It’s pretty easy to argue that the CIA is the antithesis of American idealism - unelected bureaucrats doing jobs that the public has no power to hold them accountable for.
> It’s pretty easy to argue that the CIA is the antithesis of American idealism - unelected bureaucrats doing jobs that the public has no power to hold them accountable for.
I think I got that one, Alex: "What is Congressional oversight?"
It's not that it's an antithesis of the ideal; it's just that things get real messy when the idealism meets reality. Elected officials are supposed to represent the public and carefully vet before appointment, and then hold the unelected bureaucrats accountable.
Alternative interpretation: the system is working exactly as designed, and "American Interests" trump any idealism.
> Fixed that for you. Do I need to get the CIA and various wars lists from Wikipedia?
Please, do tell me of the CIA's murderous and oppressive domestic activities since 1950 [1], and how they have been of a comparable magnitude to China's.
[1] The PRC was founded in 1949, so this time period is to make it comparable.
oh FFS, compare that to the cultural revolution, which ended in 1976. the whataboutism here is annoying; while we were debating and agonizing over the impact of the vietnam war, China was busy imprisoning, torturing, and relocating its own citizens over ideology. It created a culture of children informing on their own parents.
I wish people would realize how much they have dodged a bullet by growing up in western nations.
The US has done this to plenty of its own citizens too, typically the non-white ones. And it didn't stop in the 70s when civil rights were supposedly won.
Do I have you right here, what you seen to be saying is that the well-known images of rows of USA police/soldiers protecting citizens from racists is false? That there was no rule of law, and that the USA government was the force behind racially directed violence? And that still, the government ignored the rule of law and exacts widescale violent action against its citizens motivated by politics/race?
Or is China actually different, and you're talking crap?
>what you seen to be saying is that the well-known images of rows of USA police/soldiers protecting citizens from racists is false
China is of course different --apples to oranges--, but the images you mention are cherry picked. The images that were hidden from the front pages were of the secret police agencies subverting, blackmailing, and assassinating leaders of the civil rights movement.
"We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity" -Fred Hampton
A quick look through their reports frames this whole issue in a bit of a different light [0]. Mainly in the context of a Chinese shift from socialism to capitalism and the need for hospitals to fund themselves and run as for profits.
The numbers are big, which looks scary at first glance but ain't really that surprising considering it's the most populated country on the planet. Sadly the report does not seem trying to account for that, by comparing transplants per capita with other countries, instead, it just cites big numbers going "Look how many!".
Without wanting to sound too cynical, this looks more like an example of extreme capitalism, without any regards to ethics, and not for "Communist China being oh so evil", which this often is framed as. Which overall is a rather difficult topic as these are the very same dynamics that make China a world leader in human cloning research and one of the most important manufacturing hubs in the world.
