“Infinite growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”

You know, I’ve always wondered if there’s any animosity from the other groups since they get two letters but everyone else only gets one…

Maybe they are fans of Terrance Howard’s new math?

That’s not their most recent published work. That was published in Feb 2023 and they released a more recent report on Jul 2023 (and I believe it has less troublesome references but I’ll admit I don’t have the time to go through them all):

https://uhrp.org/statement/uhrp-submits-comprehensive-report-for-un-consideration-of-chinas-human-rights-record/

Regardless, your point still stands, there’s likely more circular referencing than I originally believed. I’m still not convinced it is as much of a conspiracy as others have claimed, but it is food for thought. I appreciate the less combative tone and a willingness to discuss in good faith.

OK fair enough. I’ll admit that I first didn’t see any connection to Zenz at all, but then I noticed you have to click on each citation individually to see all of the sources (I assumed all the citations would be listed at the bottom so I could just search for his name and when it didn’t pop up I assumed he wasn’t there at all).

I fully admit that I don’t have the time to look through and vet every citation (who does?) and I never claimed I checked everything. People were just claiming that Zenz was the source of all of this info and that was clearly not true based on just a quick check. Lots of this information is corroborated by lots of reputable organizations so I don’t think it is appropriate to just dismiss it all.

I think at least the thing we seem to agree on is that people should do some research into this stuff themselves rather than blindly believe what everyone is shouting. I fully support that. I took a look and what I saw didn’t convince me of the claims people are making here. I encourage everyone else to do the same.

Uhh, what? The links work perfectly fine and are not “invalid”. You do get a redirect notice but that doesn’t make them invalid links?

I’m not the one being intellectually dishonest here, man. I haven’t even accused other people of being dishonest. I’m just saying that I looked into what people have claimed and I can’t see what they are saying. People should check for themselves and I think they’ll see quickly who’s really spreading BS here…

I encourage everyone to look into the links provided and see for yourself what I’m talking about. In the very first link, out of 32 citations provided, Zenz was used 4 times. I’d hardly say his research was a critical part of their research or regardless there’s plenty of other sources provided if you don’t like him as a source. Don’t listen to all the others saying and look for yourself. There’s very little to back up their reasons for dismissing everything as some kind of anti China conspiracy.

Yep, I googled it and I encourage everyone else to do it too. There was nothing. I did see a few Chinese sources calling him out as fraud but nothing unbiased. I did see lots of other credible organizations backing up his findings too.

The Wikipedia article was simply a good starting point that I encouraged people to check out. There’s tons of citations in there that back up their points.

Well, I don’t know what else to tell you. I couldn’t find anything about him on their site or him being used for any of research that I looked into. Now, I didn’t go over everything so it is possible he’s worked with them in the past but I don’t think that would be a reason to discredit all the work the UHRP.

What am I seeing is anything critical of China getting downvoted and a bunch of people congrating themselves for not falling for the propaganda when I literally looked and could not find anything they were claiming as part of the article.

I encourage anyone seeing all these comments discrediting this story and look into the details yourself. I could not find any evidence for all the claims they are making to discredit this. There has been some good thoughtful discussion and I appreciate that but lots of knee jerk reactions that people not doing proper research when even just a cursory check doesn’t back up what they are claiming.

How is he so integral? I’ve looked all over their site and at a few of their reports and there’s nothing about it him or his findings? Look, I’m willing to hear people out but I’ve looked and I can’t find anything that backs up what people are claiming here so I don’t think it’s me that needs to work on investigative literacy.

I encourage anyone on the fence about this to do their own research. His Wikipedia article has some interesting points:

"As a result of his work on Xinjiang, Zenz has become a target for coordinated disinformation attacks from pro-Beijing and Chinese state-run media, as well as other state-affiliated entities. Zenz and his work on Xinjiang have been criticized by the Chinese government, which, according to The Globe and Mail, “has called his findings ‘lies’—even when it confirmed them.”

“During an interview with The Daily Telegraph published in May 2021, Zenz defended himself against allegations of fabrication, noting that 95% of documents he has analyzed are publicly available government records.”

Plus his findings have been corroborated by lots of reputable reporters. I’ve seen a lot of claims that people need to stop believing the lies and look at the sources. I’ve done that and not found what they are claiming so what exactly am I missing here?

Fair enough. I appreciate the detailed response. I agree there’s lots of reasons to be skeptical of claims made against China. At the same time, I think we can still be critical of China’s actions and not merely dismiss everything against China as some CIA backed plot.

Well I followed the citations in this article and he did not come up so I’m not sure what you are talking about.

Did you really look at the sources? Because the first source in the article links another BBC article (which links to another article) that ultimately sources research from the Uyghur Human Rights Project. That project does not appear to have any connection to Adrian Zenz. So my original question still stands what does Adrian Zenz have to do with this?

You say every tankie who commented actually looked at the sources but, as far as I can tell, they are just parroting propaganda talking points that they are accusing everyone else of falling for.

Look, I get being skeptical of what the West says about China but I don’t think anyone can deny that anything anti China gets quickly astroturfed on Lemmy. I’m seeing lots more knee jerk reactions from tankies that obviously did not read the article and are accusing everyone else of just falling for Western propaganda without doing some real introspection that they are basically just doing the same thing.

What does he have to do with this story? His name isn’t mentioned in the article.

It’s in the article I referenced:

“Last December, a report from NGO Safeguard Defenders said it had identified 102 Chinese police stations operating in 53 countries, including five in Canada.”

To be fair, the article you posted claims that NGO is some kind of CIA backed organization. I don’t know if I really buy that, but I suppose it is possible. Antcedotally, I’ve heard other stories of China doing stuff like this (particularly when there were a lot of Hong Kong protests) but I’ll admit I don’t have much first hand evidence myself. It’s just, on a balance of probabilities, I’m much more likely to believe that an authoritarian regime like China is capable of doing it.

Also that example about the “Devil Eyes” dolls is bit disengenious to bring up. Your own source states that they only ever built a few prototypes. Granted, it does say an anonymous Chinese source says hundreds were shipped to Pakistan, but again I don’t think we can really trust China’s take on this.

The CIA has lots of looney plans (likely a product of Military-Industrial complex), but not many come to fruition becasue they are not practical.

I don’t know man. The RCMP has recently charged one of their officers for allegedly putting pressure on people of Chinese origin. Now, I’ll admit this a pretty different situation than the “secret Chinese police stations” and, as far as I know, no charges been brought up in their cases or anything found during their investigations. However, China does appear to be putting pressure on its citizens from abroad using clandestine methods. Is the West likely doing much the same? shrug I haven’t heard about that myself but regardless this kind of practice shouldn’t be done by any country.

Anyway I found this National Post article which has more details:

https://nationalpost.com/news/b-c-man-places-chinese-police-station-sign-in-front-of-rcmp-detachment

Anyway, I appreciate the source but I gotta say I don’t find it very credible. It starts going down a rabbit hole that this all part of some CIA backed psyop, but I don’t really believe that. These types of stories have been popping up around the world and I doubt the CIA has that kind of reach in some attempt to… what… make China look bad?

I mean I have some pretty toxic family members as well, but at least a few of them are decent or innocent people. Pretty much everyone is going to have at least one family member that they care about even if most are shit heads.

I see it all over Lemmy unfortunately. I think it is because Lemmy is still relatively fringe and it is where lots of pro communism communities emerged. Normally, I find it actually pretty refreshing to see more left wing stuff but the pro China (or at least the kneejerk reactions to anything anti China) to be exhausting.

To be fair, I used to see a lot of it on Reddit as well. I think they are just a bigger proportion percentage wise on Lemmy so you see much more of it.

This is pretty crazy if true. I wonder if it has any connections to the alleged “ghost” CCP police stations that were reported around in Canada. I believe it was being claimed the stations were being used to bully Chinese people that were in Canada.

Or you could - oh, I don’t know - read the article you are commenting on… it says he was a test operator and not a programmer.