Slashdot Mirror

If you don't think poverty and race are factors in arrest and prosecution, then I'm willing to bet you haven't left your suburb for quite a while. Either that or you've never been outside. Or you live in denial. It's 4 o'clock on a friday, so I'm loath to dig in to a google search for links for you, but good grief man.

Across all analysis, youth who were African American or Latino were consistently more likely to be placed in secure detention.
Minorities not charged with resisting arrest subject to unequal force compared with whites.
Race continues to play a central role in police brutality in the United States.
Seaside man sent to prison for crime he didn't commit

but i don't know why I bother... if you haven't learned all this stuff by now, a few links won't change anything

For example, most countries consider allowing executions, particularly of minors, to be a crime against basic human rights.

When you put Bush in court for war crimes I'll take your God-given rights to every human born, US citizen or not seriously.

When Kurdish leaders met with Iraqi government officials in the wake of the spring 1991 uprising, they raised the question of the Anfal dead and mentioned a figure of 182,000--a rough extrapolation based on the number of destroyed villages. Ali Hassan al-Majid reportedly jumped to his feet in a rage when the discussion took this turn. "What is this exaggerated figure of 182,000?" he is said to have asked. "It couldn't have been more than 100,000"--as if this somehow mitigated the catastrophe that he and his subordinates had visited on the Iraqi Kurds

never , tortured eh?

Really? The Chinese government did none of those things? I must have missed the apologists meeting when that position was put forward. May I suggest you read this http://hrw.org/wr2k3/asia4.html ? This is what is coming out of the country, from the people on the ground the situation is far, far worse. People are being murdered for having views the government don't like, and voters who vote for anyone other than the official party representative for local positions are also facing similar attacks on their liberty.

Brahminists, those who subscribe to the ideology of caste and untouchability are a demented lot who keep denying caste discrimination and paint a rosy picture of India. The fact is not much has changed for the millions of untouchables and other people from low-castes and they constantly get beatenup, killed and their women raped. This is the main reason why dalits are leaving hinduism in search of egalitarian faiths. Check out Human Rights Watch's report on the dalit state of affairs:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/india/
A site with good articles on dalits:
www.countercurrents.org/dalits

Many of the policemen I have known think that they should have no interference from judges, juries, lawyers, politicians, citizens, constitutions, press or anyone else.
If you think I am exaggerating consider:
the death sqads in Brazil
London shoot to kill policy
Police brutality in the US
and the endless list Google can provide.

People are saying Rwanda is for the gorillaz, but
Sierra Leone sounds the most nuts:

"Witnesses describe the existence of distinct units known for committing particular crimes, like the Burn House Unit, Cut Hands Commando, and Blood Shed Squad. Some of these squads had a trademark way of killing such as the Kill Man No Blood unit, whose method was to beat people to death without shedding blood, or the Born Naked Squad, who stripped their victims before killing them. The closer ECOMOG forces got to rebel positions, the more these squads were mobilized and sent on operation."

Most guys raped are guys for there first time locked up, between the ages 18-30 that looks young, not strong, looks lonely, scared. Guys watch these things.
-- M.F., Ohio, 9/6/96

I was "rented out" for sexual favors, and a lot of the guys who rented me are not rapists, or assaulted as children, or any other stereotypical model. They just wanted some sexual satisfaction, even though they knew I was not deriving pleasure from it, and was there only because I was forced to. . . . I was with the Valluco (Valley) crowd, so I was only passed around to them for free. D. Town Hispanics had to pay. They were charged $3 for a blow-job, $5 for anal sex.
-- S.H., Texas, 9/10/96

I didn't know how the prison system work, so this inmate come up to the A & O unit and gives me three packs of cigarettes, I didn't know where they came from, or why they was given to me, I took the cigarettes, two weeks later I was placed in population, and here come this big old guy name [M], telling me that I belong to him because he had bought me, and had the same guy there who had brought me the cigarettes to verify it.
--C.D., Indiana, 10/8/96

Often the victim will be tied up on a bed, face down and sold until the debt is finished or until the novelty is gone.
-- C.M., Illinois, 10/8/96

The ones that are "innocent" in other words just regular Taliban fighters have already been released

We're still regularly releasing small numbers of people (in fact, there weren't any releases at all for the first year), so that's clearly not true. And we're not talking about "regular Taliban fighters" - most of Guantanamo is used by non-Afghanis. Most of the released people have been people such as middle eastern aid workers kidnapped on the border and sold to US troops as "high ranking al-Qaeda members".

BTW, I should add, at Guantanamo there are at least three children between the ages of 13 and 15, and more between 16 and 17.

Not that there aren't a lot of nasty people in Guantanamo; there most certainly are. But when you offer huge cash rewards for turning over "al-Qaeda" members to poverty-stricken people on the border, paid in full at the moment of sale, solely at the discretion of local commanders, you can't expect but to be sold a bunch of innocent people. Who are then shoved sensory-deprived and drugged, head-bagged onto a transatlantic flight, and... well, you know the rest.

"Ironically, possibly the single greatest injustice of our time is the fact that 4% of the adult male black population lives in gated communities and are treated sub-human as they are incarcerated."

that was a great comment.
even though black people only make up 12% of the poulation, they make up 43% of the prison population.
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/

but i don't agree with...
"America's system rewards those who take initiative and live life to the fullest and is cruel to those who just want to get by on the backs of others."

i don't think that's quite right (see slave owners in the 1800s). and besides america's system doesn't reward anybody. the reward of what's supposed to be america's system is the freedom to live how you want to live, not to be rewarded for your hard work by being rich. the "american dream" as portrayed on tv and in the media is a COMPLETE JOKE. the real dream is not to be rich or to "make it to the top". the real american dream is best summed up by samuel adams...

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

however, because of this common misconception of what the american dream is, it is becoming harder and harder to live the way that you want to live and not be "assimilated" into a culture where you must participate. i used to live next to some people who were always working on their cars and one day i saw the "code enforcement" truck pull up to their house. the next day, all of their cars were behind a fence. what was that? some moron's "property value" was more important than that guy's right to do what he wants? horseshit.

think about it...you "have" to go to college to get a good job, but if you don't have wealthy parents or you aren't really smart, you'll be in debt by the time you get out, so you take the first job you can get, but then you get laid off because some moron ceo wants his stock to go up because if he doesn't "grow" the company and become more profitable, then the ABSOLUTELY MORONIC people in the "finance" industry will take that to mean that the company is about to go out of business and sell their stock which will put the company out of business. IT'S ALL CRAP. people aren't even viewed as living beings anymore, they're viewed as consumers whose only desire is for more and more shit they don't need.

http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=usa When accused of a given crime, in the US you are considerably more likely to be convicted, and face harsher penalties, if you are in a low-income group. Some states deny voting rights to ex-criminals.

Get worried about it.

Felons lose the right to vote in many cases.

Permanently revoking the right to vote to felons means "troublemakers" will have no influence on elections - thus more elections will be won by those who are tightening the screws - since those opposed will lose more voters to felony disenfrachisment than those in support - it tips the playing field.

Many people will accept pleading guilty to a felony if they are told they only have to pay a fine, and do some community service. Then find out when they try to register to vote that they are refused by the Board of Elections - and find out what else the law says felons lose:

http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=153861&c id=12906885

http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/

They're protesting people in Vietnam getting 10 years in prison for sendng email and blogging.

No free press. If you publish something w/o Party approval on paper or the internet, you can go to prison. You just committed a crime with your post, buddy.

Or native tribemen getting harassed in the Highlands. I don't think many of those Montegnards are VN-Americans.

Are you a Catholic, Mennonite, or the wrong kind of Buddhist? Have fun in the mental hospital!!

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/06/17/vietna11151 .htm

While you're at it: let's see Vietnam's record as well.

http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=usa

No protests in Ho-Chi-Minh-City yet about America's human rights record ?

LOL! http://www.freetibet.org/ http://www.rfa.org/english/news/social/2005/04/08/ asia_pope/ http://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?i d=6974&eng=y http://www.betterworldlinks.org/book79m.htm http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/04/11/china10447. htm http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1564 321029/002-8728960-6939207?v=glance And I suppose all of these links are propaganda and lies? and why have a picture of mao? http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/C hina/chinaonmao1981new.htm Nice troll though..

In your initial post you strongly imply that it is somehow wrong to imply china is "corrupt above and beyond" the democracies elsewhere.

But then you say "I of course don't mean to say they're equivalent"?

So you're saying they're not equivalent, they're ... just not any worse? And then you say that western democracies are "just as rotten"? But "just as rotten" is different from "equivalent"?

when really the ruling parties in the West are just as rotten

No... really... the CCP is worse.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with "the west", the media, "identity politics", or "propaganda"; this is just about you entirely lacking a sense of perspective. The greater of two evils is still a greater evil. Being "bad", or "rotten", or containing nations which abuse prisoners of war, or whatever it is you're upset at contemporary western democratic systems over, still doesn't come even with executing 89 people a day without a legitimate trial.

Our human rights problems get noticed because we're bigger and have further to fall. That's fair. But all this hysteria makes me laugh. We're still, without question, the freest country on Earth. Period.

The average slashdotter should check the Human Rights Watch reports.

Ahem, what? Iran was a liberal, tolerant place with no fundamentalists in government in 1999? Maybe President Khatami was trying, but Ayatollah Khamene'i, the real power wasn't. I won't go into the the events of July when riot police raided Tehran University and beat at least 4 students to death, but lets take a quick look at what Human Rights Watch (a strong critic of the US War on Terror) has to say about the rest of the year:

General Yahya Rahim Safavi warned reformers in April, "we are seeking to root out counterrevolutionaries wherever they are. We have to cut the throats of some and cut off the tongues of others." A few days later he threatened, "we will go after them when the time is ripe...fruit has to be picked when it is ripe. The fruit is unripe now."

Executions after unfair trials proliferated, including cases of stoning to death in public. For the first time since 1992 a follower of the Baha'i faith was executed in prison. Other religious minorities, including Sunni Muslims, Evangelical Christians, and Jews were subjected to discrimination and persecution. Prominent dissidents, including writers and editors, were subjected to arbitrary detention and independent newspapers were closed down. New laws were passed discriminating against women and aimed at restricting debate about women's rights. Torture was widespread during interrogation, and the government failed to take steps to halt violent attacks by vigilante groups which serve as enforcers for conservative clerics, known as the Partisans of the Party of God (Ansar-e Hezbollahi) . As tensions with the Taleban rulers of neighboring Afghanistan mounted, Afghan refugees, more than a million of whom have lived in Iran for many years seeking refuge from civil war, were attacked and beaten by crowds leading to several deaths.

Hundreds of people were executed after trials that failed to comply with minimum international standards. In June, the daily newspaper Hamshahri, reported the public hanging of four young men in the city of Ahvaz, in the south, for "insulting" Leader Khamene'i and "armed robbery." Seven people were reported by opposition groups to have been convicted of adultery and stoned to death in October 1997 and six more were reported to have been sentenced to stoning in January. On July 21, Ruhollah Rowhani was executed in the city of Mashhad on charges of converting a Muslim to the Baha'i faith. This execution marked a deterioration in the situation of this intensely persecuted minority. At least fifteen other Baha'is were held in prison and seven were facing death sentences because of their faith. There were further detentions of Baha'is in September when dozens were detained in a new wave of repression. In May, Jewish businessman Ruhollah Kakhodah-Zadeh was arrested and later hanged in prison. His crime was never declared in public and any legal proceedings which occurred did so in secret.

Read the other 10 pages on HRW's site.

As a former member of Tehran's expatriot community I can say the Iran was - about 6 years ago - a more liberal, tolerant place then the US is now.

Yeah. Sure. Liberal, tolerant place that puts women in prison and through lashing for not covering their hair. Liberal, tolerant place that sentences people to death and executes them for converting a Muslim to the Baha'i faith. Liberal and tolerant place, where people are stoned to death for having extramarital sex.

The average American really should be given lessons in International History

The average slashdotter should check the Human Rights Watch reports.

Oh, really?

And yes, it worked well for two hunderd years, but so did the preceding systems.

The government needs to reserve ethnic prisoner gang rape for the truly deserving.

LOL, do you limit your impression of your own country to the state run organs of China?

LOL. FUCKING LOL.

What the American media tells about China is dead on, you just refuse to believe any of it because of your blind pride in your country.

If you want to just start DIGGING into some of the horrible and inhumane acts of China, you can start reading here. But that is hardly the full story.

> Its trademark 'sink plunger' attachment also reveals a
> terrifying new function.

Is it just me or does that sound terrifyingly sexual?

You mean, NYPD sexual, or something else?

No conclusive national data exists regarding the prevalence of this phenomenon, but the most recent statistical survey, published in the Prison Journal, revealed that 21 percent of inmates in seven Midwestern prisons had experienced at least one episode of pressured or forced sex since being incarcerated, and at least 7 percent had been raped in their facility.

Correctional authorities generally deny that rape is a serious problem. In Human Rights Watch's survey of all 50 states, not one correctional authority reported abuse rates even approaching those found by the rights group. The authorities' reluctance to acknowledge the scale of the violation is reflected not only in misleading official statistics, but also in a glaringly inadequate response to incidents of rape.

Similarly, a 1988 study of line officers in the Texas prison system reported that only 9 percent of officers agreed that rape in prison was a "rare" occurrence, while 87 percent disagreed. These findings are all the more notable when one considers that the question was limited to instances of "rape" -- not sexual abuse in general -- a term that many people interpret narrowly (typically believing that rape only occurs where physical force is used).

Some places felons lose the right to vote forever.

Florida is one.
So is Nevada (there was an effort to make exceptions to this, but I don't know the current status)

Here is a nice list by state (it might be a bit out of date but things like this don't change too often - I do think Utah now takes away voting while in prison)

http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/usvot98o.htm

The whole report:

http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/

And a useful Google search "felony disenfranchisement":

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=felony+disenf ranchisement&btnG=Google+Search

Some places felons lose the right to vote forever.

Florida is one.
So is Nevada (there was an effort to make exceptions to this, but I don't know the current status)

Here is a nice list by state (it might be a bit out of date but things like this don't change too often - I do think Utah now takes away voting while in prison)

http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/usvot98o.htm

The whole report:

http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/

And a useful Google search "felony disenfranchisement":

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=felony+disenf ranchisement&btnG=Google+Search

The rights and protections granted to POWs are enumerated in detail in the Third Geneva Convention. "Nonprivileged" or "unlawful" combatants are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention, customary international law and, where applicable, Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions. Although the United States is not a party to Protocol I, the U.S. government accepts many of its provisions as part of customary international law; especially relevant is article 75 on "fundamental guarantees," which sets out basic standards of humane treatment and due process that is required for all persons affected by the conflict, regardless of their status.

Read the whole article: Background Paper on Geneva Conventions and Persons Held by U.S. Forces

First off, The USofA is not torturing people there. What is happening there is similar to what the French are doing with suspected terriorist:They are detained.

yes, it is sad but you are completely wrong

Secondly, these people are not innocent. They were captured fighting for a terrorist cause on a battlefield.

Some of them were, but certainly not all. Some were rounded up by a $20,000bounty offered by the US Government, and there are children as youg as 13 imprisoned there, and they are being let go - as in free- as in "not terrorists". Not to mention a senior American military interrogator at Camp Delta told 60 Minutes II that as many as 20 percent of the Guantanamo prisoners were sent there by mistake - and that they were innocent bystanders, or very small fish.

Kashmir is majority Muslim, and its inhabitants want to either join Pakistan or become independant. Its not just the terrorists who want Kashmir out of India, its the Kashmiris themselves.

Some background on the whole situation here
http://www.fathom.com/course/10701013/session2.htm l

Human rights abuses have been committed by both the Indian army and militants. The Indian army has been accused of killing 50,000 people in Kashmir since 1989.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/kashmir/

The 'stability of the gulf' statement is very much arguable - look at it there right now - there's a hell of a lot of unrest created directly by intervention. I've heard reports that at least some of the sources cited for 'murdered millions' are leaky at best, and 'routinely tortured children' is mainly appealing to emotion. Checked out Saudi Arabia recently?

Don't get me wrong, Hussein was/is a nasty fucker, and I'd be happy to see him shot in the balls, but there are plenty of other nasty fuckers around. How come, if the rationale is human rights, is the US not bombing the shit out of these guys?

[think of the phrase "devil's advocate" when you read this]

The 'stability of the gulf' statement is very much arguable - look at it there right now - there's a hell of a lot of unrest created directly by intervention. I've heard reports that at least some of the sources cited for 'murdered millions' are leaky at best, and 'routinely tortured children' is mainly appealing to emotion. Checked out Saudi Arabia recently?

Don't get me wrong, Hussein was/is a nasty fucker, and I'd be happy to see him shot in the balls, but there are plenty of other nasty fuckers around. How come, if the rationale is human rights, is the US not bombing the shit out of these guys?

[think of the phrase "devil's advocate" when you read this]

Right to execute a 14 year old should be left up to the states? Might as well go back to 150 years and allow states to determine whether people can own slaves or not. I love how the US lashes out at Iran when they executed a 16 year old girl, yet we execute younger kids and even the mentally retarded with the mind of a child. Cruel and unusual? Every 1st world nation except the US, doesn't execute kids.

On Afganistan and warlords:
Article and an overview here

On the number of casulities in Iraq: I only said some humaitarian organisations estimates this. But the real point here is, that neither of us know, because the US military refuses to keep a tally.. That alone makes me suspect, that the real number is far greater than the tally of under 20.000 (depending on source, of course). So all that is left, is guesswork, which can be more or less informed, so I'm not inclined to turn doen the 100.000 tally completely.

On the alliance with Germany: Please don't make it sound like I think all American soldiers are 'evil baby killers'. I don't. If you say that germany in the post berlin wall era hasn't been a close ally of the US, then which country has ?? It's been painfully obvious to me, as an European, that Germany and the US has had a very close bond, also after the fall of the wall. And Germany hasn't been dragged into socialism or communism, as another post claims. If the close ally bond wasn't there, then why should the US have kept it's large bases in Germany? They could have meved them to the UK if they wanted to, and the UK would probably be quite happy with the extra jobs it would generate.

On troop numbers: You are missing my point. You can never place enough troops to guarantee security, because it will require so obsenely many troops, that even the US cannot follow. And why is that? Unless you are nearly monitoring every individual, you cannot be certain that a determined individual isn't planning some sort of terror act. So the winning of the heart and minds becomes even more important, because good will and understanding in the population makes it up for loads and loads of soldiers.

On the issue on France and oil. Yes they've had a dubious connection, but please remember, that this was when Saddam was an ally to the west, and was supported by the west. If I remember correctly, Donald Rumsfeld facilitated the sale of weapons to Saddam, when he was the diplomatic relation with the middle east in the mid 80's. So France may have sold guns to Iraq, but certainly the us has done likewise.

On Afganistan and warlords:
Article and an overview here

On the number of casulities in Iraq: I only said some humaitarian organisations estimates this. But the real point here is, that neither of us know, because the US military refuses to keep a tally.. That alone makes me suspect, that the real number is far greater than the tally of under 20.000 (depending on source, of course). So all that is left, is guesswork, which can be more or less informed, so I'm not inclined to turn doen the 100.000 tally completely.

On the alliance with Germany: Please don't make it sound like I think all American soldiers are 'evil baby killers'. I don't. If you say that germany in the post berlin wall era hasn't been a close ally of the US, then which country has ?? It's been painfully obvious to me, as an European, that Germany and the US has had a very close bond, also after the fall of the wall. And Germany hasn't been dragged into socialism or communism, as another post claims. If the close ally bond wasn't there, then why should the US have kept it's large bases in Germany? They could have meved them to the UK if they wanted to, and the UK would probably be quite happy with the extra jobs it would generate.

On troop numbers: You are missing my point. You can never place enough troops to guarantee security, because it will require so obsenely many troops, that even the US cannot follow. And why is that? Unless you are nearly monitoring every individual, you cannot be certain that a determined individual isn't planning some sort of terror act. So the winning of the heart and minds becomes even more important, because good will and understanding in the population makes it up for loads and loads of soldiers.

On the issue on France and oil. Yes they've had a dubious connection, but please remember, that this was when Saddam was an ally to the west, and was supported by the west. If I remember correctly, Donald Rumsfeld facilitated the sale of weapons to Saddam, when he was the diplomatic relation with the middle east in the mid 80's. So France may have sold guns to Iraq, but certainly the us has done likewise.

"You, like Bush, attempt to divide the world into good nations and evil nations

Check http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=asia&c=nkorea and see just a few articles on who and what North Korea is. I think that it would be silly to say that they are a "good" nation. Furthermore, I think it would be irresponsible to not assign some sort of judgement to them due to their treatment of their populace and their constant manipulation and threats to the governments that are concerned with their power-centric attitudes.

In addition to this I find it interesting that you have twice now imputed attributes to me that I do not posess and have not even intimated in my posts. You called me a "party-liner" and said that I attempt to divide the whole world into good and evil countries, neither of which I do. It seems more like you have an agenda, since you seem to know party lines and Bush polocies so intimately. Makes me wonder what you are really espousing here, and your motivations for attributing this escalation solely to the USA.

As for your theory of acceleration I don't buy it. They have been after nukes continually for over a decade. They probably had them quite a while ago. We probably knew about it too. So does China, probably more than we do.

I would consider their mention of American aggression as the cause for developing nukes a total ruse. Easy to pick a target like the US to justify their militant policies when we are the current global pariah. No better way to try to curry favor with the other countries of the world than to point to the supposed faults of another nation as motivation for your own indescretions. No mention of the gigantic dragon in their back yard (China) that has been breathing down their neck since before Americans could even pronounce Korea? Curious.

Don't fool yourself. Don't lay this at the feet of the USA. We tried diplomacy, we tried financial, humanitarian, and technological aid. Regardless of the situation they continued to do what they wanted in the first place: develop nukes. If we had ignored them completely they would have followed the same course of action.

Funny, if we had tried relaxing political pressure on North Korea I can see you figuratively jumping up and down that the Bush administration did not do more to avert the North Koreans development of nuclear weapons as well. I could be wrong, but I notice that you seem to be more concerned with tying this issue to party politics, and assigning blame, than logically considering the course of action of North Korea.

Face it, what happened with North Korea was inevitable. Also remember that the USA was only 1 of 6 nations involved in multi-national talks with North Korea. We weren't the only people trying to deter them from doing what they did. We also aren't the only nation that they are worried about aggression from. We just make a politically convenient scapegoat.

I read "The Hot House". A friend of mine was in the process of becoming a lawyer, and that was part of his required reading. Fascinating story, but I didn't get the idea that prison society is anything more than middle school, for all eternity, but with more rape. I mean that there's this weird, constant demand for "fairness" from the prisoners. It really is like they're a bunch of children.

--grendel drago

Don't you fucking talk to me about morality in the prisons. In prisons, the highest of the high is the rapist.

Do you still want to point to the prisons as a heroic example of morality that we should emulate?

--grendel drago

Yeah, those Ordinary Decent Criminals for whom a regular afternoon consists of tea, weightlifting and rape.

"Honor among thieves" is utter bullshit. Prisoners treat each other like animals; any morality they pretent to have is about as advanced as that of a five year old.

--grendel drago

All of these are basic rights for all human beings.

That has been wishful thinking of the western countries since 1945. While many countries have made impressive advancements in the development of west-compatible institutions and economies, this doesn't necessarily mean they adopted our cultural and moral values too.

Formal acceptance of the UN's human rights charter is necessary to participate in the "civilized world", but there's no need to actually implement and enforce them.

Heck, even the U.S. violate human rights on a daily basis.

Lets check these 'facts':

So the Chinese Army did not send in tanks to stop students protesting?
- The US Govt has used the army against its own population. Check the protests in the 60's. The US regularly uses its army both overtly (iraq, grenada) and covertly (cambodia, iran, south america) against other countries.

So those executions I saw where they had the people kneel and put a bullet in their brain never happened?
- The US executes a truck-load of people. In fact, this is a problem highlighted by both Amnesty International and the US Supreme Court.

So there really is freedom of religion and speech in China?
- Freedom on religion and speech? No problem (as long as you are not a muslim). Yes, I will conceded that on this point, the US does provide significantly more freedoms.

And the Chinese did not lob missiles over an island full of people to keep them in line?
- The US government regularly lobs missiles into cities and towns (iraq, afghanistan). Dont be fooled into thinking these 'smart bombs' are really that smart - 17,000 iraqis can't be wrong (but they are dead).

- TV does propogate myths in both directions - dont believe everything your overlords tell you.

I somehow didn't expect slashdotters to give up their slashdot that easily. I'd think there are a lot of you who aren't following their own laws to the letter. Copyright laws, for example, and do you all stop for a red traffic light? I'm afraid I've broken quite a few laws. Some because it was more convenient to, others because I simply disagree.

The analogy is flawed though, the risk of being caught for the laws I break is zero. The risks in china seem to be unpredictable , which isn't very promising. But I cannot find any information on how they treat non-chinese. I would expect them to be mild, especially if you're not involved in political activities but reading slashdot. Maybe it's an idea not to encrypt your traffic but use a plain proxyserver. That way they can see you're just accessing slashdot and not organising a coup.

Of course it's nice of you to worry about him doing illigal stuff in a country like China. But I don't understand that there're are no practical answers being modded up. Only the warnings that say he should adapt to the situation there. Everyone here probably objects strongly to the Chinese censorship, but nobody seems to we willing to take the risk to 'protest' against it. The risk might be very real indeed, but then again, I'd bet laws like these aren't quite the same for foreigners. Maybe someone could enlighten us about the risks involved? Are there any example cases?

No, there is no organization protecting you from prisoner rape and there is no organization protecting you from crime by watching your every move.

There is only Big Brother and what he perpetrates against you, unmonitored by the public, in Room 101.

"Any given week I'm sure one fellow sold 20 or 30 CDs at five bucks a pop."

He takes the risk, and will get caught for it eventually, because the greed will overtake common sense. Also there is a different scale of charges to have copywritten material and selling it.

But, for example, I'm mildly interested in how bad 'Battlefield Earth' actually was, so I download it. Watch, cringing, then delete it. There's no outside perceived difference between me and the other guy.

I don't have a problem with that per se, society will level, either by producing a model that can take into account the fact you can feel mugged after leaving a bad movie (especially if you're going to have to sign an NDA not to SMS friends on how bad it was) or by sueing the population into a frenzy of rioting, or something in between. Someone somewhere will always consider me a heathen or evil. Hell, my love for pork chops marks me down for the Taliban. The basic point is I don't care about the game of moral twister that an industry that promotes "Sizzla's" brand of homophobia should squeal about freedom of speech in one breath, then thump the book of the law when they think they're losing out. F*** 'em.

The main problem is that the profits of the companies that are claiming to government that they're hurting are rising pretty steadily. Can you plot a similar line for any other industry on the planet? Again, F*** them.

I have _every_ sympathy for artists that make 70c off their albums. I would personally be honoured to pay the artists direct and get around the advertising budget, A&R, marketing expense accounts and the like. I like the product because I like the product, not because I watch the Saturday rotation, or radio has drilled it into my head. I'm a music fan...my tastes have been honed by nights at home, lucky finds of rarities on market stalls, and swapping...yes...swapping tapes with friends. The music industry cannot _fathom_ or control this level of viral marketing, and you can be sure as damn that there isn't a lot of money in it, but the secondary effect is that the back catalogues of the greats are selling across generations and ARE still selling despite the fact that the industry has _destroyed_ the retail market through greed.

So F*** them in their ear.

"At the call center where last I 9-5'd"

Pay well, did it? A little supplement to the income has greased human evolution since time immemorial, and black markets have been around for quite a while. And nothing scares people like finding out that _everyone_ has dealt with a black market at sometime or another, and the scale of it. The digital content people have found out, and it's scaring them. The majority don't realise that it's been the status-quo since the year dot.

In fact, all of this roughly parallels what happened with the printing press when it arrived, but you don't see anyone shouting that down because some people lost cash. In fact, you could argue that without early print piracy, modern literacy wouldn't be at the stage it is now.

"I would be indignant about the pirates SELLING this stuff"

I am, which is why I would never charge anyone for a copy I made for them of anything. I'm not entirely morally bankrupt, but given the examples of moral behaviour by governments, rich individuals and people around me, I'm not going to be preached at over a couple of CDs, especially given that this is a minority worried about pr

There is the problem of determining the proper "balance".

For instance, I'm sure that if one solicited calls for 'balance' on Adolf Hitler, one could get LOTS of claims from his proponents suggesting all sorts of positives about him, blaming everybody but the Germans for the Second World War due to the Versaille Treaty, denying the Final Solution, attributing the Nazi defeat to Jewish Bolshevik traitors, or whatever. Personally, I'm inclined to think that any properly balanced view of him in terms of history should be profoundly negative... and fanatics will be inclined to frequently and loudly tilt the balance the other way.

In addition, the selection of facts -- even when true -- can be quite biased. A previous poster noted that an article on rape linked to the Abu Ghraib scandal. One might wonder if the same person who added that link would consent to linking an article about rampant sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in the Congo, including the running of prostitution rings and the creation of child pornography involving rape, or perhaps listing articles on the French use of torture and extrajudicial execution during the war in Algiers in an article on torture or state terrorism. Somebody who has a bias specifically against the United States or its government, for instance, might constantly point to Abu Ghraib while ignoring far larger scandals.

While Abu Ghraib is definitely an abuse situation, there were no cases of rape involved, and it's not standard U.S. policy to rape people. U.S. society doesn't view it as a viable, standard policy.

I have to disagree. Prison rape is quite widespread in the US. The constant jokes on Slashdot about the "federal pound-me-in-the-ass -prisons" make it clear that this matter is both known and accepted by the public. When something happens constantly and is known and accepted by the general public, it can be considered to be the de facto policy of the land.

So yes, it is standard US policy to rape people.

Furthermore, below you say that the Abu Ghraib page did mention claims of rape. Is there some kind of evidence that rape did not take place, since you claim this with such certainty ? The pictures from Abu Ghraib proof that sexual torture took place, which gives quite a lot of credibility to claims of specific torture forms (such as rape). Therefore, unless evidence to the contrary can be found, one must assume that these claims are true.

Well, anyway, I changed the link to something clearly more pertinent (in my mind)--"Human rights in Saddam's Iraq." The Saddam page specifically describes how rape was used against political dissidents and citizens, just as the section on the rape page talked about, so already it was more relevant than the Abu Ghraib link. Also, I had feelings that the Abu Ghraib link was politically motivated, and rather than have the page start political flamewars, I felt a link to Saddam's Iraq was something everyone could agree on.

So, since you thought that a link about US soldiers raping Iraq soldiers was politically motivated (presumably by pro-Iraq or anti-US feelings), you changed it to a link about iraqs raping someone. You did this to avoid a flamewar, because surely no one would ever think that you were trying to show Iraq as a villain and US as a heroic liberator ? The pro-Iraq and anti-US factions behind the previous, politically motivated link, couldn't possibly imagine that changing it was politically motivated, could they ?

Apparently they could. Those paranoid infidels.

I came back, and sitting beside my Nanjing link was, you guessed it, Abu Ghraib again, snuck in with some other major update. The page on Abu Ghraib doesn't even mention rape except that one prisoner is claiming it without proof. However, the Saddam page mentions rape, and Nanjing is just a given.

So, the Abu Ghraib page does mention rape, then ? So what, exactly speaking, makes it so non-relevant to the article that it had to be changed in the first place ?

As for lack of evidence, how many of the raped prisoners in the US can proof the crime ? Did the Iraq page have proof ? Are you competent criminal investigator, so you can judge the validity of the possibly existing proof ?

I also find this same thing in other articles. For instance, the Windows XP article contains a "fisher price" comment. I removed it and said it was a personal comment that implies a majority of users feel that way, and that if you're going to imply it, you should cite it. The hardcore guy of the Windows XP page stuck the link right back and linked to a couple of blogs and news sites where the author mentions the "fisher price" interface--still no hard numbers to show the majority of users actually feel that way, but now it looks "official" simply because he linked to some sites that use the term.

The current version of the Windows XP article doesn't seem to mention anything about "fisher price", so I can't check for myself. However, if you ask for citations, and the other guy links to citations, what, excatly speaking, are you accusing him of ? Surely you realize that it's impossi

"When someone points at the moon, the imbecile looks at the finger"

Indeed, can you check USA at Human Rights Watch?

USA has about 1000 issues while Venezuela has about 40.