Isn't this here already?

you dont live in a country where these things happen... because you support the countries and policies that do make them happen.

sin of omission... i really had a hard time getting diagnosed with depression, i just figured feeling like a piece of worthless shit was the trade off for my consumer lifestyle..

anyway, hail chinese overlords etc

Sears is performing their own investigation... to see if they can increase efficiencies at the labor camp or possibly relocate it to Burma where laws are more favorable to corporate considerations.

I was sure the U.S. had prison labour? It's covered by the 13th Amendment, right?

Also PIE.

Doesn't that just make her ill-informed?

Depends what you're in prison for though, right? How many US prisoners are there because of religious belief rather than an actual crime? (regardless of whether you consider drug use/self harm to be a crime ; )

It's not like this is news to anyone though. Exploitation of the labour force in China is well documented. As long as people keep consuming (gotta have those Apple products right?), nothing is going to change.

I would argue that even one is too many.

There are currently 166 remaining detainees at Guantanamo, although 6 of those do face charges you could count it as 160 detained without pending charges.

Membership of Falun Gong is illegal in China, just like being a member of Hamas is illegal in the U.S., and as far as I know it is membership of the organisation (or, more specifically, activism) that is likely to get you sent to a re-education through labour camp.

Both China and the U.S. have lists of prohibited organisations, and in both cases cite public order as the rationale.

In any case, is it really worse to discriminate on the basis of beliefs than to discriminate on the basis of skin colour, bank balance, proficiency in English, intelligence, or any of the other things typically discriminated against?

p.s. Just to make clear, I'm not endorsing either type of discrimination.

All values are equal. Chinese labor camp? CELEBRATE DIVERSITY.

But they support torture and indefinite detention without criminal trial, just like your Republican party and your government. BFFs tbh.

@oritteropo

Yes, widespread 3 years slave labor for not committing a crime is indeed the same as living in the first world, where even if you're poor, you're richer than 90% of humankind.

Did you really just say "discrimination" based on intelligence? I believe we also "discriminate" based on how motivated a person is.

Be self-reliant, and value intelligence instead of denigrating it, and life will be much easier.

I value intelligence, but don't think that culling the slower members of our species is a good idea. In your country though, the outcome of a court case depends on the factors I mentioned. To some degree actual guilt or innocence plays a part, but if the D.A. is out to get you it might take a while for justice to prevail. I can provide examples if you don't believe me.

My points were that slave labour is common in both the U.S. and China, and that although the particular form of discrimination in this video is less common in the U.S., there are other equivalent forms which at least to me make it very much a case of people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

As an aside, religious freedom seems not to apply to the same degree to Muslims in the U.S. as it does to other religions.

I really hate when people pull stats like this out of their asses because it downplays and belittles the difficulties of living in poverty.

There is so much vagueness in your statement that I shouldn't even bother with it, but it is upsetting me, so here we go:

What is the First World? The best current definition is probably the group of countries which have the highest Human Development Index, generally meaning that life there is pretty damn good. That would include countries you might not expect (like Chile, Argentina, Bahrain, and Singapore) but it is a better definition than the historical meaning of First World (basically, US, Canada, and Western Europe).

Combined population of First World countries: 1.136 billion people

Let's assume that poverty is the bottom 10 percent of that population, so you are looking at a non-impoverished First World population of 1.022 billion

Account for China's middle and affluent classes, who are surely better off than poor people in Croatia or Latvia, by adding 350 million

Do the same for India and let's call that 70 million people

Then assume that the top 1% of the rest of the world is probably better off than the bottom 10% of the First World, and you can add a further 33 million people ((World population - First World - China - India) x .01)

So then, the total number of people living better than poverty stricken First Worlders is ...... 1.77 billion people or about 25% of humankind.

So, yes, you are "richer" than 75% of humankind even if you are poor in the First World, but even that is relative if you consider purchasing power.

All of this isn't to say that I am sick of hearing about "first world problems" especially when I am from there but don't live there. I walk out my door everyday and see the very real problems of abject poverty, malnutrition, lack of access to clean water, and on and on. But I also understand how difficult it is to be poor in the US and European countries, and I think we should never downplay that struggle. Telling people to stop complaining because it could always be worse has never been a very convincing argument for me.

@aaronfr

No, being lower-class in the first-world isn't like being a Chinese slave.

Encouraging people to pretend they're Chinese slaves instead of developing the psychological maturity needed to get anywhere in life makes poverty worse.

You're free to do that, but the world would be happier with less poverty.

You do live in a country where these things happen if you are American.

You probably just don't know about it.

Wait, wait, wait, did you just compare Falun Gong to Hamas? Hamas, a violent resistance movement with a history of deadly attacks against both military and civilian targets? Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline about bettering oneself and attaining spiritual enlightenment. Being a member of Hamas is in no way similar to practicing Falun Gong.

Makes my letters from camp seem so foolish.

Well now you are just moving the goal post. You said that being poor in the First World was better than living like 90% of the rest of the world, which I roundly refuted (with numbers and everything). I never made the claim that being impoverished in the First World was equivalent with being a victim of slave labour.

I also would never encourage someone to imagine that their life is worse than it is (the definition of the 'first world problems' meme). Rather, I was encouraging people to have some empathy for those that do find themselves impoverished in the First World instead of simply looking down on them and saying 'Could be worse, look at those poor bastards in China, so could you please stop whining now. It's killing my buzz.'

Victimization and psychological immaturity might be the cause of some people's poverty (or at least inability to escape it) but I think societal immaturity and economic Darwinism should carry more of that burden.

@aaronfr

Off-hand comments that the lower-class are better off than most are still true, even if you "roundly refute" them with cherry-picked numbers.

People who have actual empathy for the lower-class encourage them to learn how society works instead of arguing on the side that's comparing lower-classness to Chinese slavery.

Note that the "grievance values" you're promoting are all on the rightward side of that image (blame others for failures, entitlement, hold a grudge, secretly hope others fail, etc.).

I was once sitting it my couch watching TV with a nice Coke and Scotch in front of me and then Jersey Shore came on the TV and I couldn't find the remote. It was LITERALLY like being in a chinese slave labor camp.

You may have some valid academic point to be made about American problems.

That is however completely overwhelmed by your callous disregard for the suffering of people in actual slave labour camps, by likening them to American prisoners convicted by a jury of their peers to a standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt who are forced to work for their 3 square meals per day. Your not wrong to point out flaws in the American system, just incredible callous to the vastly worse suffering of others.

I would say you are morally wrong to exploit said people(and weakening concern for their suffering) to champion a separate cause that matters to you more.

I don't even remember this discussion!

Anyway, even 5 years ago I did't claim moral authority over anyone, and having re-read the above I don't think I was championing one cause over the other. Events have, in any case, overtaken me. Since the northern Gulags were commissioned I am now the one casting stones, and had my crystal ball been operational I wouldn't have said anything.

LOL, hadn't noticed the age. How'd this clip hit the top of my feed then?

No idea! The comments don't provide any clues, there was nothing before yours. I thought it must've been promoted or something, but it appears not.