    Historically, this is completely untrue. The post-Reconstruction U.S. famously had all sorts of laws designed to lock up black people for being black, as well as officially tolerated (with public officials often taking part) terror killings of black people just for being black. Even after Jim Crow, the War on Drugs was was explicitly designed to disproportionately lock up black people:

    “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

    “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

    Even if you argue that today this intent has been largely wrung out of the system (which is not a given, and does not address the remaining disproportionate effects of the War on Drugs), there’s still the question of when exactly the U.S. stopped doing what you’re calling genocide and started doing non-genocidal mass incarceration.



  • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
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    3 days ago

    I just don’t believe the vast majority of “lesser evil” Democrats because I saw them turn around and enthusiastically cheer on Harris, and then act like someone shot their dog when she lost. If you’re reluctantly supporting 99% Hitler over 100% Hitler, you don’t go to 99% Hitler rallies and you don’t care when he loses.




  • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
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    4 days ago

    There’s also a point here in how if you have to kill a bunch of people to fight a movement, and still lose, that means you’re fighting a genuinely popular movement. But if it takes orders of magnitude less violence to fight a movement, and the movement fails, how popular was it to begin with?


  • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
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    4 days ago

    If the evidence shows few people support the government, you believe it; if the evidence shows many people support the government, that itself is evidence of government threatening its people. This is an unfalsifiable position; you’ve just decided you don’t like the government no matter what the evidence says.

    The 90% figure is also from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Do you think they had the wool pulled over their eyes?



  • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
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    4 days ago

    If China is a socialist state worth supporting then I’m a donkey with a laser dick :P But I’m more anarchistically inclined

    Chinese state propaganda

    Pretty easy to see your views on China, which sound an awful lot like the State Department’s. If I’m reading too much into what you’re saying, tell us what you really think about the PRC.



  • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
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    4 days ago

    Comparing different countries’ actions in similar circumstances is the very foundation of international law. “The international community didn’t consider this similar incident a breach of international law, so it shouldn’t consider my much smaller version of the same thing a breach” isn’t whataboutism, it’s an argument advanced in and accepted by the ICJ all the time.

    These types of comparisons usually aren’t even used to excuse anything, either (and they aren’t used that way here). The point of the comparison is to ask “do you have a principled opposition to this act that you would apply universally?”




  • That can be fixed with restrictions on what corporations can get away with

    The problem is that capital can and does react to this. Companies will bribe and lobby until they can erode whatever meager guardrails you managed to install, and in the meantime they’ll carefully calculate how much they can break the law before the consequences outweigh the benefits.

    As long as capital is the main driver of politics this will keep happening. “Take money out of politics” doesn’t work, either, because capital will erode or evade those laws, too. You do have to look at moving on from capitalism if you want anything more than a small, temporary change.