Cheng Lei: Journalist held in China says she misses sunshine

Seems she was imprisoned on espionage charges. Some people in gitmo don't even have charges against them iirc.

Showing that China is doing similar things to the US doesn’t seem like a strong argument if the thing the US is doing (in this case indefinite detention without trial in a horrible prison) is bad. Is the idea that post-federation there’s users who don’t view the US as doing bad things?

The problem is that liberals are operating on "Our country (the US, UK, a European country, etc) is better than China because of these reasons, China bad, 100 million dead" and so the idea is to first go "Actually, China isn't doing anything worse than the United States is doing" and then later on go "...and, in fact, the United States is the one that's by far the worst." Basically to cushion the blow of having their worldview swept out from under them.

So the first step is to go "Oh, is China bad because they imprison people for revealing state secrets? Then look at all these people in your own countries that have done the same."

And then the second step is to go "And, in fact, China has a lower number of incarcerated people than the United States despite having almost five times more people."

of course, then they start blubbering about "buh buh buh, they're lying and a-actually have trillions in prison and they're killing them and xi is personally beating them because he's evil and a monster and the CCP they're bad and they--" but the seed of doubt has still been established

You're confusing me a bit too tbh.

seeing this sort of thing

What sort of thing?

since the federation

I checked hexbear before the federation and found it to be mostly an awfully friendly and kinda cool place, so I was excited. But now I see so many paranoid hexbear users talking about "the federation" as if it were some kind of historical event with great significance; almost like how Palestinians talk about the Nakba. Why is that?

Showing that China is doing similar things to the US doesn’t seem like a strong argument if the thing the US is doing (in this case indefinite detention without trial in a horrible prison) is bad.

I don't really understand what you mean. Even the best liberal super-democracy (let's say Switzerland) will detain you if they suspect that you have given out state secrets to foreign countries. Literally every country will. That was kinda the point of my comment.

Secondly, I was not trying to show anything; I was just wondering what those people were missing during their (not indefinite) imprisonment. They're all free now, including the ones with data missing. And I didn't research the reasons for their imprisonment, use a search engine if you want to know more.

Is the idea that post-federation there’s users who don’t view the US as doing bad things?

You know that there have always been and that there always will be users with that view, so why even ask that question; and why ask it with "post-federation"? it honestly gives the impression you're in a cult, no offense.

A bigger question is whether or not this is necessary to be a super power. There has never been a super power that did not do this. We can argue good or bad till we are blue in the face, but if it's a necessity, then it's going to happen. Even if the necessity is just to become a global dominant power.

An easier example to understand is selling military equipment that will absolutely be used in genocides. You can't be a super power if you don't sell advanced military equipment. Inevitably, some of those you sell to will be using it to murder journalists for reporting about the line.

So, yeah selling them those weapons is bad. But if you don't do it, someone else will. That someone else will gain inordinate amounts of power making sure your country will never be in power. So we sell, we sell it as we watch Palestinians burn.

Copy paste those names and have a gaff

Systems of rehabilitation and methods to prevent crime, not punish it. Look up Angela Davis for someone smarter than me who has explained it better.

This question is very similar to “but if I don’t hit my child how will they learn?”

Read Are Prisons Obsolete? By angela davis

I don't know. I saw some reporting on how India basically closed off internet access and made the area a bit of a black box, but the reports were short-lived that I saw.

Not even whatabouting, this does suck, its generally not good to arrest journalists and if you're going to you should have good communication and evidence, cause otherwise it looks bad no matter how legitimate it may potentially be, its just damaging to your credibility and easy to take advantage of by bad faith actors like the western press

Seein this made me think of Leonard, he's been in there for 40 years, I think of him whenever I hear a news story like this

thought-terminating cliché says what

Except that they're not both bad, that's just something Americans keep repeating.