Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

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Well, it can be totally true, and it possibly is. Chinese government did kill and torture several million people during the "Cultural Revolution", so there's that.

But it's not true because some organization or high ranking official couldn't possibly be lying or presenting a fine-tuned picture.

Whole trillion dollar wars were supported on false testimony and lies or exaggerations.

E.g. it could just be part of the "China is suppressing Falun Gong" (including executing prisoners they consider leaders etc, and then using their organs) as opposed to "Chinese are so evil that they routinely kill Falun Gong members just to get their organs" (which I find harder to fathom).

I'm skeptical because a lot of times very official testimonies are very official BS (WMDs, "collision", Nayirah testimony, Iran-Contra, and lotsa others), so bullshitting the population and spinning the media is not some unique habit of undemocratic countries.

E.g. one basic pillar of this China-organ story is the so-called "Kilgour-Matas" report. Matas was on the board of the International Centre for Human Rights & Democratic Development, which is not unknown to controversy itself (basically funding radical organizations and R&D to covertly promote foreign interests out of line with its stated purpose) and was closed down later ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Human... ).

Fear is the death of reason.

By all means investigate the sources if you wish, but don't peddle conspiracy theories without any actual evidence.

The conspiracy theory is "China is wholesale slaughtering political dissidents in order to harvest their organs". Questioning why claims by two researchers funded by the Falun Gong cult get uncritical attention from a Tory writing in the Wall Street Journal isn't a conspiracy theory.

In politics there's seldom evidence available to average Joes.

They release/open some files after decades (not even everything) and you find out that they were lying through their teeth.

If people are to make any difference now, not in several decades, they should doubt most things said officially said, especially for matters concerning trading competitors, or the "enemy du jour" -- evidence or not, they should take things with a grain of salt.

(I'm also from a much smaller country. In countries where politics directly affect you, history is lived and wars are fought directly -- not 10.000 miles away --, and everybody knows everybody, being cynical of official announcements -- of yours and other governments --, and recognizing duplicity and private interests at play, is a survival skill.

In larger countries like the USA, you can live your life oblivious of politics and major historical events, except on a much larger and slower scale. Heck, your country can even be at war decade after decade, and it will only affect a tiny minority of poor folk that go a draft, 99% of the people will live business as usual.

But I digress -- and of course that's not proof that I'm right on this, just my 0.02 in why some can better recognize that "political and private interest conspiracies" are everyday realities, and not the stuff of conspiracy nuts who believe in illuminati. Try telling that to Italians, for example, who have suffered politicians in bed with the Mafia for half a century, had whole establishment programs to meddle with elections (and prevent parties with 20%+ of the popular vote to ever reach power), and even "enjoyed" government backed extremist organizations killing their own citizens -- and all those verified by courts, albeit much much later).

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