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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

#371

Post by mullingitover »

hrimfaxi wrote: post #334
mullingitover wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Supreme Court definitely suffers from 'not invented here' syndrome. There are vastly superior Supreme Court systems that other countries have implemented (Austria is a great example) where the US could just copy their homework, but won't. The press really needs to start suffixing the justices with (R) and (D) when discussing them to drive the point home that the SC is the most partisan branch of government.

Austria's system was created in the mid 1700s and would have been relatively new at the time of the founding. Was Austria's system clearly vastly superior at the turn of the 19th century?

Their separate constitutional court didn't come along until the 20th century[1]. They have 14 justices on that court, but only a maximum of 9 will ever hear a case for precedent-setting decisions, and usually fewer than that (making court packing difficult if not completely pointless).

They have always done what the US should do: keep the votes on a judgment private, so opinions speak for the court as a whole, and they don't let the losers have a soapbox by publishing dissents.

As a cherry on top, they enforce a mandatory retirement age of 70.

These factors make their court an actually apolitical body in a way that's in hilariously stark contrat to the US court. The US court is what you'd make if your entire goal was to turn all its judgments into political theatre.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Court_(Austria)

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

#372

Post by [deleted] »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #239
dragonwriter wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't see any distinctions beyond “there is some evil” vs. “there is no evil”, all of human history must seem to be a flat, undifferentiated blob to you.

There's no moral equivalency between the US directly torturing prisoners of war/assassinating its own citizens and a website being taken down.

[deleted]

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

#373

Post by slg »

jmole wrote: post #355
rco8786 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would think email is a lot easier than a webform. why

Not sure about you, but when I submit a “contact us” form, I am about 10% sure someone will actually read it. When I send an email that isn’t bounced back, or better yet, get an auto reply with a ticket number, I’m a lot more certain it’s going to get read.

>When I send an email that isn’t bounced back, or better yet, get an auto reply with a ticket number, I’m a lot more certain it’s going to get read.

An "auto reply with a ticket number" is not a feature of email, it is something that someone built that could just as easily be attached to a webform. Plenty of webforms work that way, I have personally built some in my career.

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

#374

Post by throw0101c »

parineum wrote: post #293
elaus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone not from the US and looking from the outside: it seems there is a _significant_ difference between the two administrations in this regard?

Escalation always happens. The classified documents thing with Trump was a manufactured scandal, for example. Everyone in our government is mishandling classified documents because we have a massive over-classification problem, as seen by the lesser reported and covered subsequent finding of Biden having documents. Only one of those events was associated with a televised raid (which the press was notified of beforeha…

> The classified documents thing with Trump was a manufactured scandal, for example.

It was not. Trump was asked for months to return the documents.

He purposefully had staff to move documents onto his private jet and moved them around his various properties. He stored boxes and boxes, not just a few file folders, in random bathrooms.

Yes, plenty of folks may mishandle stuff, but many folks try to fix their errors when they're pointed out. Trump ignored the requests and continued doing things consciously even when notified.

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

#375

Post by estearum »

rayiner wrote: post #246
galangalalgol wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that uneven enforcement is the tool of autocrats. Ignoring the law breeds contempt for it. Madison said requiring a supermajority for normal legislation would poison democracy, and I think the modern usage filibuster has proven him correct. I hope the GOP ditches the whole thing, not just for continuing resolutions. The senate will no longer have any excuses for abdicating its responsibilities. Thra…

Picking and choosing which laws to enforce is baked into the concept of prosecutorial discretion. There is a reason the country’s prosecutor in chief is an elected position. It was understood to be a fundamentally political office even in Jefferson’s day: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/02/thomas-je... I agree we should abolish the filibuster. It makes incremental changes difficult and fosters extremi…

That’s not true.

Prosecutorial discretion exists because the executive can always say they’re just prioritizing their limited resources.

They absolutely ARE NOT allowed to just say “I’m not enforcing this because I disagree with the law.”

They also absolutely ARE NOT allowed to say “I’m enforcing a specific law against Party X but not against Party Y because I’m exercising discretion and I just like X.” That’s why dismissal for selective or vindictive prosecution exists.

In principle, the Constitution is quite clear: the President SHALL take care that the laws be faithfully executed…

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

#376

Post by an0malous »

9dev wrote: post #261
alluro2 wrote: post #248

Trump is, inevitably, in the comments a lot. And I'm just surprised when people still react to what he does as "unbelievable", "illegal" etc... I get it, but it's weird how persistently people still try to frame Trump's actions into moral, legal, historical, cultural, responsibility or any other framework. He is someone who was born into wealth in the worst way possible, and was never - ever - subject to any moral re…

I concur, Trumps motivation is easy. That of his voters, not so much. They knew what they would get; it was on plain display for them to see. Every single last one of them is guilty of everything that happened and will happen.

The root cause of the current political environment is income inequality and endless funding for wars. The people who support Trump are losing the economic game and had no better representative. The reality is that both parties are owned by the investor class and support foreign funding for wars. Until we as a society figure out that the left vs right struggle is just a distraction from the investor vs labor struggle, we will never fix this problem. Note how everyone in this thread is blaming Trump and the conservative party when the Kamala and the liberal party would likely be doing the same thing, because they both support Israel and the IDF and cover up their war crimes.

All this stuff about trans rights and gun rights and freedom of speech and other random culture war issues are just a tool to keep the labor class divided. The root cause is wealth insecurity, it won’t automatically solve the other problems but it’ll turn down the temperature. I wish people would wake up to this and stop fighting their neighbors when they’re both on the same team.

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

#377

Post by spookie »

the_gastropod wrote: post #319
revnode wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's not how things work. Senate can't pass anything unless the House agrees and the House is representative of the population. Also, footnote, we've been structuring governments this way for thousands of years. Rome, etc.

The Senate heavily favors rural voters. The House is supposed to be representative, but favors rural voters thanks to gerrymandering and the cap on congressional representatives (Nebraska should have less than 1 rep in a truly representative institution, for example). Then you’ve got the presidency itself, where the electoral college favors rural voters. And the courts, which reflect the will of the president in coop…

If you go that route Nebraska will lag ever more behind other states given they don't get to have any political power.

Look, I'm just someone from the other side of the pond. This is what happens: when you have no substantial representation for the country side your political system rewards centralisation, rural areas will stagnate, leading to less people there. A cycle that fuels itself.

As someone that has had to live through this I can assure you that those feeding the country should be given proper representation. Not doing so favours huge metropolies, rises urban house prices, prevents proper traffic flow, increases crime rate, etc...

Of course no system is perfect but a middle ground is preferable in my view.

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

#378

Post by rayiner »

estearum wrote: post #375
rayiner wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking and choosing which laws to enforce is baked into the concept of prosecutorial discretion. There is a reason the country’s prosecutor in chief is an elected position. It was understood to be a fundamentally political office even in Jefferson’s day: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/02/thomas-je... I agree we should abolish the filibuster. It makes incremental changes difficult and fosters extremi…

That’s not true. Prosecutorial discretion exists because the executive can always say they’re just prioritizing their limited resources. They absolutely ARE NOT allowed to just say “I’m not enforcing this because I disagree with the law.” They also absolutely ARE NOT allowed to say “I’m enforcing a specific law against Party X but not against Party Y because I’m exercising discretion and I just like X.” That’s why di…

> They absolutely ARE NOT allowed to just say “I’m not enforcing this because I disagree with the law.”

Prosecutors are allowed to do that and do so all the time: https://www.aei.org/articles/viewpoint-on-not-enforcing-the-... (“Indeed, the ability of prosecutors to pick and choose among offenses is part of the constitutional structure of our government, as the Supreme Court has held too many times to recount. President Jefferson refused to enforce the Alien and Sedition Acts because he was convinced that they were unjust, and unconstitutional to boot. (In 1964 the Supreme Court vindicated him.) President Carter pardoned most selective service violators and halted further prosecutions. President Johnson’s Antitrust Division published antitrust guidelines that proclaimed a policy of not bringing suit against small mergers, even though the Supreme Court had held repeatedly that similar mergers were unlawful. Many state and local governments decline to prosecute small drug offenses, saving resources for bigger game.”).

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

#379

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

notmyjob wrote: post #105

It sounds like this was mainly being used to report abuses by US allies, ie “US armed IDF forces” according to the article. Obviously there is something more to this than the headline and tone of the piece indicate. For one thing, the law written by Leahy was passed in 2011, but this website went online in 2022, so how can removing the site make it impossible to abide by the law? What was going on between 2011 and 20…

It would still be roughly true that someone is trying to make it harder to report abuses or that they’re achieving the same by incompetence, no?

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

#380

Post by rayiner »

deathanatos wrote: post #349
rayiner wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reflects a common, but fundamentally mistaken, understanding of the constitution. You're thinking of the government like an operating system with a microkernel that is trusted to neutrally enforce the "law," with the three branches of government running in userspace. That's not the system the founders created! They understood that everyone is political, and no one can be trusted. The founders understood…

You should look at what gerrymandering has done / is doing. For example, the entire city of Nashville, TN, has been utterly and obviously gerrymandered out of existence, and the city has no representation in the House. (They used to be TN's 5th.) This of course does not apply to Presidential elections. The President has multiple times indicated disdain for elections, his party has used "third term and beyond", his su…

> You should look at what gerrymandering has done / is doing.

What has it done? In 2024, Republicans got 50.5% of the seats and 51.3% of the two-party Congressional popular vote. The delta between a party’s share of the popular vote and its share of House seats is much smaller since 2000 than it was for most of the 20th century: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Po...

> The VRA is quite literally before SCOTUS right now

The VRA requires racially discriminatory gerrymandering and is probably unconstitutional in that respect. The VRA is the product of an era where white democrats would discriminate against black democrats even though they shared a party. Today, gerrymandering is based on political party, not race. If black people voted 80% republican, red states would happily gerrymander out affluent college-educated whites in their favor.

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