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Bet you didn't think I would make this thread.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/05/11/concerns-excessive-force/27107533/

So recently the United States was slammed for a variety or issues during a routine human rights "checkup" ,I suppose you could say, of their human rights record. Predictably, police brutality against blacks took center stage but old favorites like Guantanamo Bay and the death penalty also made an appearance.

The question I would like to pose to you all is what powers does the United Nations or its member states have to make sure the United States follows through and corrects these issues? How do you make states willing to jeopardize their relationship with the most powerful country on earth by taking concrete actions to influence the United States into changing?

I think that it should be handled like this:

» We need more time and factual bases before we can come to a proper conclusion on police brutality, I think it's too murky to tell properly.
» The death penalty should be reserved for the most heinous felonies, because not every criminal can be therapied into not killing again and we need to set an example that it is not acceptable to kill others in cold blood for any reason.
» Prisons like these are in many other countries who also happen to be members of the U.N which could arguably be worse than Guantanamo, why aren't they also being looked at?

>How Do You Hold Nations Like The United States Accountable?

You don't, really. That's how geopolitics work.

I think we (I’m talking about the rest of the Western world here) reject the double standard and step in to enforce basic human rights. We enforce global sanctions. We stop supporting American companies. We send that country spiraling, then we step in and clean it up. We assist them in setting up a government that complies with human rights, we do not let them include anything in violation, no matter how deeply ingrained in their culture and religion it may be. We modernize the United States. Then we stick around and help them figure it all out for awhile. We’ll need to remove certain political and religious figures from the scene completely, without doubt, but what’s a handful of old fundamentalists in comparison to all the lives cut short daily by systemic racism?

How would you realistically impede on the sovereignty of the United States (removing political figures, setting up new governments) without risking outright war with the most powerful country in the world which probably has a base or two in or near your country?

As a nationalist, I'd say sovereign nations should only be accountable to God and to their own citizenry, not to any external body of men.

The thing is that while the UN is recognized as an authority on these matters by most of the nations of the world they don't actually hold any real power, largely due to the fact that it's bogged down by bureaucracy and politics. So essentially while the UN can condemn the actions of a country there isn't really any actual action they can take.

The same "power" they've been using to review Saudi Arabia's human rights record, where they annually recommend various human rights improvements and Saudi Arabia rejects them and the UN goes "okay guess we're done here for the year" and nothing actually happens. That's what the UN is all about, looking big and unified but not really doing anything at all.

It does seem to be quite an impotent organization, doesn't it?

I was just parodying Lisa's post in the Islam thread for how to enforce civil rights in the Middle East. Seeing as her plan for how to do that to the entire Middle East is about as equally realistic as doing it to the United States.

SacremPyrobolum said:

what powers does the United Nations or its member states have to make sure the United States follows through and corrects these issues?

They have none, it's one of the reasons we're a superpower. We haven't ratified the Rome Statute, so the ICC is useless, we have the largest economy in the world, so any economic sanctions would likely hurt the world economy more than the US', we have a veto in the Security Council specifically to prevent the UN's interference, and the General Assembly only uses its Security Council override to circlejerk over Israel.

The US also contributes nearly a quarter of the UN's budget and its headquarters is in New York. Congress is always more than happy to cut funding. That 3 billion dollars sure would look nice invested in our roads.

I'm quite happy no other nation can dictate what we do internally. It's our affairs, let us deal with it (and I hold that same opinion for US intervention overseas). Kudos to the Senate for not following through with the Rome Statute and to SCOTUS for saying the constitution trumps treaties.

You Are Reading This said:

The death penalty should be reserved for the most heinous felonies…

It already is. The death penalty can only be used for murders (or treason), only certain forms of death may be administered, and neither juveniles nor the mentally handicapped can be executed.

Erin said:

I was just parodying…

Daily reminder shitposting is only allowed in Riff Raff.

What I proposed has already happened twice throughout history. It can't be all that unrealistic.

Calling WW3 key players right now: US-Israel-India vs. China-Russia-Pakistan. Just wait.

xTSGx wrote:

Daily reminder shitposting is only allowed in Riff Raff.

Using parody to point out hypocrisy or absurdity by comparison isn't shitposting.

If I was shitposting I would've said something like: "Hurr durr, I'm Lisa Lamebardo. I think the only way to create social change is to assassinate people and institute martial law until they do what I want."

Anyway…
I don't think there's much the international community could do. Like xTSGx said, economic sanctions would likely hurt the rest of the world just as much, if not more, than they would hurt the US.
I think the rest of the world will just have to trust that the US will work out its issues on its own. I believe that it's a cultural issue and there's no outside force that can force a significant change quickly, I'm also confident that we will work out our racial issues… eventually

>our racial issues

Of the 101 people killed by police in April,
43 were white males
33 were black males
14 were Latino males
3 were Indian
1 was Asian
1 was a white female
1 was a black female
5 whose races could not be determined

You'll find fairly similar results no matter what month you pick.
This country has a police militarization issue.

As someone who believes in true equal treatment I'd say the same as other countries with such qualifications.

As someone who has a realistic view of the world I'd say you can't deal with the transgressions of a super power whose reach extends far beyond its borders the same as its peers.

And as someone whose prone to bouts of Patriotic Fervor my Super Murican alter ego proudly declares that the U.S. has in no way gotten to the transgressional degrees of third world shitholes and/or almighty eastern superpowers to elicit punishment on par with what its aforementioned peers are due.

Exactly, like in my area (Las Vegas) the police force literally owns a tank now, has a huge swat force, and is super on edge about everything. Like they shoot dogs very regularly. You have to keep your dog away from them and if it does get near them you have to heavily control it and warn the officer as much as possible not to shoot the dog. There are also pretty regular human shootings, tazings, and macing, but when you look at the numbers the races actually get equal brutality. So they constsntyl kill and hurt people but it's all in a very non-bigoted way.

Like personally, when I hear stories of police brutality on the news I don't think of race, I think of police using unnecessary force. Unless race is explicitly involved I don't notice it. Sure some of the cops who do this might be internally racist or something, there's no denying that. Black people get charged for crimes, arrested, and overall checked by cops more than white people, but as I said when I see brutality and such I view it as mitarization we need to cut down like Lisa pointed out.

And on the thread's main topic, as everyone said there is nothing to be done. The UN is weak and powerless even with the US so without them there would be no way. If the US decided to become imperialist again no one could do anything. The US has the power to destroy the world at this point. Sure they'd be stopped before they could destroy everything but they wouldn't leave much left. It's up to US citizens to make this changes and things internally. That is the way we control the US. Sure it's shaky but it's democracy and it's all we have. That's why voting matters.

Saying that the demographics of people killed by police stays constant month to month doesn't mean anything besides that the amount of discrimination is the same.

If it was all 'racially fair,' the demographics of people killed would follow the demographic percentages of America in general. That would be roughly: 63 whites, 12 blacks, 17 Latinos, 4 Asians, and 5 of other races. (Going off of Wikipedia's information on United States demographics.)
So, killed whites is only ~70% of what it 'should' be, killed blacks is ~280% of what it 'should' be, killed Latinos is ~80% of what it 'should' be, killed Asians is 25% of what it 'should' be, etc.

Police militarization is an issue, but race is also definitely a major component.

Blacks commit ~52% of all crime, according to the fbi, so they encounter the police more frequently, there's a race war going on after all. The amount of lethal encounters should be obviously disproportionately black, just as the rate of crime is, especially the rate of armed gang crime, yet it's not.

You know what all the cities where these police shootings take place have in common? ~70/30 b/w demographically, and it's generally a recent change. Ferguson was the exact opposite racial makeup in the 90s as it is today, that's why the police force is mostly white. The media didn't include that little fact when they were broadcasting their pretty story of an oppressed class of people ruled by a murderous racist police force that fails to represent the city.

Better that we think each other racist bigots who can't be trusted than to let us unite against the government.

If we're talking about the militarization of police, here's a handy map that shows police equipment by county. My count's worst weapons are 24 assault rifles, but over in Wayne county (Detroit area) they have 2 assault vehicles, an aircraft, a grenade launcher, and 265 assault rifles. Then the county above it has 491 assault rifles and a mine-resistant vehicle.

Do you think that starting those from the bottom of the command chain would be a good place to start improving the country? Currently there seems to be some kind of mentality which allows bad country practices to persist even if 95% of people are against it.

The question is…what should we do exactly?

Where are you getting that FBI statistic?
I found the FBI statistic for arrests by race, but not for crimes committed.

It's under Uniform Crime Reports for 2012, can't navigate the fbi site at all from my phone to get a link. If you still can't find it by the time I'm off work I'll link it when I get home.

This thread is going way off topic. Requesting lock if it doesn't get back to the actual topic of discussion.

Question is, does the US give legal opportunities to make itself accountable?