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>We (the U.S) tolerate their disrespect for human rights because we also do not respect human rights I'm sorry but this statement is just absolutely and comple

by blhack 8y ago

>We (the U.S) tolerate their disrespect for human rights because we also do not respect human rights I'm sorry but this statement is just absolutely and completely ridiculous. I don't know if you've either never been to The United States, or you've never left The United States, but the difference between the respect that we have for human rights, and the respect that much of the rest of the world has, is stark.

throwba43yt 8y ago
The US talks about respecting human rights, but has no problem with 1 million dead Iraqi civilians. Individual Americans may respect human rights. Just like individual Chinese do as well. But when you challenge them as a nation, well, then the needs of the stong outweigh the needs of the weak.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  >>The US talks about respecting human rights, but has no problem with 1 million dead Iraqi civilians. So you took a poll, "do you give a rats @ss that 1 Million Iraqis were killed by USA" and most people didn't care? Let's tone it down, USA did not go there to kill a million people, it happened because of the war, and Saddam might have killed 2 mil if he was alive for Arab Spring. Not saying that Iraq war was justified but there's a huge difference.
  - flukus 8y ago
    > So you took a poll, "do you give a rats @ss that 1 Million Iraqis were killed by USA" and most people didn't care? The war had bipartisan support and the leader that started it was re-elected in the ultimate poll, so I'd say the majority are fine with it.
    - onetimemanytime 8y ago
      Not necessarily, as you know elections are about several major issues.
      - flukus 8y ago
        He got re-elected on a bigger margin, if just a few thousand people had said "this war is wrong and we shouldn't massacre Iraqis" he would have been voted out. If they had issues bigger than killing hundreds of thousands of people then... And I'm saying this as an Australian, we weren't much better.
  - thenanyu 8y ago
    > So you took a poll, "do you give a rats @ss that 1 Million Iraqis were killed by USA" and most people didn't care? Yes, even with the strawman wording you put forth, I suspect that > 50% would come down on the "don't care" side. If you worded it in a way that was designed to tease out revealed preferences, like: "Have you considered the plight of Iraqis in the last year?" you would get even more dramatic results.
- veridies 8y ago
  > has no problem with 1 million dead Iraqi civilians And how many Kurds were killed by Saddam Hussein? How many Shias? I think the Iraq war was a terrible mistake but that doesn't mean that supporting it means you don't care about Iraqis.
  - EGreg 8y ago
    Fine let’s leave Iraq to the side. We funded militants in Syria against Assad and sold weapons to Saudis against Yemen. We looked the other way as Pakistan genocidally raped Bangladesh in the war of independence. How about the United Fruit Company? School of the Americas? Wait how about this list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in... Please go justify that and then say USA cares about sovereignty of nations!
  - stanfordkid 8y ago
    We need to grow out of this culture of attributing any value to “caring”. The fact that Americans “care” that 1 million Iraqis died is not only meaningless, but also facetious. We elected a government and enabled a system that led to this. How can we judge China as worse? More importantly why do these judgements fundamentally even matter? The real question Americans should ask themselves is : what is our vision for the future? How can we regain our glory? Anything else assumes authority without investment. A strategy that is destined for failure.
salmon_is_tasty 8y ago
If you change it from human rights to American rights, then I'd agree with your statement.
Spidler 8y ago
How many children do you hold imprisoned right now? How many children have been defending themselves in courts recently? How many women, trans or otherwise have been suffering at the hands of your anti-women/abortion movement? You don't even prosecute the people who commit atrocities in your own country, much less those that commit them in others. You don't have respect for human rights or values. As an institution, you are monsters.
- prepend 8y ago
  On the scale of human rights, having your rights restricted in planning children (ie, restricting abortion) and having your organs removed are very far apart.
  - Spidler 8y ago
    Having a policy of actively kidnapping children from immigrants and then selling them in auctions while dumping the parents on a different continent? Having a long established policy of sterilizing minorities? Or wait, was that Canada? Nothing that US would ever have as a policy, of course not.
    - XCabbage 8y ago
      > Having a policy of actively kidnapping children from immigrants and then selling them in auctions while dumping the parents on a different continent? I'll bite, although I have a feeling I'm about to be screamed at for being an ignorant bigot for lacking this specific piece of knowledge: what on earth this comment referring to? The claim is that the present-day US is selling children in auctions who were taken from their parents by force? What?
      - UnFleshedOne 8y ago
        OP might be referring to recent news about current administration separating children from illegal immigrants and having them (the children) defend themselves in immigration courts. Not sure about auction part.
sneak 8y ago
How many other nations run a global network of unacknowledged torture prisons? How many of those other nations have broken into their national legislatures to cover it up? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/11/senator_feinstein_outraged_that_cia_hacked_her_computers_for_torture_evidence/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/11/senator_feinstein_o... The United States pays a lot of lip service to human rights, while wholesale ignoring them when convenient. Did we forget about Manning’s torture, Assange’s fake arrest warrant, Snowden’s exile, al-Awlaki‘s summary execution without trial, or the longest period of continuous war in the nation’s history?
- EGreg 8y ago
  A lot of nations have torture prisons. USA has one of the highest incarceration rates due to the stupid war on drugs. It has enabled drug gangs - no less scary than ISIS yet ignored by our media and populace - to take over large swaths of central America. And so on. All we care about is blocking refugees from getting in. HOWEVER!!!! That is external. Internally, the USA has some of the most respect for human rights and freedoms of any country. This would never happen on any significant scale in the USA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_...
  - sneak 8y ago
    ...except for those insane incarceration rates, which disproportionately target specific ethnicities. And then torture them with extended solitary confinement, or sometimes murder them. Internally.
chrisco255 8y ago
Only the West has such capacity for self-loathing.
keldaris 8y ago
It's not ridiculous. It merely conflates (as do most statements in this thread) two orthogonal aspects - how repressive a society happens to be internally and how much of a threat it poses abroad. Historically, there doesn't seem to be any perceptible correlation between those two factors. The U.S. is indeed by most metrics one of the freest societies on the planet in terms of the state repression imposed on the average citizen, certainly far better than China in this regard. At the same time, in foreign policy it behaves exactly the same way any other nation state does - pursuing its perceived interests without consideration for anything else other than objective constraints to its power. Since the U.S. is by far the most powerful nation state in the world, its list of foreign atrocities far exceeds that of anyone else since WW2. However, that's not any different from any other major power in world history and there's absolutely no reason to think China (or anyone else) would behave any better or worse given similar ability to pursue its interests unchecked.
- madstap 8y ago
  What metrics are those? The US has the biggest prison population in the world by a big margin, 655 per 100k people (El Salvador is in second place with 604/100k and China is at 118/100k). I'd call that state repression. In other measures it does better, like the so-called democracy index, where it ranks #21 (flawed democracy), which is better than China at #139 (authoritarian). In the reporters without borders press freedom index it's at #45, with China at #176 (almost dead last, out of 180). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://rsf.org/en/ranking I would argue that state repression is not only about direct interaction with police and other agents of the government, and that economic inequality and poverty is less direct, but just as real, relevant and serious form of oppression. If you buy into that premise, then the recent UN report is pretty damning. http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1 http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1 Some quotes: "About 40 million live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and 5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty." " Its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other rich democracies, eradicable tropical diseases are increasingly prevalent, and it has the world’s highest incarceration rate, one of the lowest levels of voter registrations in among OECD countries and the highest obesity levels in the developed world." "For almost five decades the overall policy response has been neglectful at best, but the policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship." I'd say that compared to China it really is better, in most regards, but "by most metrics one of the freest societies on the planet" is a stretch, to say the least.
stunt 8y ago
We can't talk about respect without respecting each other.

by blhack 8y ago

throwba43yt 8y ago

The US talks about respecting human rights, but has no problem with 1 million dead Iraqi civilians. Individual Americans may respect human rights. Just like individual Chinese do as well. But when you challenge them as a nation, well, then the needs of the stong outweigh the needs of the weak.

onetimemanytime 8y ago
>>The US talks about respecting human rights, but has no problem with 1 million dead Iraqi civilians. So you took a poll, "do you give a rats @ss that 1 Million Iraqis were killed by USA" and most people didn't care? Let's tone it down, USA did not go there to kill a million people, it happened because of the war, and Saddam might have killed 2 mil if he was alive for Arab Spring. Not saying that Iraq war was justified but there's a huge difference.
- flukus 8y ago
  > So you took a poll, "do you give a rats @ss that 1 Million Iraqis were killed by USA" and most people didn't care? The war had bipartisan support and the leader that started it was re-elected in the ultimate poll, so I'd say the majority are fine with it.
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    Not necessarily, as you know elections are about several major issues.
    - flukus 8y ago
      He got re-elected on a bigger margin, if just a few thousand people had said "this war is wrong and we shouldn't massacre Iraqis" he would have been voted out. If they had issues bigger than killing hundreds of thousands of people then... And I'm saying this as an Australian, we weren't much better.
- thenanyu 8y ago
  > So you took a poll, "do you give a rats @ss that 1 Million Iraqis were killed by USA" and most people didn't care? Yes, even with the strawman wording you put forth, I suspect that > 50% would come down on the "don't care" side. If you worded it in a way that was designed to tease out revealed preferences, like: "Have you considered the plight of Iraqis in the last year?" you would get even more dramatic results.
veridies 8y ago
> has no problem with 1 million dead Iraqi civilians And how many Kurds were killed by Saddam Hussein? How many Shias? I think the Iraq war was a terrible mistake but that doesn't mean that supporting it means you don't care about Iraqis.
- EGreg 8y ago
  Fine let’s leave Iraq to the side. We funded militants in Syria against Assad and sold weapons to Saudis against Yemen. We looked the other way as Pakistan genocidally raped Bangladesh in the war of independence. How about the United Fruit Company? School of the Americas? Wait how about this list: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in... Please go justify that and then say USA cares about sovereignty of nations!
- stanfordkid 8y ago
  We need to grow out of this culture of attributing any value to “caring”. The fact that Americans “care” that 1 million Iraqis died is not only meaningless, but also facetious. We elected a government and enabled a system that led to this. How can we judge China as worse? More importantly why do these judgements fundamentally even matter? The real question Americans should ask themselves is : what is our vision for the future? How can we regain our glory? Anything else assumes authority without investment. A strategy that is destined for failure.

salmon_is_tasty 8y ago

If you change it from human rights to American rights, then I'd agree with your statement.

Spidler 8y ago

How many children do you hold imprisoned right now? How many children have been defending themselves in courts recently? How many women, trans or otherwise have been suffering at the hands of your anti-women/abortion movement? You don't even prosecute the people who commit atrocities in your own country, much less those that commit them in others. You don't have respect for human rights or values. As an institution, you are monsters.

prepend 8y ago
On the scale of human rights, having your rights restricted in planning children (ie, restricting abortion) and having your organs removed are very far apart.
- Spidler 8y ago
  Having a policy of actively kidnapping children from immigrants and then selling them in auctions while dumping the parents on a different continent? Having a long established policy of sterilizing minorities? Or wait, was that Canada? Nothing that US would ever have as a policy, of course not.
  - XCabbage 8y ago
    > Having a policy of actively kidnapping children from immigrants and then selling them in auctions while dumping the parents on a different continent? I'll bite, although I have a feeling I'm about to be screamed at for being an ignorant bigot for lacking this specific piece of knowledge: what on earth this comment referring to? The claim is that the present-day US is selling children in auctions who were taken from their parents by force? What?
    - UnFleshedOne 8y ago
      OP might be referring to recent news about current administration separating children from illegal immigrants and having them (the children) defend themselves in immigration courts. Not sure about auction part.

sneak 8y ago

How many other nations run a global network of unacknowledged torture prisons? How many of those other nations have broken into their national legislatures to cover it up? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/11/senator_feinstein_outraged_that_cia_hacked_her_computers_for_torture_evidence/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/11/senator_feinstein_o... The United States pays a lot of lip service to human rights, while wholesale ignoring them when convenient. Did we forget about Manning’s torture, Assange’s fake arrest warrant, Snowden’s exile, al-Awlaki‘s summary execution without trial, or the longest period of continuous war in the nation’s history?

EGreg 8y ago
A lot of nations have torture prisons. USA has one of the highest incarceration rates due to the stupid war on drugs. It has enabled drug gangs - no less scary than ISIS yet ignored by our media and populace - to take over large swaths of central America. And so on. All we care about is blocking refugees from getting in. HOWEVER!!!! That is external. Internally, the USA has some of the most respect for human rights and freedoms of any country. This would never happen on any significant scale in the USA: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Gong_practitioners_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_...
- sneak 8y ago
  ...except for those insane incarceration rates, which disproportionately target specific ethnicities. And then torture them with extended solitary confinement, or sometimes murder them. Internally.

chrisco255 8y ago

Only the West has such capacity for self-loathing.

keldaris 8y ago

It's not ridiculous. It merely conflates (as do most statements in this thread) two orthogonal aspects - how repressive a society happens to be internally and how much of a threat it poses abroad. Historically, there doesn't seem to be any perceptible correlation between those two factors. The U.S. is indeed by most metrics one of the freest societies on the planet in terms of the state repression imposed on the average citizen, certainly far better than China in this regard. At the same time, in foreign policy it behaves exactly the same way any other nation state does - pursuing its perceived interests without consideration for anything else other than objective constraints to its power. Since the U.S. is by far the most powerful nation state in the world, its list of foreign atrocities far exceeds that of anyone else since WW2. However, that's not any different from any other major power in world history and there's absolutely no reason to think China (or anyone else) would behave any better or worse given similar ability to pursue its interests unchecked.

madstap 8y ago
What metrics are those? The US has the biggest prison population in the world by a big margin, 655 per 100k people (El Salvador is in second place with 604/100k and China is at 118/100k). I'd call that state repression. In other measures it does better, like the so-called democracy index, where it ranks #21 (flawed democracy), which is better than China at #139 (authoritarian). In the reporters without borders press freedom index it's at #45, with China at #176 (almost dead last, out of 180). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://rsf.org/en/ranking I would argue that state repression is not only about direct interaction with police and other agents of the government, and that economic inequality and poverty is less direct, but just as real, relevant and serious form of oppression. If you buy into that premise, then the recent UN report is pretty damning. http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1 http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1 Some quotes: "About 40 million live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and 5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty." " Its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other rich democracies, eradicable tropical diseases are increasingly prevalent, and it has the world’s highest incarceration rate, one of the lowest levels of voter registrations in among OECD countries and the highest obesity levels in the developed world." "For almost five decades the overall policy response has been neglectful at best, but the policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship." I'd say that compared to China it really is better, in most regards, but "by most metrics one of the freest societies on the planet" is a stretch, to say the least.

stunt 8y ago

We can't talk about respect without respecting each other.