This article is very unclear. Why is the word kidnapped in quotes? Was he not kidnapped? Where is he? Was there a ransom? Why did the government respond by accusing him of violating his parole?

I do not understand what happened.

Ulgggghhhhhh

I try and read news through the lens of what can be done. Times like these offer painfully few answers.

I believe justice will one day come. But its pace is infuriating.

Why is this behind a paywall? Since when does the BBC have a paywall?

Wow that’s evil.

I feel like this comment section is primarily made up of dril and Ken M. tweets.

There are so many comments like the one you’re replying to that just make no sense except as absurdist humor.

You’re not even responding to anything I said. To repeat: you, me, and Weiwei are all on the same side. We’re all critics of the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights record. No one is engaging in whataboutery in this article.

You know what would be an absolute Chad move, here? I don’t think this is likely, but if anyone is reading this, take note:

You can just say, ‘That’s a good point: I didn’t read far enough to get important context and misunderstood. Thanks for the correction.’

That’s an option. I’ve absolutely misunderstood an article I didn’t fully read and had someone politely correct me. It’s okay and healthy to just own it.

No:

Whataboutism is when you defend bad behavior by trying to justify it based on other bad behavior. The whole point of the article is that Weiwei is pointing out failures in Europe in al the context of criticizing the behavior of the Chinese government. It’s literally the opposite of whataboutism.

The article explains pretty clearly that Weiwei is a critic of China’s human rights abuses, and has expanded their criticism to recognize the growing human rights abuses among China’s western critics, which has undermined global human rights and the ability of these nations to credibly pressure China to improve.

Again, I will say: respectfully, I suspect you did not click the link to the article before opining on it.

I don’t think you read the article.

Legit.

I genuinely believe that the most important steps any American who is concerned about human rights abuses in foreign countries can make is to remedy the flagrant human rights abuses they see at home.

Freedom and rights don’t really come from governments: they come from what people demand and the restrictions they impose on their leaders. So if you want safety for the Uygers, for instance, you don’t go reprimand Xi Jinping: you treat Muslims in your own country well, and you treat visiting Chinese nationals well, and popularize principles of a free society internationally through actions.

Weiwei is right: we need less talk, more action.

Yeah, the article sounds like it was written by the Onion.

Are they concerned that Trump is diminishing the credibility of the award? The one they invented to transparently flatter the things of this exact, specific egomaniacal madman?

Sure Jan.

You make a point that I don’t see often addressed:

If Denmark, Germany, and Co are serious, they’d be hitting way harder.

I honestly wouldn’t be at all surprised if this works, and European leaders just say, ‘Sorry folks! We really tried to stop him, but we just got outplayed again! He’s too good!’

Yes, 100%. That’s more than a red flag. A red flag is a warning sign of a problem. That’s just a problem.

I think this is a non event.

Mamdani has been publicly stating his opposition to the Israeli occupation for years. Israel’s government has been accusing him falsely of antisemitism since he became known. And the NY press has tried to rattle him over it since Israel began attempting to smear him, with no effect.

This is like holding a press conference to announce that the Berlin Wall has fallen. Yes. That was the state of affairs yesterday and the day before, and presumably will remain so tomorrow.

This isn’t something anyone needs to or will react to.

That’s what I said! Fifteen minutes isn’t far. But it’s no longer close.

About twelve.

You can hate US imperialism AND hate Chinese imperialism.

It’s actually quite easy if you just fucking hate imperialism.

I feel like the biggest problem in getting people to react to torture is that it’s so unrelatable.

I think a lot of people hear “stress positions”, “24 hour lights”, “pitch blackness”, and they think, ‘Well I’ve been tired before. I’ve been stuck in a hot airplane with the lights too bright. I’ve been in the dark before, these are minor discomforts.’

And I don’t think they understand that the point of all torture is to induce suffering. If the people doing this aren’t slicing someone’s body parts off with hot knives, it’s because you can get the same effect by telling someone to kneel on the ground and not letting them up for a full day, but there’s less mess.

It makes me really sad that I think people are often able to get away with torture because a key part of modern torture has been finding techniques that minimize visual signs of damage and have no similarity to things most people have experienced, and thus sound benign.

Not mentioned in all of this is that torture is – to many people’s surprise – actually very damaging for torturers too. The prison guards at this place are probably at an extremely elevated risk of intimate partner violence and suicide.

Fuck all it, especially weak-ass complicity in this fascist bullshit.

Yeah, a common them I come back to is cycles of mistreatment: people who were push from their homes pushed people from their homes.

Chill, man. I’m not here to fight.

I’m also not going trying to white-wash anything. War and tribalism are indeed ancient, and historical echos can certainly be found. But my point is this: the regional conflict between Jews and Muslims is most certainly not a persistent, perpetual, irrational animosity that has stubbornly raged on for millennia. It is true that it is informed by a long cultural relationship. But the violence is modern. It’s caused by political forces, and it can be ended by changing those political forces.

Prior to the Zionist movement and the Arab nationalist movement of the twentieth century, Jews and Muslims (and many other groups) cohabitated Israel-Palestine (or Trans-Jordan or whatever you want to call it). They did in fact share the land peacefully in the nineteenth century.

https://www.972mag.com/before-zionism-the-shared-life-of-jews-and-palestinians/

True. It definitely has a long history. My point though – as you said – is that it’s really a persistent myth that these people are just oil and water. Their conflict is far more material than that.

It certainly isn’t intractable.