Cisco Must Be Held Accountable for Aiding China’s Human Rights Abuses

We try to make push backs where we can. You're right though. It does feel futile. It must be so frustrating to work in human rights.

I think you underestimate (some) people's humanity.

So should you since that device you are reading this on was most likely sourced there. Likely sourced by underpaid workers in virtual enslavement to Foxconn or some other component manufacturer. Not to mention living in a toxic environment so we can all have our electronic toys.

While I do think human rights are a good idea, the focus seems to be carefully selected to as to make "bad" countries look bad and western countries look good. For the US, it's OK to kill people as long as you do it a bit randomly in a war instead of being too targeted, or as long as you do it to foreigners not your own citizens and you try to kill them quickly instead of using deliberate torture. If you do use torture, it should be psychological (solitary confinement) rather than physical. It's also OK to kill people by leaving them in an unsafe environment surrounded by killers (poor neighborhoods) without providing enough security or enough income to buy their way out. It's also OK to kill them in the name of economic progress by allowing cars to drive at speeds which regularly cause death. Somehow we accept these things as tolerable or even necessary but we don't realize that classic "bad country tortures dissidents" human rights abuses are equally necessary - they do the same thing wars do - secure the positions of governments against people who want to take them over. Even the name "dissident" is misleading - If we called Falun Gong members "traitors", that might make them sound like bad people and engender less public sympathy.

Cartoon about our patriotic biases: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/glorious-leader-wicke...

That said, it doesn't stop human rights abuses being wrong too.