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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

#131

Post by actionfromafar »

speakfreely wrote: post #93
hypeatei wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One must laud the transparency this administration has introduced. What transparency? What is transparent about running a meme coin that anyone in the world can bribe- sorry, "invest" in with no trace of who they are while you're President? As for the topic at hand: Trump truly has no vision for anything we do on the world stage so I don't believe it's a deliberate effort at "transparency"

> Trump truly has no vision for anything we do on the world stage It confuses me how anyone could look at what's happening in the world and see a lack of a plan. Trump administration seems to actually be unusually focused on foreign policy in this term and using geopolitical statecraft to upend the arrangements that were not working in favor of the US. The tariffs to force countries to choose US or China, putting the…

Upending the arrangements that were not working in favor of Trump!

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

#132

Post by gmiller123456 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #60

Lots of people seem to think Trump is some sort of king or going outside the law. Fact is he was democratically elected and working within the system of checks and balances established by our founders. Congress can stop him from doing things but the democratically elected congress allows him to continue. So they agree with his actions and are doing their job. Checked and balanced. The courts can stop him and indeed h…

Too bad you're getting down voted because you're correct that congress is where the problem is. They could stop most of what he's doing, but choose not to.

But "Every check and balance is working" is clearly wrong.

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

#133

Post by wat10000 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #60

Lots of people seem to think Trump is some sort of king or going outside the law. Fact is he was democratically elected and working within the system of checks and balances established by our founders. Congress can stop him from doing things but the democratically elected congress allows him to continue. So they agree with his actions and are doing their job. Checked and balanced. The courts can stop him and indeed h…

Germany 1933 is also what democracy looks like. Just because the system allows it to happen doesn't mean everyone is doing their job or that the result is in any way acceptable.

"Checks and balances" was predicated on each part of government jealously guarding their power. Congress and the Supreme Court are both giving up vast amounts of their power to the executive, out of party loyalty or cowardice or just a belief that the executive should have unchecked power. This is not what working checks and balances look like.

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

#134

Post by VerminOctopus1 »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #114
docdeek wrote: post #64

This seems like a bad decision to me. Not only does it seem not to be in the spirit of the law (you can still report but not as easily now) but it's not clear why they shut it down at all. Cost? Inefficiency? Just wasn't getting used much? They have a better solution? On the other hand, the US seems so partisan now that had the current administration told the world they were taking huma' rights abuse reporting seriou…

[flagged]

Does Israel not commit human rights abuses?

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

#135

Post by margalabargala »

dirtyoldmick wrote: post #91
Joeri wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a different side takes control of the justice department they may choose to go after all those who broke the law by order of this president. The president might be protected from consequences according to the supreme court, but those answering to the president are not. This administration has set the standard that the justice department can be weaponized against political enemies. The ratchet only goes one way i…

[flagged]

Let's say for a moment he did.

Shouldn't that be fixed rather than now abused further?

If your justification for Trump doing something is that "Biden did it first", then that means Biden is no worse than Trump. It means Trump just just following along the path Biden laid for him to the same goal.

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

#136

Post by lesuorac »

georgemcbay wrote: post #30
hirvi74 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

Progress sure but Lincoln didn't free the slaves in the Northern states.

He only freed the slaves in the South with the emancipation proclamation [1]. The 13th amendment wasn't until 2 years later. Lincoln did it as an economic weapon against the south as well as a military recruitment tool; not out of the goodness of his heart.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation

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

#137

Post by nemomarx »

candiddevmike wrote: post #127
cheema33 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then! I hope you know that Congress has abdicated all of their responsibilities to the president. I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming.

> I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming. Surely there weren't any historical examples of that happening, like in the Mediterranean... I kinda dislike how folks hold the founders up with some kind of religious reverence (for some, only when it suits their agenda). These guys may have been bright at the time, but you can tell they didn't think a lot of things through and certainly didn't "plan for scale". T…

They pretty specifically expected it to be modified and changed out, so we've let them down by freezing it and no longer even passing amendments (let alone a new convention to replace it). Hard to say they should have built a system that was up for lasting more than two centuries though imo

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

#138

Post by wonderwonder »

wackget wrote: post #74
wonderwonder wrote: post #60

Lots of people seem to think Trump is some sort of king or going outside the law. Fact is he was democratically elected and working within the system of checks and balances established by our founders. Congress can stop him from doing things but the democratically elected congress allows him to continue. So they agree with his actions and are doing their job. Checked and balanced. The courts can stop him and indeed h…

How do you explain away things like lobbying money (i.e. bribery), or politicians remaining in their post despite glaringly obvious physical and cognitive decline, or insider trading, or the stacking of courts with biased judges, or total lack of enforcement of the law, or the media being so obviously controlled by state-aligned actors? To name but a few.

The voters keep voting for them. That is democracy. The people elect these same people over and over again. We get what we vote for.

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

#139

Post by cheema33 »

speakfreely wrote: post #93
hypeatei wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One must laud the transparency this administration has introduced. What transparency? What is transparent about running a meme coin that anyone in the world can bribe- sorry, "invest" in with no trace of who they are while you're President? As for the topic at hand: Trump truly has no vision for anything we do on the world stage so I don't believe it's a deliberate effort at "transparency"

> Trump truly has no vision for anything we do on the world stage It confuses me how anyone could look at what's happening in the world and see a lack of a plan. Trump administration seems to actually be unusually focused on foreign policy in this term and using geopolitical statecraft to upend the arrangements that were not working in favor of the US. The tariffs to force countries to choose US or China, putting the…

> Trump administration seems to actually be unusually focused on foreign policy..

You left out threatening to invade Canada if they did not join the US. And stealing Greenland. And asking Ukraine to give in to Putin's demands. Illegal tariffs that are a tax on common people. Yes, it may come as a shock to you that other countries do not pay the tariffs. We do. And unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not a progressive tax. So rich people love it.

By almost all accounts, the US has lost ground globally. We have lost soft power and respect. Global surveys now show that the rest of world now sees us the baddies.

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

#140

Post by propagandist »

hypeatei wrote: post #56
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 must laud the transparency this administration has introduced. What transparency? What is transparent about running a meme coin that anyone in the world can bribe- sorry, "invest" in with no trace of who they are while you're President? As for the topic at hand: Trump truly has no vision for anything we do on the world stage so I don't believe it's a deliberate effort at "transparency"

It is more transparent than getting out of government then getting "book deals", doing "speaking engagements" and sitting on boards.

"Here's my hat, put some coin in" is transparency.

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