Comments by "Alan Friesen" (@alanfriesen9837) on "Kim Iversen" channel.

If you don't like saying "yuan" (Yoo-Ahn) you can call it by its initials for renminbi (RMB).
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@alexnoyle CCP sources do not suggest genocide. They suggest investment and construction in Xinjiang in order to provide opportunity for the local population, as well as a need to combat fundamentalism, separatism and violence and an intention to do so through education. It's interpreted as genocide only by those who want to destroy China, those who want to keep the Uighurs as a static museum exhibit culture going forward, and those who listen uncritically to these highly dubious sources.
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@jugurtha7800 Pax Americana is good for the United States and for smaller countries under the American military and ideological umbrella. For America's near peers (China, Russia, Iran) and those countries who run afoul of American ideology (Cuba, Syria, Venezuela) and their citizens, Pax Americana is terrible.
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@alexnoyle It's enough to get you profiled, which is a real enough problem. As for enough to get you incarcerated, do you have some evidence of that? Reeducation is reserved for those deemed radicalized. Discussion of religion is not sufficient to meet this bar. I don't think wearing a beard is either. Reeducation is not for the purpose of erasing culture. It is for the purpose of suppressing radical fundamentalism and separatism, which some people interpret as the same thing, but it definitely is not. Are there abuses? Probably. Where found, they should be addressed. But the Uighur culture appears to be thriving in Xinjiang, with full support from the government. No credible evidence I've seen of genocide has surfaced.
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@isoldel9313 DW seems to have a severe split personality regarding China. I've seen a lot of brutal Deutsche Welle hit jobs on China but I've also seen some real balanced stuff and even some debunking including a highly critical interview of one of the promoters of the Hong Kong demonstrations. I guess it's a big enough organization to have multiple viewpoints.
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@jugurtha7800 It is a coercive hegemony. Don't get me wrong, America has done a lot of good in the world, but we're kind of like the preacher who will only feed the famished if they stay for the service.
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@jugurtha7800 One of the exceptionally few points I agree with Trump on is his desire to disengage with the Middle East. Even saying that though, as much as I want out of Afghanistan (A theater that we have to rotate and supply through Pakistan), I can't in good conscience espouse the abandonment of Afghanistan's women to the tender mercies of Afghanistan's conservative elements without a trustworthy defender in place. Unfortunately, reality is complicated.
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@mypartyisprivate8693 There are listed in the Xinjiang Victims Database which appears to be operated by Shahit.biz and is referenced in the Newlines Institute report "The Uyghur Genocide: The Examination of China's Breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention" 13,998 "victims". I'm sure that they would argue that this is a small sampling and I would concur. But it is the number that they have confirmed to have been detained or otherwise "victimized" and it is the only hard number I've found. This includes 5,711 imported from the infamous Zenz cache which it claims "has unfortunately not been made public". The profiles on the database that I've viewed have so far only consisted of individuals accused of fomenting separatism or violence. That's not to say that many of these people are not inappropriately identified as such, but it does suggest that ethnic cleansing is not the stated purpose of detention. Some of the letters shown written from detention have the kind of tell-tale messaging that suggests that those writing the messages are trying to get on the good side of their jailers. Whether this is coerced or merely opportunistic is hard to say. I'm combing through this report and I will try to take it seriously. There are real concerns enumerated and I want to be fair, but I am admittedly biased, and I've seen some bias in the report as well. There is a lot of conflation in the report between separatism, terrorism, and Uighur identity, which I don't think is fair either to the Uighurs themselves or to the authorities in Xinjiang. The other conflation I've noticed is that reports of policies of assimilation are viewed as cultural genocide. This is deeply problematic considering the need for assimilation in order for individuals in these communities to get along in the broader modern world. Some of the evidence is pretty anecdotal. One source throws terms like "concentration camp" and "Gestapo tactics" around, strongly alluding to the holocaust, which is highly hyperbolic language undermining sober assessment. I've still got a lot of work to do in order to properly understand the full contents of the report. I do worry that many innocents are gathered up into the dragnet that is trying to weed out the separatists from the rest of Uighur society. I worry about stuff like forced confessions and McCarthyistic efforts to get people to name names. These are things that I think are genuine human rights issues, but I don't see anything that I would characterize as genocidal yet. I hope I'm not being a genocide denier. I don't want the Uighur culture to disappear. But I don't think the Chinese do either. I think they are pursuing, perhaps too aggressively, the elimination of a very real separatist element in this region, and I think that that is well within their rights to try to maintain that sovereign integrity. I'll continue to look at the evidence I find, but I am not going to accept the labeling of a targeted anti-separatist campaign as a broader "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." without better evidence than what I've so far seen.
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@Albert_Einstein_not No it's not.
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I'm not sure what the Russians or Iranians claimed. What the Chinese Foreign Minister did was suggest a possibility, probably one he didn't believe in himself, but which he used to counter-narrate the viral conspiracy claim theory that the virus was released by a Chinese lab in Wuhan. It was aggressive and irresponsible wolf-warrior diplomacy, but it fell short of an actual accusation of sabotage. I'm sorry if this sight is being censored, but I don't come here much anymore because I certainly get the feeling that this sight advocates risky behavior that is detrimental to the health of the American people. I know that there are many folks who don't trust authority and we've just been through a four-year lesson on why not to trust authority, but considering the circumstances of the moment this site and sites like it seem like they are more part of the problem than part of the solution.
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It's fine to be unsatisfied with both American parties, there's a lot to be unsatisfied about. But to say that they are the same is just stupid. One party is pro-civil rights, pro-labor, pro-education, and pro-environmentalism. The other is pro-life, anti-tax, pro-guns, and anti-regulation. If you're a single issue voter and you don't care about any of these things then maybe they look the same to you, but their priorities are very different.
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@manyquestions1157 I'm not suggesting that there aren't issues and practices that both parties have similar takes on, but for many of your examples you're conflating the inability to change practices with complicity in those practices. There is definitely corruption in both parties, as there is in any organization of any size. But even here there is a difference as one party suffers from corruption while the other embraces it. I don't think the planks I mentioned are minor; I think they are fundamental to the soul of our country. I think you are angry, and perhaps rightfully so, but it clouds your vision to the point that you can't differentiate between a good party with flaws, and an evil party. And frankly, your blindness, and that of those like you, are a big reason (though not the only one) that Trump's in the White House today, and why our country is in the greatest existential danger it's been in since the second world war.
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This title is more dangerous than any Democratic candidate.
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