Re: China and DeLay

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On Thursday 05 June 2003 02:37, Andreas Pour wrote:
> "Aaron J. Seigo" wrote:
>
> [ ... ]
>
> > Zuendel is publishing hate literature. which is a different topic, though
> > an interesting one.
>
> "Hate" literature, what a joke!  I actually have read parts of his website
> and the criticism against him and while people keep clammering "hate" they
> can't point to any on the website, and I did not find any. 

Zündel is a sadly backwards man who refuses to accept historical fact and is 
often self-contradictory (e.g. how he rails against cencorship when it is 
pointed at him, but then repeatedly calls for the cencorship of publications 
that support the holocaust =) ... however, although i do not support or 
accept Zündel's viewoint, i also do not suport the concept of "hate speech", 
as opposed to "hate crime". as i said, the topic is an interesting one, but a 
different one from what we are discussing here. i was concerned that this 
thread might meander widlly off-topic before we get a chance to address 
thoroughly what we are discussing by starting to talk about those in our 
society that have wildly outrageous and at times insulting viewpoints.

as for finding hate literature penned by here's just one link:

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/z/zundel-ernst/power-062694.html

in it he says this of Jews:

"They are rapacious, all-devouring, in their lust to dominate the curricula, 
the content of textbooks and lately increasingly even the content of 
entertainment, and teaching and training manuals, which include their 
anti-German Holocaust Propaganda in the Army, Navy and the Airforce as well! 

Unless and until we appreciate these tactics of our sworn enemies, we will 
never be completely successful in defending ourselves and our institutions 
against this alien onslauqht. "

note the use of the term "sworn enemies" and his overtly racist comments.

i do not support censoring Zündel as far as he does not engage in active hate 
crimes, but that is a completely separate topic. sometime else we can discuss 
it =)

> > however, his incarceration is quite different than burning
> > down the offices of people who support him and having him assasinated.
>
> Where do I get information about these accusations?  This seems to be going
> even further than you noted before . . . .

i'll see if i can round anything up.. it happened right after Hong Kong was 
handed back to China.

> > so I
> > wouldn't say that the Zuendel affair is anything like the cencorship of
> > antiState messages by violence.
>
> How does it compare to using tanks to kill journalists, I think Al-Jazeera
> stations were "accidentally" hit and their reporters killed in both
> Afghanistan and Iraq just a few months ago.

as i said, it doesn't compare. i put situations such as the Zündel controversy 
and gross actions such as silencing media through deadly force in two 
different camps.

one is deffinitely worse that the other. in fact, one is perhaps defensible 
while the other never is.

> > 1 billion people, but one government. and either way it really doesn't
> > excuse anything, of course. especially when the violations are so
> > egregious and downright silly.
>
> Not excusing, just doing comparative analysis

i understand, however such analysis often leads to people down playing and 
accepting the situation as it stands since "it isn't that bad". you have said 
as much yourself in previous emails, which i find somewhat dissapointing.

> People claim China is materially worse than the US in terms of respecting
> human rights, etc., but is that really true? 

i don't live in either place, so i wouldn't know deffinitively. but seeing how 
China treats Tibet, free speech, protestors, etc I'd say they currently "win" 
the "Worst Offender" award. given how protestor treatment, censorship and 
foreign affairs are being carried out in the USA, i'd agree with you that the 
US is currently doing a decent job of catching up with China in that regard 
=((

> I don't buy the "one 
> government" argument, I buy the "sphere of influence" argument - the key is

exactly, which is why, as i said, pointing out that there is a billion people 
is irrelevant. it's the same sphere of influence, so one needs to pick 
another sphere of influence to compare, regardless of population. my point 
was simply tha the fact that "one billion people" are involved is somewhat 
immaterial; it only serves to underline the severity of it due to how many 
are affected. many African nations, for example, have much smaller 
populations but are horrible regimes as well. to me it's all equally bad.

> who is calling the shots, not what form of institutions they use to call
> them.  When the US was training, funding and supplying weapons to El
> Salvadorean death squads that murdered tens of thousands of civilians,
> including reporters and all other dissidents, in the 1980s and Bush/Reagan,
> that responsibility is squarely on the backs of the US government, whether
> technically El Salvador is another country or not.  I could go on with the
> genocide in Guatemala, the state-sponsored terrorism against Nicaragua, the
> death squads in Honduras, the invasion of Panama, etc. . . .

yes, the US has and continues to commit horrible interational travesties.

hrm... i'm kind of arguing with and against both "wings" of this list today. 
is that some sort of an accomplishment? ;-)

- -- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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KDE: The 'K' is for 'kick ass'
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