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Original URL: World leaders abandoning human rights: Amnesty
World leaders are undermining human rights for millions of people with regressive policies and hate-filled rhetoric, but their actions have ignited global protest movements in response, a rights group said.
US President Donald Trump, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and China's President Xi Jinping were among a number of politicians who rolled out regressive policies in 2017, according to Amnesty International's annual human rights report published on Thursday.
The human rights body also mentioned the leaders of Egypt, the Philippines and Venezuela.
"The spectres of hatred and fear now loom large in world affairs, and we have few governments standing up for human rights in these disturbing times," Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary-general, said.
"Instead, leaders such as el-Sisi, Duterte, Maduro, Putin, Trump and Xi are callously undermining the rights of millions."
[...] The regressive approach to human rights adopted by a number of world leaders has, however, inspired new waves of social activism and protest, Amnesty said, highlighting the example of the Women's March in January last year, which began in the US before becoming a global protest.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday February 24 2018, @09:20PM (1 child)
As far as I can tell, it comes down to this: Some people enjoy the prospect of hurting and even killing other people. Even if only by proxy. Even if the people in question in no way deserve it. These kinds of sadists can't be satisfied with consensual S&M, they're looking to do these terrible things to people who they know are completely unwilling.
Now, this set of desires can translate into simple criminality, such as serial killers. However, it can also get mixed with a mindset where they think about people in terms of groupings, tribes, and teams that they were born into. How the groupings are defined is largely arbitrary: It could be "Englishmen", "Manchester United Supporters", "The Bloods", "white people" (who actually qualifies has shifted about a lot on that one), "Catholics", etc. This was satirized perfectly by Babylon 5 when they had 2 factions of an alien race chosen by pulling ribbons out of a hat, and those 2 factions were in short order engaged in lethal combat.
Add in the obedience effects demonstrated by Stanley Milgram, and you have a recipe for everything that went on in Auschwitz.
For example of this in action, when the news about what was going on in Gitmo became public, there were a lot of people going "Ra ra ra! Yeah! Get them! They killed us on 9/11, this is revenge!" It didn't actually matter to them that the vast majority of the people in Gitmo weren't involved in 9/11 in any way. It didn't matter that the torture didn't yield any useful information whatsoever. It didn't matter that most of them didn't know anyone who had died in 9/11 or had even been anywhere nearby. It was very simply "They" hurt "us", therefor "we" must hurt "them". And sure, they dressed it up with clinical language like "enhanced interrogation techniques", and talked about "weapons of mass destruction" but what they meant was "We want to hurt and kill people."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday February 25 2018, @03:24AM
Everything you say is true, and it shakes me to the core. Because it seems this is part of human nature, and perhaps one in fifty people is enlightened enough to pull their head out and see past it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...