China's Response To the Internet Addiction Death 250
eldavojohn writes "Last week, news broke of a tragic incident that resulted in the death of a 16-year-old boy at one of China's internet addiction camps. Details were scarce except for reports that the camp remained open. New reports are now coming in from China Daily that report 13 arrested and the camp closed down on Friday with 122 participants being sent home. The vice-chief of the district has stated that the authorities are working on the case to identify and punish the criminals involved in the death. Xinhua is reporting that the camp was unlicensed. This is directly in conflict with what the Southern Metropolis Daily reporter is saying, 'When the reporter arrived outside the rear wall of the school, children on the third and fourth floors started to stick notes into aluminum cans, drink bottles, and slippers, and others folded notes into paper planes. They tried to throw them over the wall, but owing to the distance, none of them succeeded. Some children had papers bearing the messages "SOS" and "beating" which they waved out the windows. Some wrote calls for help on their clothing, which they displayed to the reporter. Some even yelled for help. They were all stopped by the instructors.' Here is that original story in Chinese. Is China handling this delicate issue appropriately or are the news reports of justice and monitoring treatments merely a facade?"
Wait and see (Score:5, Informative)
There was a similar case at a Florida boot camp a few years back. A kid was beaten to death, and it was all caught on tape. The murderers were acquitted [go.com], but Florida did shut down its boot camps. We'll probably see similar results from this incident in China.
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Or summary executions of all involved - flip a coin.
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See, I've never understood this viewpoint. "Well sure, he was being beaten and kicked, but it wasn't the beating and kicking that did it, it was the underlying medical condition, and the forced exercise that he was beaten and kicked to make him do, and there's no way that a violent take-down by a 200-pound guard, landing on him with his full weight could have contributed..."
Sure, he had a medical condition, and sure, their other brutal physically abusive tactics (forced exercise) and contempt for anyone sho
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The murderers were acquitted [go.com], but Florida did shut down its boot camps.
Small nitpick but they aren't 'murderers' when they were found innocent by a jury of their peers.
We'll probably see similar results from this incident in China.
Because they care so much about public outrage and human rights?
Re:Wait and see (Score:5, Informative)
The murderers were acquitted [go.com], but Florida did shut down its boot camps.
Small nitpick but they aren't 'murderers' when they were found innocent by a jury of their peers.
Small nitpick, but aquittal != innocent.
Aquittal simply means there was not enough evidence to find them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Re:Wait and see (Score:5, Insightful)
Since in America you are innocent until proven guilty, and they were not proven guilty...
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That is an extremely stupid thing to write.
Innocence or guilt is a matter of fact, not of proof.
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You don't get ruled innocent though, merely not guilty.
Re:Wait and see (Score:4, Insightful)
And here we're supposed to be all versed in binary logic here at /. That's like saying that an equation doesn't evaluate to true, just to not false. Here's a hint, just as !false == true, so does !guilty == innocent. Particularly in a legal system that is built completely on the notion that you are innocent until proven guilty. Until that guilt is proven you are and have always been innocent.
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True, but in reality the distinctions of guilt or innocence mean little outside of the legal framework. We have established a method of determining guilt in a fair and balanced system, and when that system fails to prove guilt then essentially "factual guilt" is left between the accused and God, the FSM, or their conscience - or anyone who they chose to confide a confession to. Since no one here on Slashdot is likely to meet any of those descriptions, then any discussion of "factual guilt" is useless, as
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That's amusing. Way to quote an "authoritative" source as a means for trying to prove a subtle point. FWIW, just because Wikipedia says something is a tautology does not make it so. The statement "a person is not legally guilty until a jury returns a verdict of guilty" is not a tautology, it is only true in a system which says you are "innocent until proven guilty". You could just as easily have a system in which the accused are presumed guilty, where the courts either find them innocent or affirm their
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"just as !false == true, so does !guilty == innocent"
You presume that people are as logical as a programming language? Or, you presume that law is that logical?
Either way, you fail.
Do you, perhaps, live in your mother's basement? You should get out and stufy people more. You might even browse some lawbooks and legal cases. In real life, not only are there black and white, and shades of grey, but there are MILLIONS OF COLORS. Kinda like your monitor, I hope.
If juries could be handed just black and white
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To put it another way, consider the following scenario. I go o
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That's like saying that an equation doesn't evaluate to true, just to not false. Here's a hint, just as !false == true
You're referring to the excluded middle [wikipedia.org], but intuitionist logic doesn't don't exclude the middle. A truth value can be true, false, or null.
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Re:Wait and see (Score:4, Informative)
Since in America you are innocent until proven guilty, and they were not proven guilty...
*presumed* innocent until proven guilty. presumptions != truth.
You're confused about this. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're reasoning on the basis of short slogans, and not actually the rules that these slogans imperfectly summarize.
In the USA, the criminal court system operates on a presumption of the innocence of the defendant. This means that the prosecution has the burden of proving that the charges are true; defendants don't have the burden of proving themselves innocent, and have the right to not testify during the process.
A person truly does commit a murder, but is acquitted of the charge for it, is quite simply an acquitted murderer. If you call somebody an "acquitted murderer" there's of course the issue of why do you believe you are justified in believing that person to be a murderer when the court ruled in his favor, but we're all certainly entitled to our own opinions.
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Re:Wait and see (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, with a little googling you will find that according to 12 of Chinese criminal procedure law no one is guilty of a crime without a people's court rendering a judgment according to law.
It is a presumption of innocence.
15 minutes to Wapner (Score:2)
according to 12 of Chinese criminal procedure law no one is guilty of a crime without a people's court rendering a judgment according to law.
I'll assume that this people's court [wikipedia.org] has nothing to do with televised arbitration [wikipedia.org].
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It's funny how people are very quick to lecture on how the US doesn't necessarily work the way the US Constitution says it should but assume the People's Republic of China works the way the Constitution says it does.
Actually if you read the wiki article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_people's_court_of_the_People's_Republic_of_China [wikipedia.org]
During the 1940s and 1950s, People's Courts were village meetings in which peasants would complain about their landlords. This was known as 'Speak Bitterness' and was set up by the Communists for the denunciation of landlords.
Hmm, more Googling finds this
http://hilly2007-8.wikispaces.com/Speak+Bitterness+Meetings [wikispaces.com]
The "Speak Bitterness" Meetings, as they were called, came after The Agrarian Reform Law (June 30, 1950). This law being introduced not too long after Chairman Mao Zedong gained control in 1949, gained control of all of China's land for the new government, and allowed them to use and distribute the land as needed. With this new distribution of land, the wealthy or 'rich' population in China (specifically farm owning/ landlords,) had parts of their land taken from them and given to "poor" peasants. This certainly caused the peasants to benefit from this law, and those who already already owned the land to grief from it, however this concern for land-owners was soon distracted by the "Speak Bitterness" trials. Because the vast majority of China was lower class, they more than likely had been under the employment or have suffered from a Land-owning person, and so the Communist party members encouraged the peasants to go to these meetings and 'speak bitterness' about their grief and those who may have caused that grief.
In addition, the vast majority of peasants in China had little to no education, they had no reason to think that this would cause draw backs or repercussions to the economy and themselves. These meetings along with the newly given land distracted peasants from the fact that they had no equipment, wealth or money to cultivate the land given to them, and focused their anger and contempt towards their previous land owners, or even those who they simply did not like. China became something similar to the Salem Witch trials or old Soviet Russia in the peasant areas under Stalin, in which people were turning on each other simply because they could. Communist party members actually encouraged it, so the peasants pointed the finger of blame on who ever they wanted with the intention that they would benefit from it, and simply hope that they were not pointed at or seen as having unjustly pointed their finger. Any one could be a target, even some one who was previously in the CCP. That having been said, some peasants began to accuse people who used to or were in the CCP, this could be because they did not like the person or just because they were associated with the CCP, as well as the fact that they could not do so before.
The CCP managed to distract the population by turning the lower class against the upper class and caused the upper class to be too worried about their fate to blame the CCP. This benefits the CCP themselves for having control over the population, and in turn benefit anyone else who could gain from CCP control.
So the People's Court was not really about the presumption of innocence.
More to the po
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Why don't we start with understanding the presumption of innocence?
The principle applies to the relationship between a government and it's citizens.
It doesn't refer to the opinions held by it's citizenry, since these are outside the purview of government.
If I say that OJ killed his ex wife, OJ's only remedy is via civil litigation, and I can offer truth as an absolute defense, if I can show by preponderance of evidence that my conclusions are those of a reasonable person.
IINAL - so this is probably a gross
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Indeed, there is a presumption of innocence.
But the presumption of innocence is simply a matter of law. It refers to who carries the onus of proof.
In a matter of criminal law, the onus of proof is on the state, thus the *presumption* of innocence.
This does not mean that you committed no crime until proven otherwise. Many people commit crimes and are not proven guilty.
As a matter of ethics, those people are *NOT* innocent of the crime.
As a matter of law, they are *NOT GUILTY*.
Don't get the 2 confused.
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Small nitpick but they aren't 'murderers' when they were found innocent by a jury of their peers.
That just means they are murderers with good lawyers.
Re:Wait and see (Score:5, Insightful)
That just means they are murderers with good lawyers.
It's amusing that you've made up your mind based on media reporting and are second guessing the jury. Did you sit in the court room? Did you see the evidence that was presented? Are you looking at it logically or are your beliefs driven by emotion?
It's supposed to be hard to get criminal convictions in this country. Get washed through the legal system for a felony or two and you might come to appreciate why our system functions the way it does.
Re:Wait and see (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, guards being a kid and having him die may not be murder, but it certainly sounds like manslaughter. That beatings were routine doesn't make it ok, it makes it a human rights violation. yes, its supposed to be hard to convict... but to say the guards and nurse did nothing wrong is simply not true either.
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but to say the guards and nurse did nothing wrong is simply not true either.
Please point out the comment in which I said they did nothing wrong.
Don't be too quick assigning blame (Score:4, Insightful)
Milgram did his experiment because he wanted to understand why the holocaust happened. How did the German guards turn so brutal? There was a myth that it had to be something to do with the German character. Milgram dispelled that myth.
Ignorance of these facts will lead to more beatings in the future, and more deaths. China, Florida, Germany, it doesn't matter where.
In chasing the antecedents of blame, one must look at the organisers of the boot camp. Perhaps they should have known better.
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Let's not forget that "murder" is also a legal term. I have not read the Florida case, but I'd expect "manslaughter" would have been a better crime for the DA to prosecute. We've all seen this happen, a DA apparently under public pressure, tries to prosecute a death as a murder instead of a manslaughter and sometimes succeeds sometimes fails.
Let's recap (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's recap: in that case the guards
- were videotaped punching and kicking a 14 year old, who died soon afterwards
- they did not deny it. In fact, they said it was normal boot-camp procedure. You don't get a much clearer admission than that.
I'm sorry, but I don't need media hype to think that those assholes should be in jail. If not for murder, then for the assault that they're not even denying. It's hard for me to imagine them as innocent of at least that savage beating, when even they admit it. In fact, that it was common procedure and they did it to lots of other children.
We're not even talking about a belting or spanking (much as I'm against those too, but, ok, let's skip that part for now.) We're talking a group of adults punching and kicking a 14 year old child.
To add insult to injury: it wasn't even because said child had actually done anything bad. They were beating him because they thought he was simulating an illness. Except it turns out that the illness was real, and in fact they argued in court (and that was why they were acquitted) that the kid died of the disease not of the punching and kicking received. Again, it's stuff they themselves argued in court, so I'm not doing more than taking their own word for it.
Roll that around in your head a bit: a child received that savage beating (whether lethal or not), just because he was genuinely ill. No other guilt, infraction, misdeed, or anything else involved. Get sick, get beaten. Does that sound right to you?
I mean, FFS, even the advocates of corporal punishments argue that it's to correct some antisocial behaviours. Whereas in this case a child was savagely beaten just for being ill. Instead of being taken to a doctor, he was punched and kicked by a bunch of adults. I can't imagine any scenario, no matter how convoluted, where that can possibly be morally right.
But at any rate, murder or not, by their own confessions they are at the very least guilty of assault. And for that, they earn my heartfelt contempt. Bunch of scumbags.
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It's amusing that you've made up your mind based on media reporting and are second guessing the jury. Did you sit in the court room? Did you see the evidence that was presented? Are you looking at it logically or are your beliefs driven by emotion?
I don't need to be on the jury, sit in the court room, or see additional evidence to know that when a child is in your care and a camera (which you can watch the video of online) caught the killing on tape, I can't come up with a single reason where that situation would be legitimate and not named 'killing'.
Also history has shown the law is not just or fair, so any statement coming from the legal system is suspect for that reason alone.
So that is three points against the killers, to make me think they are m
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Small nitpick but they aren't 'murderers' when they were found innocent by a jury of their peers.
In the eyes of the law perhaps (as it should be). But never confuse law with reason. That will get you nowhere. Just because a court finds that grass does not reflect green light does not make it so.
Re:Wait and see (Score:5, Insightful)
what court found that grass did not reflect green light? Here, you are using an example that would never exist, to prove your point. Since that example WOULD and could never exist, you not only did not make your point, you only succeeded in proving that you are really bad at using analogy.
Now. Have guilty people been found innocent in the past? Sure. Does that mean every person found innocent is guilty? Nope. Does that mean that most people found innocent are guilty? Nope. All it means is that some guilty people have been found innocent in the past. It does not reflect or prove out any future percentages. Some people who are innocent have been found guilty in the past. Does this mean every guilty conviction is incorrect? Because some innocent people have been found guilty, exactly what percentage of guilty convictions are incorrect? Exactly what percentage of acquittals are incorrect, based on the number of incorrect acquittals that have been passed out?
The fact that you are attempting to "educate" people in how they should never confuse law with reason is one of the reasons why our legal system faces the troubles it does. If the law finds someone that YOU believe is guilty, to be innocent, then your choices are clear. Accept the decision of the courts and stop persecuting that party found innocent, or find the necessary proof to PROVE they are guilty. Standing there with your hands on your hips shouting.. "But he is GUILTY! I have no proof, but I just KNOW it!" does nothing at all.
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Small nitpick but they aren't 'murderers' when they were found innocent by a jury of their peers.
Whew, I feel so much better about OJ now.
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Huh? Maybe not legally, but we are not part of the legal system. A jury verdict isn't some kind of magical proclamation that overrides every person's opinion.
Unless you believe that every single jury out there is somehow infallible?
Of course not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is China handling this delicate issue appropriately or are the news reports of justice and monitoring treatments merely a facade?
Of course it is not, you cannot say that a country that allows for few basic freedoms, has a mostly state-run economy, and has almost no non-state run news. Along with no real way for its people to voice their opinion in government matters. So lets see, we have no third-party news service, no public records, and no way for Chinese citizens to act against this. How can anyone say they are anything but a facade?
Re:Of course not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is China handling this delicate issue appropriately or are the news reports of justice and monitoring treatments merely a facade?
Of course it is not, you cannot say that a country that allows for few basic freedoms, has a mostly state-run economy, and has almost no non-state run news. Along with no real way for its people to voice their opinion in government matters. So lets see, we have no third-party news service, no public records, and no way for Chinese citizens to act against this. How can anyone say they are anything but a facade?
Ok I'll bite. They aren't a facade because they clearly have the manpower to overthrow their government, but have not done so. Either they keep their current form of government because it works better than anything they've had in their history, or because they are completely broken as a people and thus indifferent.
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THIS. Thanks Darkness404 ...the people in true power elevate small elite groups as sheriffs and local rulers, those groups never want to give up the current system because they are above the common masses.
The trick is the balancing act of giving the masses just enough to keep them complacent, squashing any uprisings before word gets out, suppressing and spinning information given to the masses and of course, the primary rule: make sure that in general the masses don't have access to weapons any more advanc
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It's a valid point that there are similar abuses here. However, the key difference is one of scale: here you're also bombarded with anti-US messages and almost every single protests goes smoothly and doesn't provoke a reaction from the state. This makes for a vastly different experience.
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I'll bite again. I live in the US and I can't say that I'm not being constantly bombarded with pro-government propaganda and censorship. We've also had plenty of protests stopped violently, including one where the military slaughtered students at a college. In the American Revolution we also had farmers with pitch-forks and torches. We had to make or buy firearms to compete "fairly" as you eluded to.
Sure, there is censorship in the US, yes, there is propaganda in the US. On the other hand though, there are many, many, many news outlets that we can turn to for US news. While each one has their own bias, we don't have a government-owned news station giving us -all- of our news and censorship in place where we can't get news from other sources about other forms of government. If you want Anarchy a quick Google search pulls up http://www.anarchistnews.org/ [anarchistnews.org] , want Communism? You are free to get your news
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There is a third option. It was demonstrated in Iraq under Saddam, and probably a zillion other places. Imagine a whole population of people oppressed under the boot of a single man. Everyone,
Re:Of course not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to defend China, which certainly does have a very bad track record, but your logic doesn't make sense. The fact that the Chinese government does not grant what we consider normal and appropriate rights to its people has little to do with how they handle this matter, which appears to relate to a non-government unlicensed facility. Just because a person or entity does things which we disagree with doesn't mean that they will always without fail make every choice with an eye toward "what's the opposite of what Darkness404 would do?"
It's certainly possible that they will handle this badly and cover it up, they've done so before. On the other hand, to assume that you simply know what's happening, because you disagree with other policies of the Chinese government is a complete non sequitur.
Re:Of course not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, maybe not. There have been death at American "Youth Boot Camps" too, and we have all of the freedoms you mention. Accepting for the moment that you are right, however, and that this death could have been prevented in a "free society", it's not the argument you were making in your original post. There you implied that you already knew the Chinese Government was going to just cover this up and let the camp continue operations as normal, because the Chinese Government has done other thing which you disagree with. Your argument these was essentially "China has done evil things, therefore China is inherently evil, and will always make an evil choice over a good in every situation."
It just doesn't work that way.
Re:Of course not... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sorry but I would have to respectfully disagree. Like many things in life, China is not all bad, and the US is not all good. I have lived in China for 2 years, and I tell you for working with the Chinese government that the Chinese government generally does want to do the right thing and often does try its best. Does it fail at times, yes. Is is subject to problems with bribery, yes. Does it occasionally do some really, really bad things, yes.
The western media will ignore 10,000 good things that happen in China and focus on the one bad thing. I know, this is how news works. The same is true in the US. However, if all you knew about the US was what you read in the news, you would think people in the US all carry guns and live in fear of being shot. That does not make up for Chinese government's bad behavior, but I do get tired of these westerns who think China is purely evil. It isn't. Life here in China is actually pretty good. I go about my business, and no one bothers me. All my employees go about their lives and never have any trouble with government. They know everything the government does because the government has almost no control over news and the internet ( Everyone uses proxies to read the foreign news in Chinese. Foreign news in English is almost never blocked - including slashdot and articles highly critical of China. ) Please stop acting like the Chinese government is the same as it was under Mao. It isn't.
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This seems to be a camp that charges parents for admission for their kids, (without connection to the state?). The first thing I thought when I saw 'Chinese Internet Addiction Camp' was that the kid must have said something online to piss off the authorities and they shut him up 'for his own good' in an 'Internet Addiction Camp' ( read political re-education camp ).
Especially as Internet Addiction / pathalogical internet use / pornography etc seems to be being played up Chinese media of late, I suspect th
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Umm.. no...
Westerners who have grown up in a free society think they are innoculated against ever falling for state propaganda. They see examples of propaganda posters / pr
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Sounds to me like that is exactly how this would play out in any western democracy as well. Maybe, just maybe, the Chinese as well think it's terrible that a child is beaten
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I'm suspicious of China precisely BECAUSE it looks like the way the US would handle it. And I am informed about the state of justice within the US system.
If you think highly of the US system, it's because you haven't been watching it. There are worse systems, but the US system is definitely not a good one, and it seems to be deteriorating. The criminal system seems to let anyone associated with law enforcement get away with murder. Even if convicted of the act the result is almost never worse than getti
Re:Of course not... (Score:4, Insightful)
what happens to the 13 arrested people? (Score:2)
Are they gonna send them to a 'addicted to killing your clients' camp? ;)
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Incident like this in china will most likely mean 13 very quick trials, all ending in very public death sentences.
Actually, China carries out many of her executions [wikipedia.org] using execution vans [wikipedia.org]. The remainder are usually ad-hoc affairs at random locations wherein the condemned is shot once in the back in the head. In neither instance is the public allowed to view the execution. They aren't real big on the public execution concept. Perhaps you were thinking of any one of a number of Middle Eastern countries?
lrn2ask non self answering questions (Score:2)
Is China handling this delicate issue appropriately or are the news reports of justice and monitoring treatments merely a facade?
I'd think that the 6 sentences this preceded that question would answer to that.
Re:lrn2ask non self answering questions (Score:5, Informative)
Considering that the "editorial" staff here missed the fact that the Southern Metropolis Daily article covered a DIFFERENT camp with the same problems and claimed that there was conflicting stories...Heh...
There is NO conflict (Score:5, Informative)
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What the Southern Metropolis Daily reported was a case in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in contrast to the other case in the Guangxi province, where the death happened. See the difference here?
Guanxi,Guandong,Guangzhou.... All sounds Chinese* to them. (*Greek)
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What the Southern Metropolis Daily reported was a case in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in contrast to the other case in the Guangxi province, where the death happened. See the difference here?
Thanks. I was too busy trying to work out how reports of kids trying to throw "help me" notes over the wall was "directly in conflict" with the camp being "unlicensed" (were the notes scrawled on the back of official license certificates, perhaps?) to spot this.
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You'd have to know Chinese to get the joke though.
Woot! (Score:2)
Is China handling this delicate issue appropriately or are the news reports of justice and monitoring treatments merely a facade?
You used "China," "Justice," and "Appropriately" all in the same sentence. I think that means you get triple-points in geo-political Scrabble.
Bad article blurb on /. (Score:2)
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Which is wrong and implies that a news report about a different camp shows a contradiction to the government report about this camp. Whee.
people love making orwellian allusions to (Score:5, Insightful)
various practices of western governments. i won't aggrevate your prejudices too much by suggesting some of your fears of an unstoppable march to orwellian fascism in the west are somewhat hysterical or overhyped
but did any of you stop and think that what is going on in iran or china is perhaps exactly what your orwellian fears allude to? and that it might pay more dividends, at least in the realm of intellectual honesty, to criticize those governments rather than western governments?
because no matter how bad it is in the west, surely you can see how downright horrific it is in some other places in the world. not that the west doesn't have problems. not that horrible problems elsewhere doesn't mean you should ignore little problems close by. and of course, it is invalid to be only able to criticize practices in other countries, not your own
its just that, to me, there seems to be a lot of people in the west who fall into a ridiculous trap: some people's ability to criticize ends at the borders of their own countries. you are a human being, right? or does the rationale for your ability to judge right and wrong magically vaporize at the straits of bosporus or the rio grande?
while you make mountains out of molehills in the practices of governments in the west, all i am asking is that you sometimes actually pay attention to the real mountains outside your border. they represent a threat to you just as much, if not more. its not THAT big of a planet you know, and its not the days of slowly sailing ships. what happens in beijing and tehran does have a real and measurable impact on your life, and it isn't a good impact. some days, you should stop beating the drums of the evils of the west, and turn your moral and intellectual concerns outside your borders
the only valid moral and intellectual point of view is a global one, not a western one, nor an indian one, nor a chinese one. its just that, if you only concern yourself with criticism of the west, you fail this qualificiation for being able to consider yourself as having a truly human conscience
stand up, criticize beijing and tehran. it doesn't mean you are suddenly a dick cheney style neocon. the rationale and ability to criticize nonwestern governments does not start with the assumption that you are enamored of western governments. you can hate washington dc just as much as you hate beijing. criticizing the former does not mean you love the latter, and visa versa
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Tell me, how did you fix your shift of caps lock key for a single word? Or are you just making a statement against the imperialistic capital .. uhh .. letters.
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Some may call that inspiring, but its ultimately pointless. As a westerner under the rule of the evil western governments (though apparenty not upto the Evilness of those of asia), what do you want me to do? We can't stop our own less-evil governments from cranking out laws stripping us of our freedoms, let alone get the majority of the population to even vote to stop it. What can I, as a man who has so very little influence over his own country, do to right the wrongs of a country the purposely limits the
when your neighbor's house is on fire (Score:2)
you might want to make sure to help him put it out, before the whole neighborhood is aflame. rather than watch his house burn down while you obsess over the fact the upstairs toilet's flush handle stays stuck
really, that's about the scale of comparison when it comes to the "stripping of our freedoms" under western governments (now there's a loaded concept) with what goes elsewhere in your world. do you think it made sense to focus only on fascist elements in great britain in 1939 as germany invaded poland?
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Wow, just wow. Seriously.
when your neighbor's house is on fire you might want to make sure to help him put it out, before the whole neighborhood is aflame. rather than watch his house burn down while you obsess over the fact the upstairs toilet's flush handle stays stuck
Since you seem to Your house may be ablaze, but mines starting to smolder, its taking my effort to stop it from burning to the ground. Once its safe, I'll come help you, otherwise my house will burn as yours does. And im pretty certain y
the ivory tower, eh? (Score:2)
"In the history of the world? It means nothing, its the blink on an eye"
its nice of you to sit so oblivious and detached from any concern for any suffering in the world. and yet to be so horribly upset by my call to actually care
i know its difficult for you to maintain the sneer on your upper lip as you look down from on yonder high at us mere mortals in the mud actually trying to care about the fate of other people in this world. i apologize. next time when i call for you to care about the suffering of you
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Yes, Life Is Hard. Accept it, work with it, deal with it. Your posts are getting worse and worse, tending more to victim syndrome. Did you even read all my post or just look for something to take out of context and snipe at?
I'll ask you a third time now DO NOT IGNORE THIS.
YOU, yes, YOU. YOU ask for action, yet YOU suggest NONE. You have ideals and dreams, you have a vision of a better world. Good. But you have no action, no plan, no suggestion as to how this may be done. You look away to foriegn powers to s
you never heard of amnesty international? (Score:2)
doctor's without borders?
the international criminal court?
this is now your opportunity to:
1. say these organizations are ineffectual. when they obviously aren't
2. press me for why i am not invading another country as a one man army, which suggests the intellectual dishonest concept that before YOU lift a finger, i must demonstrate substantial effort on my part (somehow, over a anonymous internet forum, i am required to present to you ironclad credentials of my efforts and you are dishonestly suggesting that
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plenty of other avenues (Score:2)
amnesty international, doctors without borders, financial and emotional support to dissidents, etc.
but your refinements of my point are otherwise dead on, thank you
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Beijing! Tehran! Stop being dicks!
Well, that's that taken care of. While I remember...
Attention tide! Cease and desist your ingress!
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Western world is moving in 1984 direction, China & co. is moving in opposite direction.
Year by year, westerner loose some rights and non-westerners gain some.
Sure, there is point in speeding things up for nations who are already on their way. But there is much bigger point that nations who are already there do every bit they can to stay that way because it is never won entirely. Freedom only thrives when people actively want to obtain and preserve it.
what does the word "scale" mean to you (Score:4, Insightful)
if you have a mile length of road, on one end is pure fascism, and on the other is pure democracy
you have two guys on the road. one guy is a lot closer to fascism, and another a lot closer to democracy
the guy closer to democracy wiggles around a bit, and moves a few inches towards fascism. OMFG! IT'S A SLIPPERY UNSTOPPABLE SLOPE TO ORWELL
but, since its still mostly democracy, the next moment he wiggles a few inches back towards democracy. silence on your part
meanwhile, the other guy down there, right close fascism: he steps a couple of feet deeper towards fascism, cheerfully turns to you, and in classic propaganda, tells you of his great strides towards democracy
and you believe him
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You aren't wrong, but you aren't right either. Certainly there are places where it is worse to live than in any Western country, and certainly as citizens of the world and human beings we should be concerned about the people in those places. However, we can only hope to influence our own governments. Since we don't want our own countries to fall down the same rabbit holes that we've seen other countries go down, we monitor and criticize our own governments to try to prevent such a slide. The fact that C
2 guys you're watching on the street (Score:2)
one guy flat out murders a bystander. you yell "stop!" at him, and he pays you no attention. so you let him be
the other guy litters. you yell and "stop!" at him, and apologizes. you proceed to read him the riot act in high holy moral outrage
so in other words, your sense of moral conscience is not calibrated to the depth of a criminal's crime, but only to the level a criminal is willing to engage with you and attempt reconciliation for his crime
but in this simple analogy, we're glossing over a much more impo
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More like: I'm a cop, and I see someone murdered in another jurisdiction. I report the crime to the local police and trust them to handle the investigation and bring the criminal to justice. If they're incompetent or corrupt, they may fail to do so, but I've done what I can. I'm not the local police and I can't conduct my own investigation. Now if I see someone litter in my own jurisdiction I can write them a ticket. I have influence in my jurisdiction, but not in someone else's.
At any rate, other than
the only morally and intellectually (Score:2)
coherent point of view on any issue in the world is a global one
your entire post consists of nothing more than an attempt at rationalizing your lack of concern for humanity past the rio grande or the straits of bosporus. you wish to say that you have no authority, therefore, you should have no conscience
you have it completely backwards: authority flows from conscience, not the other way around. on any issue, regardless of geography, anywhere in the world, at any time period in the history
look: if everyone i
yes (Score:2)
the world would be a much simpler place if no one actually cared about anyone else
but people do care if someone else suffers, for better or worse. and so you must make peace with that, as butting out isn't an option, and never was, and never will be. its only an option if you can magically alter fundamental human nature
besides, forget altruism, you protect your own selfish interests by taking a keen interest as to whether or not your neighbor's house is on fire. the best defense has always been a good offen
This can't be true! (Score:2, Funny)
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No one was acting surprised. It's merely reporting the news. Just because we expect little different from a country doesn't mean that we should just stop reporting the happenings from that locale.
Or do you really respond to all Olympics coverage with "Tons of countries have sports tournament every 4 years. Again? No way. I don't believe it.".
Cannot happen here (Score:2, Troll)
Interesting responses (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting to read that the majority of responses here seem to be in sympathy of china because it apparently happened here. Makes me wonder how many slashdot readers are dupes for some chinese propaganda machine... I know that sounds paranoid, but the fact that these stories about china continue to surface, and the "anonymous" internet response is a collective yawn... The fact remains that one cannot know anything of any country that engages in such invasive propaganda management. It may all be true, but I don't believe it. I can't. Not until the chinese people get a chance to express for themselves their condition, no matter how unflattering it may be to "One China".
So please, continue to reply to this message with 'But you do this in your country' or 'your press is just as bad' or 'you're just a stooge of western media'...
Show trials... (Score:3, Insightful)
I find that the international media gives a misleading view of what goes on in China. In such cases, for example, they make it seem like China is actively trying to fight corruption and other major issues. In my experience, the reality is nothing like that. The average person, and particularly poor people are constantly getting screwed, both by companies and the government and no one lifts a finger to do anything about it. Action is only taken when something happens to someone wealthy, as was the case here. Most people in China would probably be lucky to earn $1000 a month, let alone pay that much for an internet addiction camp. The only other time the government takes action seems to be when people raise enough furor about an issue.
And the Chinese government likes making a big event of trials and often ends them with harsh punishments. They're almost show trials, except that the charges aren't necessarily trumped up. I wont be surprised if some of those arrested in this case end up being executed.
Evil Empire (Score:3, Interesting)
Is China handling this delicate issue appropriately or are the news reports of justice and monitoring treatments merely a facade?"
China is the most worthy heir to the title of Evil Empire (after North Korea at least). Like all communist regimes, it is a despotic tyranny that tramples the rights of its victims, the citizens. So no, China is not handling this appropriately. The governement there cannot implement a solution when it is the source of the problem.
Why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you kidding me? (Score:2)
>or are the news reports of justice and monitoring treatments merely a facade?
Dude, you really don't know your Chinese history, about how cruel the Chinese government is to their own people...almost as bad
as any other 3rd world country such as many of the African countries that have genocide etc...I know for sure they would have no problems to do what this reporter is claiming, if that is what the government had decided.
As far as Chinese justice, we know that the movie in which Richard Gere starred in wa
both China and US have tons of under-enforced laws (Score:2)
Scapegoats for abusers and sociopaths (Score:3, Insightful)
Years later, it was so-called mental health professionals who believed that various forms of abuse against adults and children could "cure" their victims of homosexuality. Even creating "camps" to "change" them.
Then, there are the troubled youth, the fat, the depressed, and more. All finding their way into "camps" to "cure" them through verbal, mental, physical, and/or sexual abuse.
But you know what? The common element in all this is? Not that there are people who need help or need to be "cured". But that there are sick sociopaths and psychopaths out there who found a way to get off on their sick desires of a variety of abuses against children and adults alike.
They find a scapegoat, something to blame, so that they can create a reason to "cure" something.
In the case of those who had been taken advantage of by groups who used brainwashing techniques to force their victims to follow a particular belief, the "deprogrammers" co-opted the same tactic to do the same thing, only they programmed their victims to believe in an "acceptable" religion.
In the case of the victims who were homosexual, they had been the victims of various forms of abuse because society had taught that that is how you treated homosexuals. As many are taught that being the victim of abuse for ANY reason and the resulting emotional horrors from it is actually the victim's fault. So the so-called mental health professionals blamed, not society's obscene teaching that abuse is good, homosexuality as being "bad" and "harmful". So, to get their sick, perverted rocks off, they had a justification for abusing homosexuals.
Scapegoat after scapegoat has been created. All to feed a sick need to have their desires to abuse others justified.
But each and every time, it backfires and shows itself for what it really is. A sick, obscene, perverted desire to abuse others, whether it be verbally, mentally, physically, and/or sexually and whether the victim be adult or child.
And there's no end in sight. "Spare the rod, spoil the child." We've seen just how far THAT is taken. Even the so-called Seat Of Morality, the Vatican, attempts to cover that up. Look to the recent events in Ireland for proof.
It isn't the victims who are the most in need of "curing".
It's the people who claim to have the cure.
Andrew
Intresting story about that... (Score:3, Interesting)
So this topic has of course brought up the "well the US ain't perfect either!" argument. And no, we are not. However I'd like to think that we do try and have in place the tools to make our trying actually mean something. (Our constitution/Bill of Rights/etc.)
That being said this morn one of our local radio talk shows stumbled upon a serious subject, kiddy porn, via the "My cat downloaded that kiddy pron" excuse story. They then even went deeper and talked about how given how harshly kiddy porn is dealt with here how that can be, and is, used as a weapon vs people. (IE put kiddy pron on your targets computer and then turn them in.)
They actually did a relatively decent job talking about the issue given the show and then an actual IT guy called in and spoke about it. He dispelled a lot of their jovilaity by underlying how serious the issue is as well as, getting to how this relates to China now, telling this story:
Some Chinese national was working here in Fla and left his laptop in some computer lab at some point. The person in question was a journalist working to show the various human rights violations that the Chinese government perpetrates. And so in response to this the Chinese government had an operative call the FBI and tip them off that there was kiddy porn on the guys laptop. The operative then went to the lab and planted the kiddy porn onto the laptop.
I'm sure you can see the mistake, he did it backwards. In court it was proven that the porn was put on the laptop after the tip. But you can imagine the hell that the Chinese national went though even while trying to prove his innocence. (The IT guy said that the attitude surrounding kiddy pron is guilty until proven innocent pretty much right now.)
We may have our issues here in the US, as do the other 1st world free nations, but China still needs to go a long way before they can even close to being viewed as a nation that is not known, and rightly so, for abusing it's own people.
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ok, that was extremely funny, but the caption also says that it was his 6 year old sister.
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In some cases the one child policy isn't true. This should be pointed out as an example of what money can buy you in the modern China. "Anything" from the corrupt bureaucracy. Just make sure no one is looking.
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Couples who were single children themselves, for instance, are allowed a second child.