Is There a Human Rights Double Standard?US Policy Toward Saudi Arabia,

[vulturesrow]

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Probably, Finland! Probably, Finland! The US would probably rate 10 to 20th in the world, objectively.


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Since we're editing posts I'll address this statement instead. Show me where I made the claim that the U.S. has the best human rights record bar none.

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I think you need to be woken up from your dream (the USA dream) that is starting to look more and more like a nightmare for the rest of the world!

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Being looked upon as a leader doesn't you're perfect or not making serious errors. That was basically the main point of the post that you don't care to address as usual.

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Adios,

you probably shouldnt waste your time trying to have an actual discussion with Midge.

[wtfsvi]

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A non sequiter as usual and ignoring the point I made. Where did I say that the U.S. has the best human rights record bar none? I never made the claim.

[/ QUOTE ] Respecting human rights seems to be the easiest and best way to promote human rights. And I don't mean because of a "good example" effect, but cleaning up one's own act is cleaning up someone's act.

I don't think there is much point in discussing if the US is the leading promoter of human rights. There are too many problems with definitions, and we would almost certainly talk past each other. But I'm pretty confident that your claim - That the world outside of the US looks at the US as the leading promoter of human rights - is false.

edit: I agree with your OP, obviously. What I'm saying is I think your reputation is already more damaged than you seem to think. Largely because of the "double standard" you describe.

[Adebisi]

I was just want to say I think the entire idea of consitancy is bs.
Countries we don't like: try to make them look bad.
Countries we do like: ignore their shortcomings.

That's just the way the world works. We support countries that help us advance what we perceive to be our national interests. We villify those who don't. It's that simple.


Most countries have real [censored] "human rights" records. The only ones that are probably even close to ok are wealthy western liberal democracies. Drug smuggling in Thailand? Life in prison! (I'm sure those Thai prisons are a blast)
The Angolan police force must be fun to deal with. China, Pakistan, Israel, Saudia Arabia, Colombia, Russia, Sudan..."human rights" violations are pretty common in all of them.

What we really need is to have people stop giving a f*ck about the political rights of people that live thousands of miles away, come from a totally different culture, and don't really care about us. If the government wants to start beheading every second-born child over in Tajikistan, it's really not going to affect my life in any way whatsoever.

[AzDesertRat]

I can't believe anyone is naive enough to believe that we tie anything into human rights. China runs over its people with tanks and that hasn't stopped us from having relations with China. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[boracay]

Please, try to be objective. Let’s think about human rights in the US first.

A hint – when talking about human rights search about discrimination against gays $ lesbians, treatment of non-citizens, labor rights, prison conditions/violence, etc. You tell me if USA is the world leader in promoting those human rights.

Then search about criminal sentencing and death penalty (as human rights).
During 2006 at least 1591 were executed in 25 countries. I will purposely name all of them, so one might get a better idea what group was that: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, North Korea, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Uganda, USA, Vietnam, Yemen. What a company! Leaders in promoting human rights? link

USA is the most aggressive jailer in the world with over 2 million prisoners, followed by China with 1.5 mio and Russia 0.86 mio. No other country in the world is known to incarcerate as many people. That’s 727 prisoners per 100.000 residents in the USA, compared with 102 for Canada or with most European countries that imprison fewer than 100 people. Not to mention again conditions with torture, violence, abuses in US jails.
link

You might be surprised, but in 1999 Amnesty International put the USA on a list of persistent violators of human rights, higher than China.
link

‘World leader in promoting human rights’ while failing so much at home. But let’s go abroad.

Just think about a support of repressive regimes in Latin America, Middle East, Africa, US corporations even employing local militias and militaries to violate people’s rights. How many military actions of the US army were there abroad since WWII? How is that supported by promoting human rights? Like in Iraq? What about kidnapping foreign people abroad, imprisoning people for extremely long periods of time without any sentences, denying visits of Red Cross, humanitarian organizations, their lawyers, Guantanamo, denying of international law and conventions, etc. World leader of promoting human rights? Are you kidding?

You have to admit that people abroad somehow don’t realize how humanitarian purpose of attacking other countries actually is. According to BBC poll in 27 countries (28.000 people), where Israel, Iran and USA share the most negative ratings about countries’ influence in the world. link
Maybe countries/people abroad support rather softer ways of promoting human rights, than by military actions (just compare Canada with only 14% negative votes vs 51% negative votes for the US).

To get a good and objective perspective, sometimes is good to check independent sources and not stay with the common view presented by home media. This time I’d check institutions like Human Right Watch or Amnesty International. I’m sure you shouldn’t have troubles finding much better examples about who’s better in promoting human rights.

[adios]

Here's a link to speech that Bush gave today:

Bush urges U.N. to spread freedom

"The people of Lebanon and Afghanistan and Iraq have asked for our help, and every civilized nation has a responsibility to stand with them," Bush said.

"Every civilized nation also has a responsibility to stand up for the people suffering under dictatorship," the president said. "In Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Iran, brutal regimes deny their people the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration" of the United Nations.

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"The nations in this chamber have our differences, yet there are some areas where we can all agree," Bush said. "When innocent people are trapped in a life of murder and fear, the declaration is not being upheld. When millions of children starve to death or perish from a mosquito bite, we're not doing our duty in the world. When whole societies are cut off from the prosperity of the global economy, we're all worse off."

"Changing these underlying conditions is what the declaration calls the work of larger freedom and it must be the work of every nation in this assembly," he said. "This great institution must work for great purposes: to free people from tyranny and violence, hunger and diseases, illiteracy and ignorance and poverty and despair."

More stuff quoted in the article but you get the idea.