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US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

bbc.com

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Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#21

Post by wffurr »

mikeyouse wrote: post #5

> Tim Rieser, former senior aide to Senator Leahy who wrote the 2011 amendment mandating information gathering, told the BBC the gateway's removal meant the State Department was "clearly ignoring the law". We're in a really bad place... with a servile congress, it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. When everything relies on "independent IGs" for law enforcement inside executive…

The answer is impeachment, but when Congress is stuffed with boot licking toadies, then there is no recourse.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#22

Post by nerdsniper »

wffurr wrote: post #21
mikeyouse wrote: post #5

> Tim Rieser, former senior aide to Senator Leahy who wrote the 2011 amendment mandating information gathering, told the BBC the gateway's removal meant the State Department was "clearly ignoring the law". We're in a really bad place... with a servile congress, it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. When everything relies on "independent IGs" for law enforcement inside executive…

The answer is impeachment, but when Congress is stuffed with boot licking toadies, then there is no recourse.

* s/impeachment/“conviction by the Senate”

Impeachment by itself has been shown to accomplish nothing. There is no other mechanism except conviction by the Senate to address constitutional or legal violations made by the president.

Also no president has ever been impeached by a House which is controlled by a majority of the same party of the President. If Congress had a full Republican majority during Nixon’s years, he would not have been impeached. If Congress had a full Democratic majority during Clinton’s years, he would not have been impeached.

Edit: “Approval voting” is the appropriate escape hatch from 2-party politics. It lets you get rid of primaries entirely and run all the top-n candidates who have the greatest number of valid nomination signatures. Its advantage over range-voting/etc is that it is dead-simple to explain to voters: Put a checkmark next to any candidate that you're "okay" with. The candidate with the most checkmarks wins.

https://rangevoting.org/CompChart.html

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#23

Post by abeppu »

sschueller wrote: post #8
hirvi74 wrote: post #4

Not that I agree with this decision, but is there any evidence that these reports yielded any consequences? Or rather, was it one of those, "After conducting an internal investigation, we have determined we did nothing wrong" kind of things?

Yes, I would think the 'smart evil' thing to do would be keeping it running and just ignoring what you don't like but now people will just send the stuff to WikiLeaks.

I don't think that's even the smart thing. Because this is set up to receive reports about acts committed by groups receiving weapons from the US, the smart evil thing is to have dossiers of all the human rights abuses of your client states ready the next time you want to negotiate something with them. "It's highly embarrassing that you used the guns we gave you to shoot so many civilians. We might be somewhat less embarrassed to continue supplying you with guns if (your national airline bought more Boeing planes|you sung praises to our glorious leader more loudly in public|you brought a complaint against our adversary in the WTO)."

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#25

Post by runarberg »

mikeyouse wrote: post #11
propagandist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it was always purely a pretense. One must laud the transparency this administration has introduced.

One really mustn't. There are plenty of people who work in government that actually care about human rights - this 'tear it down' mentality relies on the fantasy that it will be rebuilt in some better form. And this kind of 'both sides' bullshit from the article highlights it perfectly: > Blaha had already voiced frustration that despite the HRG passing its pilot phase, the Biden administration had not done enough to…

The ‘tear it down’ mentality is about tearing down the covers and exposing America for what it is. That is how I understood your parent at least.

The USA has been doing human rights abuses for a long time, without any repercussions. The Iraq war and the Patriot Act is but a few of many many many more examples. For a while now the entire political spectrum in Europe has given this impunity to the USA, with the covers gone, maybe it will be harder—at least for the left of center parties—to give this impunity to the USA.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#26

Post by dfee »

mikeyouse wrote: post #11
propagandist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it was always purely a pretense. One must laud the transparency this administration has introduced.

One really mustn't. There are plenty of people who work in government that actually care about human rights - this 'tear it down' mentality relies on the fantasy that it will be rebuilt in some better form. And this kind of 'both sides' bullshit from the article highlights it perfectly: > Blaha had already voiced frustration that despite the HRG passing its pilot phase, the Biden administration had not done enough to…

> There are plenty of people who work in government that actually care about human rights

Hopefully most do! All should.

However, most employees don’t pick what they work on. So it’s always at the discretion of the boss to determine what’s practically considered, regardless of ideals or desires.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#27

Post by foobarian »

aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #14
hirvi74 wrote: post #4

Not that I agree with this decision, but is there any evidence that these reports yielded any consequences? Or rather, was it one of those, "After conducting an internal investigation, we have determined we did nothing wrong" kind of things?

I have a feeling thats exactly how it was used. But that makes its removal even more odd. The hosting cost must be trivial; an email support form connected to a shredder. Defund the organization in charge of checking and follow-ups is one thing, but its complete removal just smell of incompetence or acknowledging of wrongdoing, or some sort of performance. And the response is also baffling. "sorry we migrated it syst…

Guessing some mid level functionary had to come up with 3 things to do that week and this is an easy bullet point. Saying "Actually we should keep this thing because we're playing 4D chess" doesn't look good on such a status report.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#28

Post by skizm »

mikeyouse wrote: post #5

> Tim Rieser, former senior aide to Senator Leahy who wrote the 2011 amendment mandating information gathering, told the BBC the gateway's removal meant the State Department was "clearly ignoring the law". We're in a really bad place... with a servile congress, it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch. When everything relies on "independent IGs" for law enforcement inside executive…

> it turns out there aren't really any laws constraining the executive branch

There are plenty of laws being ignored. Tariffs being the most obvious.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#29

Post by hirvi74 »

excalibur wrote: post #18
hirvi74 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> When did the US government ever care about human rights? July 4 1776

Educate me.

How cruel was the treatment from the British truly? My understanding was things like "no taxation without representation" was unrealistic due to the sheer distance and amount of time required to travel between the US and the UK. We're talking somewhere around 2-4 months one way. To send a rep back and forth with a message like:

US sends rep -> Uk and rep interact -> rep goes back to US with UK decision -> the US give their answer and the rep goes back to UK -> then rep goes back to the US with the UK's decision.

Such an interaction could take well over a year.

I also thought the US was the lowest taxed colony under British control? Not to mention it's not like the British didn't provide military protection to the colonies as well.

I am not saying the revolution was purely unjustified, but I am not really aware of how bad things truly were. My history classes kind of glossed over that part.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#30

Post by georgemcbay »

hirvi74 wrote: post #10
excalibur wrote: post #2

Because the US government is no longer even pretending to care about human rights.

[flagged]

> Slaves were freed and the civil rights act wasn't passed for almost 100 years after the war.

That's progress though, even if its progress on something that never should have existed to begin with, and the progress is far too slow.

And yes, our progress has been far too slow and way too uneven, but for the first 40 years of my life I felt like we were still progressing (yes -- too slow, and too unevenly).

But in the most recent ~decade of my life I feel like we've switched from too-slow progress to regression.

Shitty progress isn't enough, but its better than no progress (or, much worse, regression).

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