As long as we are besties with Saudi Arabia I'm not going to be surprised by who the US jumps into bed with.
Absolutely. It's a brazen betrayal of principles - he's shaking hands with the representative of a government which tortures and kills civilians with impunity.
I have a hard time getting this "what about human rights" thing in the English speaking world, wherein people get upset about the US/UK collaborating with nasty regimes, which are nonetheless significantly less nasty than them.
Saudi Arabia is less nasty? Really? In 2015?
6: It's limbering up with Yemen, but it has a lot of catching up to do before it can touch anything the anglophone world has done even in the past 15 years.
Don't we get credit for women voters and such?
7: Oh, you mean in terms of foreign policy. when I see the words "regime" and "human rights" I think of how a government treats its populace.
I think you are confusing depth of evil with reach. Saudi Arabia evil goes deep, but its mostly confined to its own neighborhood. Anglo evil is less intense, but is unmatched in its capacity for global export.
10: I get that, but do not see why that should be a meaningful distinction. If anything, foreign policy nastiness is worse, because the people on the receiving end of it don't get a vote.
Even on the domestic end, people outside the US often put it just one notch below the worst offenders. The whole thing with mass incarceration, systemic racial disparities, people going broke because of medical problems, etc. Not as bad as Saudia Arabia, et al, but not really one with much room to point the finger at anyone either.
The US does evil. That doesn't mean we shouldn't shame it when it pats other evil-doers on the back.
11 It's no US but its reach is pretty damn long as it is, including much of the ME and a bit of the NA and parts east.
The US is also hugely responsible for what is happening to Yemen. That's a lot of American weaponry being put on target with American intel.
15: Saudi Arabia, AFAIK, doesn't have elections, but many of the countries that typically come in for censure on human rights in western discourse (e.g. Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela) do.
I think maybe Putin cheats on them a bit.
Maybe he does; it's hard to say for sure.
Well, if you count what they have in China and Russia and Iran as elections, then Saudi has them too. The next ones are due next month.
Does Venezuela often get slated for human rights abuses? I wouldn't list it as one of the top offenders.
Some people around here count "fossil fuel resources not being properly exploited" as a human rights abuse.
By "around here," I mean in geographic proximity to my current location.
Does Venezuela often get slated for human rights abuses? I wouldn't list it as one of the top offenders.
Whenever the right wing here in America wants to point to a country that has been turned into a hellhole by left-wing ideology, they use Venezuela. As if all the other countries near Venezuela are beacons of liberty and stability.
Venezuela main problems are a high crime rate and an economy in the toilet due to petroleum dependence.
Its democracy could certainly use some work, but I don't think left-wing politics are the root of the problem. Its not like right-wingers in Latin America have been better.