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Indigenous leaders condemn Trump's move to rename Lake Ontario (www.aptnnews.ca)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] 6 points 2 months ago (8 children)

The next weird Trump move. It's telling how similar autocrats act across the globe. China has been playing the same 'name games' with its neighbours and in the wider Indo-Pacific Region for decades, and Xi Jinping has been increasing such activities in recent years.

A recent example: China has just officially mapped Russian Far East sites with Chinese names. It's another sign that Beijing isn't a reliable partner - not even for a like- minded dictatorship.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    I would copy China too, they're the only ones still in touch with reality therefore have an actual shot at getting everything they want. Trump all but seals it. They don't even have to do anything shady, just get out his way and continue to appear isolationist to the casual observer.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Yeah, that's not in anyway related. The places that Xi is "renaming" are not being renamed. They retain their original names. The guidance put forth by the Xi government is to place historical Chinese names for those places that used to have Chinese names back on the maps alongside the names currently used by the current administrations that operate those locations. This is very unlike a European settler colonial state renaming a lake that was given an anglicized version of an indigenous name by European settler colonialists to another European settler colonial name.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    @freagle@lemmygrad.ml

    @freagle

    Yeah, I forgot that it's only colonialism if the West does it (/s, just to be safe).

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    China was certainly doing colonialism in the past. The Chinese people of Taiwan province are settler colonists, definitively. But the idea of China using Chinese names for places that China had Chinese names for alongside the contemporary names for those places is very different.

    However, to address your point directly, unlike China, the entirety of the United States of America is literally a settler colony. Its own Supreme Court, with the majority opinion written by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, has established that the entire legal basis for the USA rests on the Doctrine of Discovery. The Chinese situation, complete with the long history of wars, dynasties, assimilation, genocides, etc is more comparable to the Holy Roman Empire in Europe than to the USA.

    So while you may want to do a both-sides false equivalency, there is no factual nor historical nor political basis for that equivalency.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Who cares what she said. Lady didn't know when to retire and that is one of the steps that led down this path.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Who cares what she said? Well, literally anyone who cares about the legal basis for the USA. It wasn't her personal opinion. She was delivering the legal definition of the USA's legitimate claims to its territory on the continent on behalf of the entire government, with the support of the majority of SCOTUS justices.

    What the hell kind of response is this anyway? Who cares what RGB said? That's inane. It's clear what the point is. RGB was not only NOT a Trump appointee, not a Bush appointee, but also a literal DARLING of the Democrat Party and the American Liberal zeitgeist and even SHE, with ZERO expediency pressure and ALL of the resources available, put in formal writing, reinforcing the highest law of the land, that the US exists ONLY because the Pope said it was OK to genocide savages.

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