Be honest now: PT 2

[WinterPalm]

I all their involvements and acts around the world, which of the five security council members do you think have been involved in the worst human rights violations? This can be direct, indirect or supporting regimes with the weapons, training and means to carry these acts out.

[Laughing Cow]

Tough one to answer.

As "Human Rights" are only a very recent invention and thus older acts cannot be judged against them as the standard did not exist than.

Example:
A friend told me about a pet-shop in Osaka (some time ago) that treated their Pets miserably, when he went to the police to report the problem he was told that they could do nothing as no Law exists do prevent /punish "Animal Cruelty". I believe Laws now exist.

Another problem is that the "Human rights" like many other standards are based on modern Judeo-Christian values and beliefs and thus not applicable to all situations.

I voted for France, as I feel that as a modern nation it was still involved in some bad things like Prison colonies in French Guinea (aka Devil's Island) till the middle of the last Century.

Just my 0.2 cents worth of thought.

[African Tiger]

One word: Tiennamen.... (sp)

France being my very close second. Any country who thinks Greenpeace is so scary that they need to send French Marines after "The Rainbow Warrior", certainly fits that category.

[Souljah]

I'd have to agree with LC.....good points

[rogue]

Canada
The Bahamas
Andora
Lichtenstein

[norther practitioner]

As "Human Rights" are only a very recent invention

What is "very recent" mean to you? 30 years, 100 years, 250 years, 1000 years?

[David Jamieson]

nobody has clean hands entirely.

kill one person, go to jail, kill 10 people get in the paper, kill 100.000 people and get invited to geneva for peace talks.

killing is killing.

peace

[Laughing Cow]

Originally posted by norther practitioner


What is "very recent" mean to you? 30 years, 100 years, 250 years, 1000 years?

Less than 100 Years, preferably after WW II.

With that I mean Human rights as they are defined now.

Edited
To give you an example.

Many Tests like the SAT & College exams undergo revisions to make them tougher or more suited for current situations.

Now if you would apply those new criteria to tests taken lets say 20yrs ago, you would have a huge failure rate as with the old standard there was a huge succes rate.

Hence old things cannot be truly judged by new standards.

Just my 0.2 cents worth of thought.

[GLW]

If you allow for indirect - the US looks pretty bad.

We supported most of the dictators in Central and South America.

We supported the Shah or Iran, Saddam Hussein, etc... We have sold a large amount of weapons to many countries.

We have done nothing when we were in an area doing something already (Ignoring the plight of China in WWII, the plight of the Jews in WWII, Cambodia when we were already bombing and supporting a government...then pulled out leaving a vacancy for the Khmer Rouge).

Allowing our organizations to deal in arms for hostiages, drugs, etc... Supporting such things in Asia all During the Viet Nam era...

Our government has gotten better at covering up the facts...but we are still doing those things. We are also the world's larges owner of Weapons of Mass Destruction (what a term).

AND<<< we talk the most about human rights.

The others may have done more directly, but we are definitely competitive.

[rubthebuddha]

i voted for china, simply because their violations are the most heard about.

sad logic, but that's all i have to work with. :(

[Souljah]

ssshhhhhhhhhhh GLW no1s supposed to mention the 'things' about the 'things'.

;) :)

[Laughing Cow]

Originally posted by Souljah
ssshhhhhhhhhhh GLW no1s supposed to mention the 'things' about the 'things'.

;) :)

You mean like
THIS (http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.30A.byrd.wmd.htm)

I never said nothing.

Just my 0.2 cents worth of thought.

[norther practitioner]

Human rights have been around for a while now.... however, politics are a bit newer.......

Now as far as the U.S. we have done some dumb things and supported tirants in numerous occasions in the past and some now. We also use things like trade sanctions against others, which in turn makes them do more to violate human rights. However just because we support someone doing something it doesn't mean that we condone the situation, support it directly etc. It can be looked at kinda like that dumb commercials about not doing drugs saying that if you buy drugs you might support terrorists. In a lot of these situations it is a catch 22, you don't use sanctions against someone, they go on and do crappy things. You use the sanctions, you make it worse for the people of the country indirectly. They arsehole is still going to be an arsehole until the people decide or see that this is happening. It is really hard for this to happen in some areas of the world, there education tells them that we are there sworn enemy, even if we help them out they see it as us trying to corrupt them. There is a lot that goes into the equation, looking at it in direct situations, I would have to say China or Iraq. The Taliban was a f*cked up regime also.... The morals that we look at for this though does go back to modern Judeo-Christian values. So when we judge the Taliban and Sadam, etc. we need to realize that most of the f*cked up things they do seems like status quo.

[Former castleva]

"A friend told me about a pet-shop in Osaka (some time ago) that treated their Pets miserably, when he went to the police to report the problem he was told that they could do nothing as no Law exists do prevent /punish "Animal Cruelty". I believe Laws now exist."

I thought pets were treated relatively well in Japan (no generalisations here)

I think that when it comes to older China,some things could have been left without Confucianism´s influence.

[Crimson Phoenix]

OK...I'm French in my heart (only 50% in blood) and proud of it so I'm obviously biased to death.

But guys, you vote France when there is a "China" and a "USA" option? You gotta be kidding right? You see the USA as angels or what? Not to even mention China, who anyone in his right mind wouldn't even hesitate placing on top of the list...
God knows how much I love China and the Chinese...but what the government there is doing can't be ignored.

Every country has their hands soaked in blood for sure, and everyone is doing their nasty underground covert ops...but some far more than others...

But what exactly made you vote for France? I don't get it...we don't have the death penalty, whereas some US states still have it and China definitely makes an overuse of it. We do not put political opposition in jail. We do not put journalists in jail (China does both). We do not carry out an ethnic cleansing (Tibet anyone?) or claim territories by military actions (Russia and China do). That is already enought to rule out France of the choice. This is for the obvious parts...

US secret services have been implicated in far more twisted schemes that we know of than our own secret services were (they're not that good anyway heheheheh).
We seldom shoot people out of abortion clinics or forbid evolutionnist theroy in school books because of our blatent religious extremism (don't tell me religion doesn't come into play, because it's deeply mingled in US politics, from parties to mentions on bills to having to swear on a Bible in a court). Speaking of religion, where do most of the money teasing the fire of hatred in the middle east comes from? Yup, boucing in the city where the heat is on, welcome to Miami...
We are about equal when it comes to political manipulation of other countries (even by means of assassination if needed), you in South America, we in Africa.
We are equal when it comes to forgetting human rights when big $ is on the table (drugs, major industrial deals, whatever).

But anyway, it's just fashionable to criticize France these days (especially in these times of "we want to kick Iraki butt and will find a reason to do it" when our politic has always been openly pro-arab)...so go on, have fun, and keep spending your dough at the Eiffel Tower hahahahahahahahaha

[red5angel]

Here is why I voted France:

A while ago the UN needed to vote in a new president. The popular option was a gentleman from Africa, can't remember his name or country at the moment, and was almost surely a shoe in, EXCEPT, France chose to vote him down because he didn't speak FLUENT french, he only spoke broken french.

Initially, I don't know what the law is now, France RECQUIRED, all websites that were located physcially in France had to have a French Language version of the website. they even went so far as to shut down several websites who for some reason refused to, most of these by the way were created by people from other countries of course in their own languages.

While the rest of the world was settling in to use CD as the common and accepted abreviation of Compact Disk, France held a vote to give it it's own French abreviation. Don't ask me why they just didn't use the abbreviation for Compact Disk, in French.

Also, can't remember where I heard this, but as of very recently, it was illegal to stare at the Parisian Mayor or the French President without permission. this law was an old law but had apparently been enforced as recently as the 80's.

So in my mind, forcing the French language and culture envy have puched France to some bizarre lengths.

Actually I can't think of any poll I wouldn't vote France worst of.


Not to mention that while I served with the UN forces in Kuwait, apparently French soldiers can walk away from a post for one reason alone, a cigarrette break! Yes, while it is encouraged to get someone to cover your post, it is more important that you not be seen smoking on post so you can be excused from walking away from your own post in some instances.....

[MightyB]

"We have done nothing when we were in an area doing something already (Ignoring the plight of China in WWII, the plight of the Jews in WWII, Cambodia when we were already bombing and supporting a government...then pulled out leaving a vacancy for the Khmer Rouge).

Allowing our organizations to deal in arms for hostiages, drugs, etc... Supporting such things in Asia all During the Viet Nam era...

Our government has gotten better at covering up the facts...but we are still doing those things. We are also the world's larges owner of Weapons of Mass Destruction (what a term)."

Whatever Benedict, whatever...


Does anybody know who Chenault is? Prior to the US's overt involvement in WWII, there was an unofficial US protection force stationed in China called the Flying Tigers protecting the Chinese, Burmese, and others from and slowing down probably one of the worst violators of international law-- even to this day-- the Japanese. It was infighting amongst the Chinese warlords that prevented a better resistance. It seems Chang's and Mao's best forces were reserved for fighting each other rather than protecting their own people.

It was the Pope who ignored the Jews, The US was again heavily involved in supporting an anti-German movement with none other than the good ol' Brits. We had already broken several of the Axis's codes and were supplying key intelligence, weapons, money and personell to the British and also helping Scandanavian and Polish dissidents. There were several key players in this: Admiral Halsey, a Canadian with the last name of Stephenson aka "Intrepid", and Winston Churchill.

We bombed the Ho Chi Minh trail, a key supply route for the NVA. Let's talk about this for a minute... Unfortunately, we had ties to both Hanoi and France. We supported Ho Chi Minh in WWII in doing guess what... fighting Japs. We also supported him when he was fighting the Chinese, but, what happened is the revolution against French colonization. Unfortunately, we felt committed to France, because, in the past, they were a key US ally. They actually helped to create the US by supporting, albeit very close to the end after it was clear that we would win anyway, the US against Britain in the American Revolution. Anyhoo, when push came to shove, we pulled support from Hanoi... Giap was corrupt, but he was anti-commi, and like it or not, the Domino theory was big then. Hind sight is always 20/20. People like to blame Nixon, it was actually Kennedy and Johnson's war and fiasco. Nixon did what he had to do. He had no tolerance for political BS. He bombed the crap out of North Vietnam and Cambodia, He supported counter insurgency and offensive actions in both countries and he generaly kicked ass. The saying is that he bombed 'em back to the peace table. If we would have had that attitude earlier, when Kennedy and then crazy boy Johnson were in charge, it would have been different. Heck, he normalized realations with the Chinese and almost got Russia and China into a war, that would have been great... F___k the Cambodians. Just like everybody else in the world. Whine like heck if we're there, whine even more if we're not. Isn't that the point of your thread. whiningly stating that if the US would have intervened, so much more would have been better. No Sh!t. That's what we're doing now.

Yeah, we do have the best Nukes. We also know the danger in having them and would very much like it if there were no nukes in the world. We are the country who created smart weaponry. We are the only country who recognizes the rights of non-combatants and we try the hardest to eliminate needless deaths of civilians. Look at our technology and lack of tolerance for collateral damage.

Again, you people suck. F_off. You don't like it... Tough.

Personally, I would love to see us pull all support from you foreign pin headed arrogant pu$$ies. How fast would you whine with No US money, no US food, and no US protection? You need us, we really don't need you. We know it, you know it, we're not putting up with the BS anymore. If we pull out of countries, the result is anarchy and death. We are the world's police. Now we're going to prove it.

[David Jamieson]

Mighty B-

Although I personally believe that a very small percentage of people who control all the money on the planet are the real problem and the fact that most of us buy into the bs heirarchy and power structure of things, I do not believe that the US should be the world police and nor do I believe that they are "needed" in many cases and rather they tend to impose on other countries in their own interest.

They wouldn't have anything to do with the rest of the world if there wasn't something in it for them. Any western political power is NOT benevolent or forgiving. Most of the world is an anarchistic mess.

I think you need to do some travelling, or maybe read a little bit more to open your head up a bit.

My government, your government, everybodies government and the corruption and greed within those "governments" are the real problem.

The people need to be heard and have never truly been heard.
Nobody in their right mind wants to go to war. Those who will not have any chance of dying in conflict are all for it (read: the powers that be).

Do you think any world leader will pick up a gun and lead soldiers into battle? I think not. I can't think of a world leader who has the cajones to do that. Not your president, not my prime minister, none of them have "it".

No wonder everything is factioned, no wonder there is "terrorism".

George Orwell once said "If you want to envision the future of humanity, just think of a boot stamping on a face repeatedly, forever"

I don't think he was that far off both metaphorically and literally.

I also think it would be good to disband the united nations and for the major G7 countries to pull out of all the countries they interfere with on a daily basis. ONce the dust settles, we take a look and see what is best for everyone.

I don't believe in democracy as it is practiced in the west, it is an out and out lie. By the way, for the true definition od democracy read platos republic.

Also, by the way, if you don't like what your fellow americans are saying then get out. See how silly that sounds? The earth and it's rewards belong to no one. Get that one fact into ya and maybe things will change. You don't own anything but your own perceptions. When you die, when we all die, there is nothing, no land, no politics, no need. Perhaps that is better than living in any world afetr all. No need to rush to it, it will come naturally because we all get to die. Some of us just get to choose how.

In the meantime, chill on the US is great diatribe, nobody buys into that anymore with few exceptions, such as those who are lead around by rhetoric, b.s or ulterior motivation.

peace

[MightyB]

I'm just sick of all the anti-American sentiment right now.

These are the same people who come whining for US intervention and support whenever things don't go their way.

We have real problems in the US. Our economy is suffering from a correction. Our health system is on the verge of bust because we subsidize just about everyone else's health system, and we have to deal with this terrorrism BS.

I know two representatives at the state and congress level. They really don't want to have to be involved in world politics. But, when we don't involve ourselves, we suffer. What it is is that we have wealth, freedom, rights, and potential. That makes us a threat to anyone who doesn't.

I really don't hate foreign people and I'm one of the few who argues for open immigration still. There are people who really want to close off the rest of the world.

You're right. I haven't travelled abroad. I had a friend who spent a year in Liberia building bridges. He told me that you really can't appreciate how great America is until you see how bad the rest of the world has it.

Nobody I know wants to kill anybody. But, when people fly planes into buildings, when they threaten you with diseases that you thought you had eradicated for the good of humanity, when they threaten you with nuclear waste dispersion, and poison, and whatever else vile you can come up with, and it's people, civilians, not military that is there target, when they can't even tolerate your coexistance and your right to be here because what you value-- Freedom-- is such a problem to them-- then you must act. You must act swiftly and without tolerance. It has to be decisive, unified, and focused. You must destroy their ability to do harm.

North Korea would rather have their people starve and resorting to canabilism than give up building weapons of mass destruction. China does the same thing. The Palistinians demand that women and children murder and kill themselves. The Somolians resisted free food, they are starving to death.

The US does have problems. Distribution of wealth isn't equitible. Business seems to take precedense over human life. But it's changing. And it will continue to change for the better. I just attended a health and technology summit that discussed amongst other things, the benefits of a minimum 6 weeks vacation a year, and a positive work life balance. We are on the verge of eradicating human disease and hunger. We are building new models for civilization that focus on health, wellness, peaceful coexistence, and the exploration of human potential that will eventually eliminate the need for commerce as we know it. We are revitalizing man's greatest potential and reason for being here which is pure exploration. It's the quest for knowledge. We understand that humans are the most important and significant creation in the whole universe. (We can look at a star and wonder about it, the star cannot wonder about us).

That's why others feel the need to bash the US.

[Crimson Phoenix]

Red 5, hahaha that is why you voted France? Weren't we speaking of human rights? LOL

Anyway...I won't argue about that issue...to anyone their opinion...
Apparently lot of you yankees feel good when bashing France...so go for it if it is any relief...
Don't worry, we'll give you the hearts of your women back eventually hahahahahahaha

[Laughing Cow]

MightyB.

May I point out a few things:

1.) Don't judge situation outside from 3rd party sources like your friend. Libiya(sic) is not typical of Africa and never of the rest of the World.

2.) Go and travel it will show you the real status. Liberia is one of the FEW countries that receive US-Aid, the majority of the countries receive NO US-Aid in any form.
Yes, America does great in THOSE countries where it gives aid, but also tends to interfere in other Countries that receive NO aid.

3.) Nearly every 1st-world Country on this World gives aid to the same countries that the US gives and often to some tht the US refuses aid.

4.) Your view of the world and the US influence is skewed,therefor I assume that you lack some Information that many others have.

5.) Don't confuse UN aid with US aid.

6.) US foreign aid till recently was 2nd to Japan. At the moment BOTH the US and Germany give more aid than Japan.

Remember that the Japanese have 1/2 the US-Population, a long recession and still gave that aid.
BTW, they are still the 2nd largest Economy in the world if you don't count the EU as a single economy.

That is all I wanted to say.

[Laughing Cow]

Looks like a lot of Countries got double standards going.

Supporters if Iraq's nuclear program. (http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-nuclear1217dec17,0,94515.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines)

Hmmm, are those countries for or against SADDAM???

Just my 0.2 cents worth of thought.

[joedoe]

Originally posted by red5angel
Here is why I voted France:

A while ago the UN needed to vote in a new president. The popular option was a gentleman from Africa, can't remember his name or country at the moment, and was almost surely a shoe in, EXCEPT, France chose to vote him down because he didn't speak FLUENT french, he only spoke broken french.

.....

That wouldn't happen to be because French is the diplomatic language maybe?

[Crimson Phoenix]

right on the money, Joedoe
At last an educated intervention :-)

[red5angel]

Kung Lek, who should be policing the world? No One? that would be good I suppose, if your into allowing petty dictators to grow powerful, human rights to be denied en masse, small brushfire wars breaking out that could potentially turn into conflagerations.
Is it a bad thing we keep blocking the punt on small dictators reaching nuclear capability? Is it a good idea to maybe let them go ahead and nuke the crap out of each other?
Of course its out of self interest, I believe every law is out of personal self interest. Look at the ten commandments in the Christian bible! 10 rules so that I don't get beat up, killed, raped, thinsg stolen form me etc... It's huiman nature. You bet tyour sweet a$$ we are going to be watching out for us. We also do a lot of good around the world in the interest of helping people out. Our govenrment supports programs designed to give foreign aid, and has their own policies.
The optimal choice would be for a "World" wide governing body but we can see how effective that is in the UN, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I think anyone is fooling themselves if they believe that anyone shouldn't be onvolved in what is going on in the neighborhood.
Would you call the police on a neighbors house that was being broken into? Would you call the police if your neighbor was beating their spouse/child in the front yard for everyone to see? Would you do something about the neighbor that keeps dumping trash in your yard? Why?

joeode, I understand why France may have decided to do it, but I still don't agree with it. I believe it's self serving, save the French culture and all that. everyone in the UN speaks English to a certain degree or another, not everyone speaks French. I fit wasn't for the linguistic and cultural obsession the French have begun to cutivate I might be inclined to agree with you, but I don't buy it ;)
Besides, as far as I am concerned, they don't deserve and didn't earn the seat they have in the UN, excpet maybe roll over for every european invasion after Ceasar led the Romans through Gaul......and I don't want to hear anything about Napolean, everyone knows he was not really so much French as crazy.....;)

[Laughing Cow]

Originally posted by red5angel
...and I don't want to hear anything about Napolean, everyone knows he was not really so much French as crazy.....;)

Which one would that be I, II or III??

Just my 0.2 cents worth of thought.