My experience is most younger and tech savvy people have a VPN. It’s common / casual, like speeding your car by 10mph on the highway.
Most people are not persecuted for using a VPN, I assume that’s reserved for people who the government already wanted to persecute and just need to give an excuse for why they detained their target.
I suppose for the government, as long as it isn’t the majority of people doing something that would cause trouble, it isn’t worth tracking down all things, as expected.
Except for that muslim chick another commenter pointed out, or anyone else the party decides is undesirable.
i imagine the chinese intranet is reasonably quick and the interconnection to the internet is just intentionally ultra-bottlenecked.
She was a spy--look at how intense their reaction was.
Unfortunately, they tend to grab innocents to exchange for captured spies. However, they're going to go for big fish, not little ones. As an average joe I'm not concerned about being held for a spy swap, but if I were a highly placed executive there's no way I would set foot in China.
Hence intense reaction. The 2 Canadian Michaels on the other hand, were text book spys with NGO covers. Western propaganda likes insinuate PRC would capture innocent westerners when state security have massive state survillance capability that completely dismantled CIA networks a few years prior. Like literally friend of Michael hinted he was in "intelligence" and CSIS (Canadian CIA) publically celebrated on twitter upon their return. The Michaels weren't executives. The TLDR, while in PRC, don't traffic drugs, don't be a spy/do anti state activities, don't get involved in expensive legal proceedings - the latter is what actually get (white) westerners in trouble via exit bans.
GFW is sophisticated beyond imagination, one way to detect VPN traffic(or SSL, or SSH) is to observe its patterns and where the traffic is going. It's not too hard to have a blacklist of all VPN vendors too.
shadowsocks was designed to bypass it(to make traffic looking random), I recall its developers were visited by cops and warned to stop doing that.
It's said China built the largest LAN on earth, the government is just too scared by its people to get educated, it's a true parallel universe.
So ICE will arrest you for a VPN?
ICE runs concentration camps?
This comparison is silly.
"sinofication" sounds a lot like "eliminating the existing culture" which sounds a lot like genocide. Genocide is more than just murdering everyone like in some of the most well known cases like the Holocaust -- it includes elimination of an ethnic group by any means possible, including "nativification"
Maybe to simple minded uneducated people. Others take the time to learn the actual definition.
> cidium "act of killing," from caedere "to kill, to cut down" (from PIE root *kae-id- "to strike"). https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=homocide https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=fratricide https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=suicide
lots of others
""" Article II In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. """
I wouldn't recognize this as a dictionary definition but rather a legal document outlaying its premises and defining its terms. All but item b I'd argue are a form of killing, the ending of the demographic line either immediately or incrementally. You have to look at all these definitions in terms of the ultimate end being sought after by the perpetrators and these five categories are all means of doing so. The only stretch definition is b which I imagine is a much slower form of destruction. It's still a necessary clause though because imagine a dictator amputating the hands of all members of some group and claiming they didn't kill them therefore they didn't commit genocide. That would be a fraudulent claim because they effectively severely debilitated their ability to provide for themselves and function, they severely wounded that group so that one wouldn't be surprised if they did wind up dying and not thriving some time later on account of that action through indirect causes directly tied to that original offense.
It's not an ancient word however, apparently it's a 20th century construction coined by Raphael Lemkin. """ He decided to create a name for the crime without a name. He came up with genocide, which he defined as the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group. He said he created the word by combining the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing). """ https://www.facinghistory.org/ideas-week/where-did-word-geno....
The book he coined the word was authored in 1944, the UN convention was signed in 1948 https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide-convention..., very close in time and I'd say complimentary but still a legal document meant to get in writing specific means of destruction for that genos. So it's a emphasis on the means, not the end, and I'd say an equivalent definition is intentionally causing the end of a collective bloodline however that end may be accomplished.
- 'nice' means 'ignorant', - 'to travel' means 'to suffer torture',
and a lot of other interesting (but incorrect) ideas about what words mean.
So do I.
Nice comes from nescius 'ignorant'.
Travel according to the most common version comes from tripalium, a torture device.
If you assume that genocide must be about killing because it comes from a Latin word for killing, then being nice should be about being ignorant because it comes from a Latin word for ignorant.
Those examples I’m guessing have no record of those who coined them, genocide however appears to have such a record.
for example, a cultural genocide refers to destroying culture, e.g. Uighur or Muslim culture
Or is it chosen for rhetorical/propaganda effect without too much concern for accuracy?
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml
What the Chinese are doing there is covered under Article II, c.
If you are being pedantic by holding fast to the literal Greek translation of "geno" and "cide" then, well, this is simply not the complete modern meaning of the term.
Look, internment isnt good either, why dig in your heels on the most loaded possible word?
why not focus on that, rather than your personal, individual dislike of a term?
why dig your heels in on the semantics of the thing, rather than the substance?
false: there are a few. They aren't always correct, but they're more correct than you personally
> More generally, if genocide can mean...
there is no question what it means, you simply personally disagree with it
and since you definitely aren't an authoritative body on the definition of words, your personal pedantic insistence that the word mean only what the strict etymological roots imply, rather than how people actually use it, is irrelevant
> a negatively-loaded bomb to be lobbed in partisan debates
it's quite telling that you seem to view usage of the term "cultural genocide" to refer to cultural genocide as a bigger issue than actual cultural genocide
don't like people using the correct term to refer to the action? maybe get those perpetrating the action to stop, instead of telling everyone we're using the wrong words to describe it.
Modern definition of genocide at UN explicitly wouldn't categorize what PRC is doing in XJ - cultural genocide - because members, especially west went out of their way to ensure cultural genocide would have little legal ramifications, otherwise Canada would have been sanctioned to death for self professed cultural genocide a few years ago. Incidentally the entire reason Pompeo tried to propagandize genocide label was because it would trigger diplomatic ramifications at UN. What the PRC is doing in XJ is cultural genocide, and bluntly that’s permissible thanks to lobbying from the west.
The entire manufactured genocide narrative is so retarded because if PRC wanted to, they could just... commit genocide. At PRC scale they can wipe out the 12M Uyghurs in a few weekends on the cheap instead of wasting trillions of RMB trying to sinicize them.
* suicide
* regicide
* fratricide
* insecticide
* pesticide
Using the word "genocide" to refer to something other than mass murder - and then falling back to the claim that "genocide" doesn't mean mass murder - is just playing rhetorical games.
Yeah, seems to be overlooked quite a lot since it's convenient for the US narrative lately.
> Starting in 2002, the American government detained 22 Uyghurs in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp. The last 3 Uyghur detainees, Yusef Abbas, Hajiakbar Abdulghupur and Saidullah Khalik, were released from Guantanamo on December 29, 2013, and later transferred to Slovakia.
> None of the Uyghurs wanted to be returned to China. The United States declined to grant the Uyghurs political asylum, or to allow them parole, or even freedom on the Naval Base.
> A May 2008 report by the Inspector General of the United States Department of Justice claimed that American military interrogators appeared to have collaborated with visiting Chinese officials at Guantánamo Bay to enact sleep deprivation of the Uyghur detainees.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo...
The party isn't technically the government of China.
Of course a foreigner is going to be possibly vetted more.
This is a headline from this year.
It turns out that when you break the law in other countries, you might get punished for it.
Who could have possibly expected that, right?
When I rented a furnished apartment in Saigon back in 2008, there was an ethernet cable on the table and a piece of paper in English that said "Do not visit websites of anti-government propaganda, or pornography, or news such as the New York Times."
Naturally, as the police held my passport for the entire year I was in Vietnam, I was cautious. But after a few days, I just went ahead and openly browsed the NYT for a few minutes. My internet was shut off for about 3 hours. The next time I did it, it was shut off for 24 hours, and then I knew it wasn't a glitch. It wasn't exactly immediate, either; it took a few minutes. I was pretty sure there was a semi-dedicated person assigned to watch my traffic.
That wasn't over a VPN. I wanted them to see my traffic. But I knew running over a VPN would just raise suspicion. When I opened up VPNs to check email after that, I did it from cafes, and I did it in short spurts.
I didn't feel good about it when I found out (actually, the moment I signed the lease), but there was nothing I could do about it.
My exit from Vietnam was almost humorous. I had about 50 DVDs in my suitcase, mostly encrypted backups and burned movies, and every single one was inspected by sight, holding it up to the light (to see how far the burn went?), then left on the floor of the airport for me to pick up. Upon re-entering the US, the customs officers did almost the same thing, and then just confiscated all my discs.
Weirdly, no one on either side checked my laptop.
Yes just like the US
[1] They prefer not to fuck with the armed ones.
How was your nap, Mr. Van Winkle? 2020 wasn't a great year in the US. You were better off spending it asleep, trust me.
I've seen the police publicly flog random people on the street in Vietnam just for being in their way. What a wonderfully just, equitable socialist paradise.
Go check out and live in a country where the police actually control people and get back to me.
Btw all you’ve said is something about degree of control or tactics. Not relevant
In fact, the US Department of State recommends that all US citizens have a photocopy of their passport with them, when traveling abroad.
I think it may be illegal, but I've heard from people who travel to places where it's sketchy for Americans to travel, that they report their passport as destroyed, get a second copy issued, then keep the first one.
The reasoning is that certain immigration departments see red flags if they see visa stamps from certain other countries, and you may get grief for having visited them. Cuba and the US used to be one, but cross-border rivalries are another. Knowing who hates who and presenting the right passport to receive the stamp would save you grief. Also if you encounter corruption/extortion you can schedule the next flight out and run.
With the electronic ones now I don't know how many places that still works.
1) you travel a lot and sometimes may need to mail your passport off to get a pre-travel visa from some consulate, while you are still outside the USA. This way you can send off one passport to get the visa for your next country, while keeping a valid passport with you while you’re abroad.
2) You need to travel between Israel and countries which have laws against visiting Israel (Historically, GCC countries). This way you can always present whichever passport doesn’t have Israel’s entry and exit stamps on it.
I’ve had two valid US passports at the same time, and I’m just a random nobody American.
https://www.touristisrael.com/the-israeli-passport-stamp/974...
It used to depend on where you were coming from. When travelling to Israel for work a few years back, my passport (irish citizen) was not stamped, but my colleague's (at the time, a Turkish citizen) was.
No idea why.
And to show how stupid things were--he also had a stamp he had made up to make forged entries on our yellow books. At that time your average joe certainly did not have an up-to-date smallpox shot--but at multiple border crossings they would hit you up for a bribe if you didn't have an up-to-date smallpox shot. Hence fake them. (Even around 2000 which was the last time I had occasion to have anything added to my yellow book there still was no anti-counterfeit protection.)
Part of this is simply because American passports are extremely valuable. Another part is that anyone who wants to fuck with you in some semi-official capacity now has to choose whether to go back to your hotel or arrest you on the spot, which puts them in a better mind to give up or take a bribe.
Happened to me at an airport in Thailand. Some airside police officer demanded to inspect my passport, then wouldn't give it back to me until I walked him to an ATM so I could pay him a "tax" in cash.
I never went back to Thailand.
It most certainly can be done--I wore mine basically 24/7 for a year. The only time it wasn't under my clothing was for border crossing or bathing--and in the latter case it almost always was under a traveling companion's clothing. No close calls--but someone else in the group wasn't so cautious and hers was snatched. Fortunately, the thief wasn't sophisticated, kept the cash and dumped everything else quickly.
In the end you'll have two passports but one of them is now useless and it will be flagged the moment you actually use it for traveling. It may not be pleasant when you're abroad and the authorities catch you using an invalid travel document.
I guess it makes more sense if you never intend to use the old passport again for crossing borders?
[1] https://www.interpol.int/en/How-we-work/Databases/SLTD-datab...
Use of VPNs is... universal... among middle-to-upper-class Chinese. This is obviously not an example of legal risk associated with using a VPN. Rather, it's an example of a punishment coming down on someone who was targeted for other reasons.
An immediate implication is that, if you repealed all the laws against VPNs, nothing about anything would change.
> The use of VPNs in China can provide individuals access to the international internet, but in China, it can be a potential legal risk. In 2017, the Chinese government declared all unauthorized VPN services to be illegal.[94] An example of the use of this punishment is Vera Zhou, a student at the University of Washington, who, when visiting her Hui parents in Xinjiang, China, used a VPN to access her school homework. She was arrested and sent to a Xinjiang internment camp from October 2017 until March 2018, followed by house arrest after her release. She was not able to return to the US until September 2019.[95][96]