> You can insult anyone in the free world except Xi from China and MSB from Saudi Arabia.
You can even insult them. Maybe not with someone else’s money, but go ahead and put up a website.
You can even insult them. Maybe not with someone else’s money, but go ahead and put up a website.
With China it's even worse - they've been caught operating secret police stations worldwide, who then targeted and threatened dissidents [3]. Can't find the article again, but I remember that there were also cases of Chinese dissidents being threatened with harm to their family that was still in China. Hard to get more insidious than that.
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/german-lawmaker-briefly-detained-on-tr...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/18/saudi-arabia-u...
[3] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-are-chinas-allege...
Remember Jamal Khashoggi?
The crazy thing is that, just like mocking Chinese politicians is not in actuality a big deal in that it’s harmless and it’s clear to us that the Chinese government is being extra sensitive; revealing of US war crimes seems to have been harmless too in that the government continues to do it, the general population doesn’t care, and the people who did it are roaming free, yet the US government continues to be extra sensitive to it.
That's all?
The US government is trying to show that if you publish American government secrets, they can go after you, no matter where you are in the world. If they succeed, it will send a chilling message to journalists around the world.
At least China is (as I linked) known for threatening the families of regime critics in exile; reports from Turkish people in Germany suggests the same for Turkey (where groups as the "Grey Wolves" act like the Turkish government's "enforcers"), and there's also anecdotal reports from African refugees that they are extorted to pay back the smugglers.
[1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/erdogans-gegner-werden-in...
As a Canadian I am so dismayed that the response from my goverment when those police stations were found wasn't to raid them with swat teams and lead everyone found inside out in handcuffs.
If we can't respond to a foreign country setting up police stations without permission what can we do?
Sounds more like a "we told you so" for everyone who is against every morally unsound dumbass in the country being able to own a firearm.
And to be clear, I am with the other poster who said he wishes the Canadian government's response was stronger when it came to the Chinese "stations". That is of course the proper mechanism for handling this.
I have not heard of any 2nd amendment 'events' that have occured at these stations.
Depending on the exact sense of "immigrant" in use, the answer is either an unqualified "no" (if looking at the status of being present on an immigrant visa) or "in some but not all case" (if looking at "people who have immigrated", in which case some are naturalized US citizens, but many are not.)
Sure, some. But not all…and from my understanding the nature of these police stations is to try and police anti-CCP activity of the non-US citizen Chinese immigrants.
>Do you discriminate…
Bear in mind there is a considerable cultural difference between a freshly arrived Chinese immigrant in Chinatown NYC and Joe Bob McGill from Pahokee, Florida as it would relate to the submission to or tolerance of a foreign government’s expression of authority within their community. One is a person used to heavy handed action from their government, and the other is a guy driving around town with a Gadsen flag flying on a pole in their truck bed (which is stained with alligator blood that was shot and killed and pulled out of their momma’s pond for getting a little too frisky).
Even if I had material evidence that the house next door is a nest of Chinese spies, there is no cause, precedent or excuse for me to kick in the door and waste everyone inside. My doing so would instigate an international incident in their favor, and I would never see freedom again.
Guns pose no threat whatsoever to adversaries who treat human life as disposable, and who know our weapons can't be lawfully used against them on our own soil. It's literally win-win for them.
The second amendment (along with other aspects of the Constitution relating to the militia) is largely an attempt at protection against our own government setting up large dedicate internal and external security forces which would naturally become insular subcultures (the internal security forces being the most critical one, though external services were a threat because they have a history of being called on for internal security when the government feels particularly threatened), by instead protecting the capacity for and promoting the use of a small permanent cadre supplemented by the militia of the general citizenry for both purposes.
It completely failed both as to external and internal security, but it wasn't a bad idea. (Ironically, the people most hyped about the second amendment also tend to be rather aggressively in favor of giving more resources, responsibility, and leeway to permanent security forces, both internal and external, and are violently opposed to people who promote things like defunding the police.)
In the cases I've read about, they were set up by local Chinese associations, and the main service they provided was verifying the identities of Chinese people who wanted to do things like renewing their Chinese driver's license.
It's a satellite spy office operating as police officers abroad while conspicuously denying their role. They're barely hiding it but you bought an obvious cover story without a second thought.
"They're not real police, they're not even affiliated with the government, but they'll helpfully do things like help expats put themselves on the CCP radar by performing essential services like...verifying their identities and renewing drivers' licenses."
That's what the fucking consulate is for.
This arrangement is like me offering to "help" you by living in your backyard and peeking in your windows randomly to make sure you're still alive.
I've sometimes heard it said that job search centers can help people look for jobs, but they still expect people to be able to fill out an application, because that's a bare minimum expectation that an employer is entitled to have.
And I feel like there's some sort of correlate when it comes to a certain amount of functional literacy in conversations like this. If a person doesn't have the literacy to understand that the exercise of shuffling labels around to insulate from criticism or evaluation, to me that someone who's not showing up having fulfilled a bare minimum expectation of functional literacy. It's not a formal or informal fallacy but I do think it's fair to categorize it as a failure to bring the necessary type of functional literacy to a conversation of this nature.
These sorts of services are often outsourced from consulates. For example, there are separate visa application centers set up by foreign governments in many countries.
> It's a satellite spy office ... while conspicuously denying their role
Unironically, that's what consulates are for.
The whole story was reported as "police stations," which gave the public the false impression that Chinese police officers were roaming around Western cities arresting people. They could have been cover for spying, but what they were doing day-to-day was far more mundane than what the public thought, based on the headlines.
> This arrangement is like me offering to "help" you by living in your backyard and peeking in your windows
I don't see how this analogy holds. Chinese people interacted with these places on their own initiative, because it allowed them to handle bureaucratic things like renewing ID cards more easily.
Edit in response to the reply: presumably it's the Chinese market that is not interested in paying for content that criticizes them. But if you want to make this about Apple, then I just reiterate that the parties in this case are entangled in ways that can't be coherently taxonomized into independent subjects that are understood as being completely unrelated to each other. If a company bringing shows to market in a country, and the countries willingness to assassinate critics, are subjects you view as unrelated, then, to use your term, our models of the world are probably too different to productively communicate.
We have video games like Fuck Putin (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1926680/FUCK_PUTIN/) does that count? I’d sure put up a single page html site calling all the above listed as autocrats with blood on their hands but I too fear what might befall me physically or professionally. So much Chinese money flows into the west especially here in Berlin and Germany in general.
Imagine I put up a site that said President Xi is a a despot and looks like a certain bear and word got to my would be employers at BMW and they thought my words would threaten their ability to sell cars in China I wouldn’t be offered the job, that’s for sure.
So, even though I am nobody, I’m still too afraid to really speak out.
Did you read about the Harvard and Columbia law students who had their job offers rescinded because they signed a letter critical of Israel’s actions?
I would expect the same reaction if right after 9/11, a group released a statement saying the US brought the attack on itself.
I am far too dependent on being employable to be able to say what I think without consequence. I’m not rich enough to be able to be free enough to do that.
He was first name in your reply. I assume you have some evidence right? Cite your sources.