Here’s Yogthuos’ comment

Sigh, alright I guess I’ll address the “concentration camps” nonsense in detail for you. The whole conspiracy theory started with a claim of millions of Uyghurs being supposedly imprisoned story is based on two highly dubious “studies.”.

However, this claim is completely absurd when you stop and think about it even for a minute. That figure 1 million is repeated again and again. Let’s just look at how much space would you actually need to intern one million people.

This is a photo of Rikers Island, New York City’s biggest prison. The actual size of a facility interning ten thousand people.

According to Wikipedia, “The average daily inmate population on the island is about 10,000, although it can hold a maximum of 15,000.” Let’s assume this is a Xinjiang detention camp, holding ten to fifteen thousand people. How many of these would it take to hold one million people?

Let’s do some math:

In reality, one million people would probably take more space; all the supposed detention camps we see are much less dense than Rikers.

For comparison, San Francisco is 47 square miles. Amsterdam is 64 square miles. You’d literally need detention camps that total the size of San Francisco or Amsterdam to intern one million Uyghurs. It’d be like looking at a map of California. There’s Los Angeles. There’s San Diego. And look, there’s San Francisco Concentration City with its one million Uyghurs.

Literally visible to the naked eye from space.

CHRD states that it interviewed dozens of ethnic Uyghurs in the course of its study, but their enormous estimate was ultimately based on interviews with exactly eight Uyghur individuals. Based on this absurdly small sample of research subjects in an area whose total population is 20 million, CHRD “extrapolated estimates” that “at least 10% of villagers […] are being detained in re-education detention camps, and 20% are being forced to attend day/evening re-education camps in the villages or townships, totaling 30% in both types of camps.” Furthermore, it doesn’t even make sense from logistics perspective.

Practically all the stories we see about China trace back to Adrian Zenz is a far right fundamentalist nutcase and not a reliable source for any sort of information. The fact that he’s the primary source for practically every article in western media demonstrates precisely what I’m talking about when I say that coverage is divorced from reality.

Zenz is a born-again Christian who lectures at the European School of Culture and Theology. This anodyne-sounding campus is actually the German base of Columbia International University, a US-based evangelical Christian seminary which considers the “Bible to be the ultimate foundation and the final truth in every aspect of our lives,” and whose mission is to “educate people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ.”

Zenz’s work on China is inspired by this biblical worldview, as he recently explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “I feel very clearly led by God to do this,” he said. “I can put it that way. I’m not afraid to say that. With Xinjiang, things really changed. It became like a mission, or a ministry.”.

Along with his “mission” against China, heavenly guidance has apparently prompted Zenz to denounce homosexuality, gender equality, and the banning of physical punishment against children as threats to Christianity.

Zenz outlined these views in a book he co-authored in 2012, titled Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation. In the tome, Zenz discussed the return of Jesus Christ, the coming wrath of God, and the rise of the Antichrist.

The fact that this nutcase is being paraded as a credible researcher on the subject is absolutely surreal, and it’s clear that the methodology of his “research” doesn’t pass any kind of muster when examined closely.

It’s also worth noting that there is a political angle around the narrative around Xinjiang. For example, here’s George Bush’s chief of staff openly saying that US wants to destabilize the region, and NED recently admitting to funding Uyghur separatism for the past 16 years on their own official Twitter page. An ex-CIA operative details US operations radicalizing and training terrorists in the region in this book. Here’s an excerpt:

US has been stoking terrorism in the region while they’ve been running a propaganda campaign against China in the west. In fact, US even classified Uyghur separatists as a terrorist group at one point https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-was-at-war-uyghur-terrorists-now-claims-etim-doesnt-exist/276916/

Here’s an interview with a son of imam killed in Xinjiang https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-06-19/Son-of-imam-assassinated-in-Kashgar-s-2014-mosque-attack-speaks-out-RqNiyrcRuo/index.html

Here’s an account from a Pakistani journalist who has been all over Xinjiang (which borders Pakistan) claims that western media reports on “atrocities” are lies. https://dailytimes.com.pk/723317/exposing-the-occidents-baseless-lies-about-xinjiang/

It’s also worth noting that the accusations originate entirely from the west while Muslim majority countries support China, and their leaders have visited Xinjiang many times.

• https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/on-eid-xinjiang-imams-defend-china-against-u-s-criticism-1.5425967
• https://www.bolnews.com/latest/2023/07/pak-religious-leaders-nurture-bonds-of-cooperation-with-xinjiang/
• https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/islamic-envoys-say-china-is-protecting-minorities-in-xinjiang-after-five-day-visit

Also notable that whenever western media actually deigns to visit Xinjiang, which is not often, they’re unable to produce support for any of their claims of mass imprisonment and oppression, so they opt for insinuations instead https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9

There’s a further list of debunking here if you’re interested https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/

The whole thing is very clearly a propaganda blitz that US is cynically using to manipulate impressionable people in the west.

Here is a comment I made 2 years ago

Fuck it i know what im doing in this class anyway heres some more info

the Uyghur population has been steadily increasing and grew by more than 25% between 2010 and 2018 even though the total population of Xinjiang only rose by 13.99%. The Uyghur population is growing faster than Han Chinese (2%) or other ethnic minorities (22.14%).[source]

Chinese protections of Islam have been reputed to be contested by some citizens as suggesting preferential treatment, refuting the claim that the China’s policies are anti-Islam.[source]

China has roughly 54 other ethnic groups which have been relatively unscathed, including other Muslim-majority ethnic groups such as the Hui ethnic group, which is larger than the Uyghur population. In 2019, almost 1,000 diplomats and journalists from many countries as well as the UN, EU, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation visited Xinjiang and found no evidence of genocide. [source]

In response to the Trump administration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s claims of genocide in Xinjiang, people from all walks of life in the region submitted at least 450 written responses and 345 videos condemning the comments as untrue and harmful. [source]

Adrian Zenz is a far-right racist connected to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which is controlled by the U.S. government. He claimed that Xinjiang is forcibly sterilizing Uyghur women with IUDs. In fact, only 328,475 of China’s total 3,774,318 IUDs were in Xinjiang.[source]

In September 2018, he said there were about 1,060,000 Uyghurs in re-education camps. This number is based on anonymous interviews with only eight people.[source]

In his initial report for the ~1M estimate, Radio Free Asia is cited four times, and the estimate is only mentioned on (pp. 21-2). Zenz finds this number by roughly extrapolating a “leaked” report by Newsweek Japan (affiliated with Newsweek Inc.).[source] This report came from “Istekral TV”, which frequently platforms the terrorist organization ETIM—the report was never confirmed.

On May 4, 2022, the BBC posted an article detailing what they termed the “Xinjiang Police Files”, a collection of documents and other resources which purportedly proved accusations of maltreatment against Uyghurs. The documents were allegedly provided by an anonymous source to Adrian Zenz, who then gave them to the BBC. The documents in fact showed many Uyghurs working at the centers and that the centers had some Han Chinese detainees. Many articles used images of guns as a scare tactic without noting that these were images of security drills and that the magazines were empty. The articles associated with the files whitewashed the crimes of genuine ETIM members who had been a party in bombings such as Yusup Ismayil (with text placed over an image of Yusup reading “many have been detained just for ordinary, outward signs of their Islamic faith or for visiting countries with majority Muslim populations”, with no citation for this claim). The Xinjiang Police Files “key documents” file metadata showed that Adrian Zenz and Ilshat Kobor (of the Uyghur American Association) had modified them, with metadata information being removed soon after release. The XPF website also posted demographic data, of which the number of male and female detainees added up to over the stated total in the same data.[source]

BBC claimed that Zamira Dawut was sterilized at a vocational center. Her brother, Abduhelil, said she had never been to a vocational center. Zamira said her father was arrested multiple times and then died of unknown causes. In reality, he was never arrested or even investigated and died of heart disease on 2019 October 12.[source]

On 2019 November 16, The New York Times reported on supposed leaked documents on Xinjiang. State media was quick to assert that these documents were not authentic, calling them “fabricated.”[source]

Grammatical errors indicated that the documents were fake and likely translated from English to Chinese, with users further noting that the “leaked” docs did not correspond to the formatting standards of Chinese government documents (GB/T9704).source

In 2018 December, diplomats from Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Thailand, and Uzbekistan visited Xinjiang and had full access to vocational training centers. They found no evidence of forced labor or cultural or religious oppression.

On 2019 January 29, an EU delegation visited. On February 25, about 200 representatives of 50 political parties from almost 30 countries visited Ürümqi. On February 28, diplomats from Algeria, Burma, Greece, Hungary, Morocco, Vietnam, and the Arab League visited. China offered to let the EU visit again in March, but it declined. On March 27, the Albanian and Serbian ambassadors to China (Selim Belortaja and Milan Bačević) visited. On June 15, Under Secretary-General of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office Vladimir Voronkov visited Xinjiang. Between June 18 and 21, diplomats from Algeria, Burkina Faso, the DR Congo, Laos, Malaysia, Nigeria, Serbia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Togo, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation visited. On August 19, diplomats from Bahrain, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka visited. In September, diplomats from the African Union and 16 African countries, including Burundi, Djibouti, Lesotho, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe visited. In November, Fahri Hamzah, former Deputy Speaker of the Indonesian House of Representatives, visited Xinjiang. On November 11, the World Bank visited Xinjiang and found no abnormalities in the vocational centers.[source]

On 2019 January 6, Reuters visited Xinjiang. Starting on January 9, 12 media representatives from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Sri Lanka, and Turkey visited. Another media delegation from Egypt visited on January 29. On February 22, 11 journalists from Indonesia and Malaysia visited. On 2019 May 7, NPR released its report on a visit to a vocational center. On 2019 June 18, BBC visited a vocational center. Starting on July 14, journalists from 24 countries, including India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, the USA, and Uzbekistan visited Xinjiang. On August 17, a media group from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Turkey, and the UAE visited. On August 29, ABC News visited a vocational center.[source]

On October 10, 2021, as Xinjiang was slowly opening for tourism, the Associated Press traveled to Xinjiang in order to investigate the measures taken by the government. They concluded that the genocidal policies had existed at some point but had been done away with before the opening measures, although the article still critiqued certain things they felt stifled Uyghur culture.[source]

A response was posted afterwards by The New Atlas which bemoaned several of the article’s pretensions.[source]

I really dont know anything about that vice thing but i think this should suffice yeah?

I understand why its easy to believe that china is committing genocide and i get why you might distrust china. You would be right to based on the information you are fed, no judgement i promise. Personally I trust the US and US based sources a lot less however

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Crazy how no one could have known this before today /s

My cat seems to like anime for some reason

Project zomboid, once build 42 finally comes out that is. Shouldn’t be more than a few more months right? Haha

Me when I just lie. It’s literally in the first paragraph of his wikipedia

Adolf Bruno Heinrich Ernst Heusinger (a.k.a. Adolf Horn while in Gehlen Org.; 4 August 1897 – 30 November 1982)[1] was a German military officer whose career spanned the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, West Germany and NATO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger

Heusinger was later appointed head of the military cartography office when the war ended. Despite his alleged knowledge and participation in war crimes, he later became a general for West Germany and served as head of the West German military from 1957 to 1961 as well as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1961 to 1964.

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I’m sorry? That’s the fucking annual cost of a nursing home? Are you joking? I’m gonna die in the fucking streets

The only thing I am reading rn is Capital but I don’t think you came here for political theory so I will recommend The Hot Zone. It’s the last book I read and it’s about the discovery of Ebola, its investigations, and how it got to the US.

I hear there is a knowledge sheet shortage rn. Hopefully its over by the time I’m thirty

They are on thin ice but no it does not include them

It be like that sometimes

Yes and no, it does kill people so fast that it would run into spreading roadblocks here and there but its main issue is that it is not airborne. Should it be, the rate it kills people would be unlikely to matter unless we took very serious precautions that some countries have proven to be unwilling to do. It also has a decently long incubation period that could shed disease while not obviously infected.

If Ebola Zaire were airborne (while being as infectious as it is through other methods which is admittedly a stretch but not a huge one) and it got into a major American city and we did not quarantine in time it’d be fucking over. Like we would be unbelievably fucked. The casualties world wide would be astronomical. Covid would be a joke in comparison.

Ebola has the potential to be a big fucking deal but thankfully it is not.

I am actually more scared of Ebola Sudan for the kill rate reason. If it became airborne I think things could be worse. However, Ebola Reston is more closely related to Ebola Zaire so we don’t need to worry about that just yet.

This Ebola outbreak convinced me to read the hot zone. As awful and scary as Ebola is I want everyone reading this to know that it is not a global threat at the moment. This is not a disease that spreads easily.

It would take a very specific species (Ebola Reston) jumping from primate to human for it to become airborne. So long as your country has a well funded medical system that can afford proper cleanliness, you are okay.

The current outbreak is awful and tragic and honestly preventable but it is very unlikely to be a major global threat, as much as news media might present it that way sometimes.

Yeah I didn’t make the meme or feel like editing it

Canceling elections is totally fine if it’s our guy

So true

There might be an app that has that functionality but lemmy itself doesn’t iirc

Ferrofluid for sure