"A couple of hours outside Yangon, the country’s largest city, U Aye Swe, an administrator for Sin Ma Kaw village, said he was proud to oversee one of Myanmar’s 'Muslim-free' villages, which bar Muslims from spending the night, among other restrictions.
'Kalar are not welcome here because they are violent and they multiply like crazy, with so many wives and children,' he said.
Mr. Aye Swe admitted he had never met a Muslim before, adding, 'I have to thank Facebook because it is giving me the true information in Myanmar.'"
Facebook has nothing to do with Sin Ma Kaw having anti-Muslim laws, and Muslim free areas have been instituted by the Burmese army all over Myanmar since at least 2012. Ethnic cleansing and ethno-religious conflict with Rohingya has been happening and accelerating since before Facebook existed.
Widespread hatred for Muslims existed long before widespread usage of Facebook in Myanmar.
There’s also no evidence Facebook pulled Free Basics because of media pressure. Commercial reasons are obvious. Burmese now have a much larger mobile internet and phone market with better penetration, so Facebook doesn’t gain as much now.
> Ethnic cleansing and ethno-religious conflict with Rohingya has been happening and accelerating since before Facebook existed.
Just because the problem existed before Facebook doesn't mean Facebook is completely free of responsibility. It amplifies existing prejudices in those echo-chambers we know so well from American politics; and it provides practical help to the organization of "grassroots" violence. From this New York Times article on the similar Sri Lankan situation:
> “We don’t completely blame Facebook,” said Harindra Dissanayake, a presidential adviser in Sri Lanka. “The germs are ours, but Facebook is the wind, you know?”
I mean ultimately it's just a social network/communication technology. It's not at all setup to police people's speech, so there'd be a huge cost to dealing with that.
If anything, it could enable the local government to do the policing and prevent hate killings. Unless the government itself is participating in that. Then who's to blame here? (The government/people are)
It's totally set up to police people's speech! That's what the "report" button and paid moderators are for!
It's just that in peripheral markets like the Sri Lankan case I mentioned, they're not willing to put in the financial investment to be a responsible social network; they had no Sinhalese speaking moderators, no staff in-country, and did not respond to either reports of content inciting violence or direct outreach from the government. Until they were blocked and realized their precious market share was in danger.
Facebook can do all those good things you mentioned, and it generally chooses not to until the consequences become too enormous to brush off.
Yes. Roads can service vehicles used by terrorists or invading armies. Roads are a necessary evil that should be heavily moderated, and any road makers must be held accountable to who uses their roads.
You sound like you're sarcastic, but I know the road system in northern Norway was made with the explicit intention that it should be slow for an army to drive westwards. If you made a private east-west road during the cold war, you'd probably get some unpleasant encounters with officials. Of course, all development at this scale has to be sanctioned by the state, but in this particular case you'd be much more likely to have a Bad Time.
Exactly. To build a private road you need government cooperation, there are usually special arrangements for policing roads, governments pay (traffic engineers to pay) attention to the systemic effects of adding roads, etc.
I do wonder why the Valley has such an aversion to defense contracts then if other non-defense related “necessary” technologies cause guaranteed collateral damage.
Is it because these technologies such as self-driving cars will only kill people accidentally?
That's a new thing. Silicon Valley was built on defense money after WWII. The microcomputer and BBS world there was very connected to utopian and pacifist ideals, which is where a lot of the anti-military ethos present today comes from. That was later, though.
It applies to all technologies. I seriously thought we got past this "we only do science, we're not responsible for its use" shit during the Manhattan Project.
That's not to say that various technologies shouldn't exist (certainly not encryption), or that researchers should be liable in a legal sense. But everyone who develops technology has a responsibility to consider the harm it might cause, alongside the good it might do.
> But everyone who develops technology has a responsibility to consider the harm it might cause, alongside the good it might do.
but if the harm it might do out-weights the good but only to somebody else? Ala, externalized harm?
In this game theoretic system, the actors that benefit the most are the ones that externalized the harm. For example, AI development may actually cause harm. But that harm can either happen to those who get marginalized due to AI taking over their existing roles, or that humanity gets destroyed by an AI. But in the short term, an AI that works well can make massive profits.
"Responsibility to consider the harm" is a far, far cry from "should be held accountable for the harm", which is the statement I was responding to. Not even comparable, really, in terms of impact. Whether the harm should be "considered" was never in question, AFAICT.
Agreed fully in principle. But that runs contrary to the history of development, which is profit-motivated. From arrowheads to phonographs to nuclear fission to broadband.
I look forward to the day when technologists consider both.
And is true. Governments reserve the power to take off-air radio stations inciting violence, any new mode of transportation is heavily studied and regulated before going into widespread use, etc.
"...Widespread hatred for Muslims existed long before widespread usage of Facebook in Myanmar..."
It's not the widespread hatred of Muslims that's putting pressure on facebook. It's the widespread killing of muslims that's putting pressure on facebook. No one would mind if it was just a giant bunch of idiots hating each other. In fact, we have that in the US. The difference is that as soon as you start offing people the situation begins to be viewed in a significantly different fashion.
There was the very real possibility that the government was going to ask facebook to leave. (Truth be told, this move by facebook may prove to be unequal to the government's desires. So in the end facebook may still be shown the door.)
The widespread killing (and other abuses) of Rohingya is done by the Burmese Army as part of offensives against the independence armies in Rakhine state, not by people who read anti-muslim posts on FB and then go out and murder people. Burmese people (and UN, international press, etc.) aren't even allowed in the areas where the Rohingya crisis is happening! So no Facebook does not have much to do with it. Really.
Actually, more often than not, it is exactly the people who are reading the anti-muslim posts (and other forms of media, online and off) and then going out fueling the violence. When I was in the country there were riots and anti Muslim mobs accross the country, and they were both fueled by and contributed to the widespread atmosphere of hatred and revenge. And in Rakhine state the violence started with riots and mobs, not primarily the military.
The Rohingya uprising was just a response to what must be a feeling of helplessness and desperation. They want to be treated fairly, but with the current political and social climate that's not going to happen.
The nobel peace prize has a long and sordid history of bad winners and horrifying nominees (but to be fair, the problem is more that those people were actually popular in intellectual circles at the time, the committee is simply part of that).
Besides I wonder why the reporting on this conflict is so incredibly one sided. There are 2 major "details" being ommitted:
1) muslim ethnic cleansing of buddhists (including group rapes), and the declaration by militant groups that they were going to do it to the entire country is what started this.
2) muslim ethnic cleansing of buddhists in the neighboring country of Bangladesh.
Both of these are at least closely related to the current conflict, and zero attention goes to them.
If you’re concerned about leaving out major details, then you should probably mention that the Rohignya have been persecuted since at least WWII. When the Buddhists fought along with the Japanese, and and the subsequent post-war Buddhist government declared all Rohingya stateless people and have been persecuting them ever since, until recently when they were all told to leave or be killed.
Sure the conflict has cut both ways, but no reasonable person would expect anybody to just roll over and accept genocide. There’s been some level of Rohingya insurgency since they were all denied citizenship, but nothing that could even come close to being described as an ethnic cleansing, where as the Buddhist activity there is absolutely a full blown genocide.
(in case it isn't clear to someone, the Rohyngia are the ones committing genocide on Buddhists in Bangladesh, some say with state support. Certainly no Bangladeshi army is partially mobilized to protect them like in Myanmar, even though yes, they managed to thoroughly piss off that Myanmarese army)
So ... 50km down the line ? Across the Bangladeshi border ?
Not that it hasn't been happening inside Myanmar too, but at a lower level than with state support, as the muslims have in Bangladesh and the Buddhists have in Myanmar, sure.
How long has that been going on ? Since long before the separation ... (depending on where exactly you mean it's between 500 and 1000 years)
Do I get a question now ? Why is there very little to zero action and attention to the Bangladesh persecutions/genocides ? Especially given that the death toll in Bangladesh is far higher over the past 50 years, more than a factor 10, than it is in Myanmar. Even more so given that it's probably just one single conflict, especially in the last 10 years, rather than 2 separate things ? Why is there zero mention of that side of it, and zero pressure on Bangladesh, hell, there are people claiming the Bangladeshi state is actually being paid to make it worse.
The history of the situation in India is long, sordid and cruel. We know what started the whole thing : muslim invasion, with systematic genocides carried out over hundreds of years ... the only conflict in world history that caused so much death to actually cause a dent in the growth of humanity as a whole. A millenial genocide, fought mostly with dull knives and systematic abuse and persecution of non-muslims, with so much death that 100 nukes couldn't hope to be it's equal, with the 2 partitions in some ways just being a resumption of the old conflict between muslims and ... well everyone they ever met, temporarily put on ice in India by the British colonization.
You’re talking about small examples of sectarian conflict (which are reported on, as proven by the report you posted), and trying to equate them to a genocide, which is beyond dishonest. What’s happening to the Rohingya is absolutely a genocide, a fact the Burmese Buddhists openly admit to. It’s clear that you simply have anti-Muslim prejudice, and that no level of revising history or denying reality is beneath you.
> Widespread hatred for Muslims existed long before widespread usage of Facebook in Myanmar.
This is true, unfortanatly. I lived in the Ayeyarwady Delta from 2010 - 2014, and saw a level of hatred that was very hard for me to understand. Facebook didn't really start to take off (at least in the rural area I was in) until the end of that period.
I was at a community event were a DVD of mostly raw footage from the violence in Rakine, South Thailand, and I think a few other places, was shown. It was set to a pounding rock soundtrack, and intersperse with fiery Bhuddist monks preaching against Muslims. It had the most horrific shocking footage I'd ever seen or immagined and left me with nightmares for years afterwards. I'll spare you the details.
The room was full of regular village people, elders, and children, cheering it on as if it was a football match. They told me that while the army was still in power, they would have cracked down on these DVDs, but when I was there you could freely buy them on any street corner.
Anyway, my country (the US) and other places have been through this kind of hatred (more or less) in the past too, and we overcame it. I hope that the people of Myanmar can too.
This is what I'm thinking, too. They've already gotten what they wanted - market penetration for little cost. They get a few million "low-hanging fruit" users hooked on their product, then shift their spending somewhere else when costs increase.
I think media pressure is part of it, but only because media pressure can lead the local government kicking them out of the market entirely, especially in countries with internet censorship.
It's true. What is seen of Facebook in that region is a reflection of the underlying social sentiment. However, there are a lot of people especially kids who form their beliefs based on what is popular in these platforms from adults.
> However, there are a lot of people especially kids who form their beliefs based on what is popular in these platforms from adults.
Correct. And all this action does is let Facebook remove their name from the whole mess. What I wonder is, will anyone in western media care anymore once we can't involve ourselves in the story. There's local genocides going on all over the world that have nothing to do with tech's current favorite clickbait punching bag. I'm sure we could invoke past colonialism or some such to prove again how we are culpable for all the worlds ills. But lets just face it, people suck.
Now excuse me while I go watch some inspirational TNG Picard speeches about evolved humanity. Only another 45 years until warp drive is invented and world peace rapidly ensues!
I don't think Zuckerberg is trying to stir up existing ethnic hatreds in order to seize the oil wells and install a new Burmese government that does his bidding...
What you say sounds like complete opposite to democracy, where wishes of people define the society. If you restrict propagation of information between two people, both wishing to produce / consume it, you (the society) now define what people should wish.
Not necessarily stating that I disagree with your idea, just that it is either it, or democracy, but not both.
There is a difference between sustainable democratic insitutions and brushfire populism. Especially when we are talking about teetering on the edge of genocide.
I'll take the lesser evil of censorship over the greater evil of hundreds of thousands of people dying (or more).
At some point you have to accept social responsibility and stop hiding behind the ”guns don’t kill people” argument. Facebook passed that point a long time ago.
"Users who sign up for Internet.org are required to sign up for Facebook first, and Free Basics works by not counting Facebook use against a limited data plan; therefore, if users do most browsing through Facebook, they can use the “internet” essentially for free."
Sure, connecting billions of underserved people to the internet is great and all, but it's all in the name of growing Facebook's user base and numbers. Any philantrophic / good will effort that has a business agenda behind it can't really be trusted. Not to mention putting Facebook as the access vehicle and introduction to the Internet for folks who have barely or never been connected before, is like giving drugs to a new born.
There are ways to get people connected to the Internet, without requiring them to "browse through Facebook", for example by spending your billions and building infrastructure. Try again, MZ.
> Any philantrophic / good will effort that has a business agenda behind it can't really be trusted.
Why? Most philanthropic ventures have agendas that aren't purely altruistic. If you don't call a particular agenda an agenda, it might be because you agree with it.
>If you don't call a particular agenda an agenda, it might be because you agree with it.
Let's not be confused by the word "agenda." What's being talked about is "a hidden goal pursued under the cover of a facade goal," not "a list of tasks."
I think there’s something important to glean here. We’ve always seen Facebook driving trends in social media (or re-appropriating features from lesser groups). We are starting to see a near constant reactive Facebook. This is the beginning of the end for them.
When FB was trying to peddle "Free Basics" in India, I looked up the rules for a website to be supported, and FB demanded no communication between the user and websites be encrypted.
The problem was technical (due to the way it was initially built, I think it was using facebook domain for zero rating). Currently, encryption is supported: end-to-end on app, for mobile browser facebook apparently still decrypts the traffic.
We encrypt information for Free Basics wherever possible. When people use the Free Basics Android app, their traffic is encrypted end-to-end unless you specify that your service should be HTTP only. For the Free Basics website in a mobile browser, we use a “dual certificate” model to encrypt traffic between a person's device and our servers in both directions. If your server supports HTTPS, we will also encrypt traffic between our servers and yours. Even if your service doesn't yet support HTTPS, where possible we will encrypt that information between our servers and people's devices unless you ask us to not use dual certificate HTTPS. When people use the Free Basics mobile website, information is temporarily decrypted on our secure servers to ensure proper functionality of the services and to avoid unexpected charges to people.
We preserve the privacy of that information while it's decrypted by only storing the domain name of your service and the amount of data being used—the same information that would be visible using end-to-end encryption—as well as cookies that are stored in an encrypted and unreadable format."
There's several distinct issues intermingled in this reporting, muddying the lessons.
First, there's issue of ethnic violence in Myanmar, fueled by hate speech on and off of Facebook. While the article acknowledges that Facebook's digital distribution allowed hoax stories designed to incite ethnic violence to spread very fast, it says a lot about a society when isolated instances of trolling can lead to real people being killed. It said a lot about the US' fears and anxieties when foreign agents were discovered to have been generating content to amplify sectarian divisions, but it was also remarkable how similar their products were to organic content produced by various factions of true believers within the US. If domestic agents are posting hate speech in Myanmar, the only explanation is that Myanmar is a sharply divided tinderbox with many prejudices and preconceptions, and some people will latch onto a rumour that in their mind provides the necessary justification to commit violence and murder against another ethnicity. It's difficult for me to accept the article's insinuation that in such an environment, Facebook must somehow do more to counteract the undercurrents of society.
Then there's the issue of Facebook and certain websites being zero-rated on some phone networks. This is popular in countries where no organized lobby against it exists, and has been withdrawn in some places where activist groups have succeeded in framing it as a foreign company picking winners and losers. Zero-rating is the new frontier in net neutrality that was punted even in the US, where the old FCC never banned it outright, the new FCC is declining it investigate it, and telcos are vertically merging with content providers, which seems to lay the groundwork for more zero-rating to come.
> It's difficult for me to accept the article's insinuation that in such an environment, Facebook must somehow do more to counteract the undercurrents of society
Facebook went into a troubled situation to make money and made it worse. They don’t have to solve Myanmar’s problems. But if you’re getting paid to throw fuel on a fire, you accept liability for the houses it burns down.
One wonders if anyone got value from it. Many realize the ratio of negative articles to positive ones regarding Facebook domestically far outweighs the ratio of negativity to positivity in people's lives (maybe not most here, but in general).
I personally feel like I'd be someone unfamiliar with a situation looking down and judging all peoples of a society as too irresponsible for Facebook, so I don't. If anything, I think Facebook would be wise to temper growth as it is guaranteed that no matter what happens, there is no outlet for it to be seen as a positive by anyone whether it is or not.
(not completely excusing FB here, just not sure they are more complicit than any other messenger...I see too few articles suggesting action taken against the message senders)
The previous junta in Myanmar would definitely have silenced the message senders. (And the people committing the violence. And likely any people who agreed with the people committing the violence. And probably their families just to be sure. Etc etc etc. It wasn't a fun time to be a hater in Myanmar.)
Point is, the previous "government" kept more control over this sort of violence and hatred, BUT... they did so at the barrel of a gun. What was the cost there? (Does the cost even matter in view of the fact that we can now see that they did save tens of thousands of lives? All really tough moral and ethical questions.)
What's disheartening to me is the fact that, it seems that humans haven't evolved past that. The only demonstrably effective method of controlling this sort of tribalism, seems to be at the barrel of a gun.
As long as there is scarcity, it will be game theoretically efficient to form violently competitive in and out groups.
That said, cynicism is misplaced. We are in a centuries-long progression of falling per-capita rates of violent death. Perpetuating that virtuous spiral is our tendency to shame, as this article goes, enablers of violence.
They didn't go into Myanmar to make money. That's absurd. The country barely has an economy much less a meaningful online ad market.
They went into Myanmar to capture market share. That's paid for by their extraordinarily rich US ad market, as is the case in countless other commercially worthless markets (which may or may not one day be valuable). Every market they ignore, no matter how small or poor, produces a potential social competitor or hands the market to a competitor.
The notion they were chasing riches (in Myanmar!) is just a convenient emotional blanket that makes everyone feel better about the Facebook global social network agenda. The fact is, they never have to care about markets like Myanmar financially, it's entirely meaningless and probably always will be to their financials.
When you know that society is a tinderbox where spreading rumors can get people killed, it might not be your fault, but it seems like a good idea to think twice before deploying a super-efficient rumor-spreading machine?
I'm not saying that there's any easy answer, but the idea that we should think ahead about the consequences of what we do and at least try to mitigate any harms doesn't seem so outlandish.
As to the first issue, the problem is deeper than one of Facebook merely mirroring existing cultural fissures. Facebook is functioning as an accelerant that's actively making it worse.
> it says a lot about a society when isolated instances of trolling can lead to real people being killed
In Bremen (Germany), maybe a week ago, a TV station aired a spot where they accused a man of being a pedophile. Even though they didn't disclose the location, the house where the man lived was identifiable for locals, and up to ten people went to the house, grabbed the man and nearly beat him to death. Later it came out that a) the man the mob identified and beat up wasn't the man from the TV spot and b) even the "real" suspect hadn't done anything illegal [0].
All societies are vulnerable to this kind of shit.
>It's difficult for me to accept the article's insinuation that in such an environment, Facebook must somehow do more to counteract the undercurrents of society.
Your conclusion is fairly bizarre given the explanation preceding it. If a country is "a sharply divided tinderbox with many prejudices and preconceptions, and some people will latch onto a rumour that in their mind provides the necessary justification to commit violence and murder against another ethnicity", isn't that all the more reason for entities like Facebook to take extreme care in how they disseminate information? If you're entering an area filled with flammable material, you should be doubly cautious about starting a fire.
> Are we now accusing Facebook for not having enough censorship power?
No, we’re accusing Facebook of selling ads next to a system known to prioritise sensational junk. When your ad platform rolls out before your moderation system, your priorities are wrong and you are morally culpable.
There is also the problem of disparate treatment. “‘Facebook is quick on taking down swastikas, but then they don’t get to Wirathu’s hate speech where he’s saying Muslims are dogs,’ said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division” [1].
They tried a moderation system. An active and passive moderation system. Conservatives in the U.S. claimed it was "biased" so they stopped. Despite the fact that Facebook had clear records about disinformation campaigns and how untruthful they were. To keep the faux appearance of "intellectual curiosity" they scrapped the moderation team and now eventually the news feed. Talk about political correctness.
When rolling out their platform to other countries they obviously "learned" from yesteryears experience about dealing with disinformation and decided that doing nothing was better than doing something (no matter how perceivably flawed, or how substantially flawed it actually was, which is just foolish). Boy did they learn their lesson here, at the cost of other people's lives. Fortunately, such rhetoric rarely has jarring repercussions in the U.S. (for now).
Blame humanity. Some of the best engineers in the world tried to solve the problem but were only meant with whining about unfairness. No doubt had they employed enforceable, decent standards when moderating content on the implementation of their platform for other countries it would have just been dragged under the meaningless label of "censorship." So they didn't bother apparently. Foolish and privileged.
But at least we treated all sides equally. It only was paid in blood.
This article talks about two issues at the same time: the first is Facebook's insidious "free basics" plan, which I'm 100% against, but the second is Facebook's role as an "accelerant" in Burma, for which I can't really blame them - censorship is pretty hard and you'll always have someone complaining.
> "Educating the world" should come before "connecting the world".
That's a scary thought in several ways. At the very least it's a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Also, it robs large groups of responsible people from beneficial communication tools because of how it's used by others. It often occurs with progress and advancement though, those that have it often only see the negative side of sharing. The positive side rarely gets coverage.
"Should come before" implied shifting priorities: I didn't suggest to rob somebody of beneficial tools but to provide at least basic training before giving access to a potentially dangerous technology.
These aren't technology trees you control in a game of Age of Empires where things are all bad or all good. There is not a single door with which you prioritize access serially. Often progress has both good and bad tenets. I am just saying on the outside we are only made aware of the bad, so we aren't informed enough to say what should come and in which order. In the meantime putting artificial limits on tech only benefits the powerful who can circumvent them.
Yes, I believe that a decent school and especially civic education is a priority for the absolute majority of the world population. There are some exceptional persons who would use Internet mostly for learning but they'll find how to get there even in a less connected world.
The thrust of the article kind of seems like it wishes Facebook was a better censor so it could more aptly shape the course of the society at hand in a better fashion and its hard to imagine a more backwards perspective.
Who can look at Zuckerberg and instead of thinking why would I want that guy deciding the course of my nations fate preceed to lament that he doesn't do so slightly differently.
It's ridiculous to cut Facebook services in Bolivia because of what's happening in Myanmar. In Bolivia, Facebook is the Internet. There's an opportunity here for a company to step into the breach. Tencent (WeChat) will ramp up in Myanmar, but Bolivia is a little far from their normal markets.
>“Perhaps Facebook should consider not aggressively getting more people online through its free internet program, and on its platform, until it has fully realized the scope of various ways it impacts a society, and often the whole nation,”
Imagine the amount of first world privilege you need to have to be able to say this with a straight face. While we're at it how about we don't spread education and vaccinations across developing countries as well, until we "fully realized the scope of various ways it impacts a society, and often the whole nation".
I’d love to hear someone’s analysis as to why these things happen. Like these major, major fuck ups by some super national organizations and governments. Is this due to scale? Lack of accountability? Perverted incentives?
I feel like some sort of super national government is needed. I hate the idea but like there needs to be some sort of counterweight to supernational organizations. Local governments trying to punish them is like a game of what-a-mole.
I feel like some sort of super national government is needed.
Only because you feel like your definition of human rights would win, likely because you're american (as I am).
Are you still for this if it meant China was the enforcer against the US? Are you ready for them to retaliate against us for citizens speaking out about CCP actions? The role and place of government, and even the idea that it is open to criticism, is a western idea. It is not a given that western ideas will continue to prevail (in fact, democracy is on the retreat worldwide).
This is an extraordinarily difficult situation that is developing at a very fast pace, so information to make the sort of analysis you are asking for is very difficult. As you have seen by the regional government inquests, most of our national leaders are struggling to keep up as well.
Here are a few observations:
1) the smartphone has become a technology vector to the most remote areas in the world, and its natural use case is communication
2) data is expensive, so expensive that many regions can not afford it regularly.
3) connectivity infrastructure is very expensive, and many developing regions customer base do not represent the revenues to support it.
4) Facebook and other services growth depend on reliable data connectivity
5) what started out as a way to launder facebooks ad inventory profits to carriers to provide free data so that Facebook and carrier networks could expand, turned into a cultural invasion
6) now areas who had not experienced the level of connectivity that Facebook affords are using it in radical and sometimes violent ways.
7) those local communities are struggling to regulate it while the broader developed world is shocked at the results
8) it turns out each region wants to regulate this in very different ways and have very different culturally accepted goals about communication as a whole. I.e. censorship hate speech etc.
9) the variety of cultures means that a global standard to filter and control communications is a kind of np complete problem. What is hate speech in one region may be free speech in another.
10) the best positioned and leveraged entities to provide the super-oversight are as of today, private for profit companies. This is likely a distasteful solution to many.
I'm not opposed to the idea either. I'd also like it to hold government ministers/officials personally responsible for a states breaches of basic human rights. But the problem lies in it's structure, accountability and execution. It would be very hard to make a stable system that was objective and neither corrupt nor possible to subvert in some way.
I agree the idea has problems. But I also would like to see democratic countries band closer together, and use their economic and military power to protect democracy and human rights.
We opened our markets to many unfree countries on the idea that when they became richer, they would become democratic. We were wrong on that. Instead these countries sell to us to make themselves as dictators richer, and use our money to suppress their people, and in the name of free trade, we sell them the weapons and technology to do it. And when they become rich enough, they use their new found influence to attack democracy in other countries.
Free trade with the west should be the reward for being democratic, free, and a protector of human rights of your citizens.
Afterall it is our freedom that made us rich... we shouldn't allow dictators to benefit from it. Dictatorship is poverty. They are linked together. And without western money, they would be forced to live in the squalor they have created for themselves.
Sadly our addiction to fossil fuels is probably the biggest impediment to this. Until thats solved, we'll continue to fund some of the worst human rights abusers in exchange for oil.
As witness the current UN: stable, but not objective, thoroughly corrupt, and constantly subverted by pretty dictators and wannabe genocides. I think giving an organization like that enforcement power over anything would be a disaster — even if it weren't an affront to every sovereign nation on Earth.
The UN is a place to talk and conduct diplomacy. It is very intentionally intended to be the minimal, reliable set of international services needed to try and keep nations diplomatic channels open.
Agree, the UN in it's current form is a joke. I have no idea how an ideal structure for this would be, if even one could be created. "Power corrupts" is still as true as it was in 1870.
'Kalar are not welcome here because they are violent and they multiply like crazy, with so many wives and children,' he said.
Mr. Aye Swe admitted he had never met a Muslim before, adding, 'I have to thank Facebook because it is giving me the true information in Myanmar.'"
[1] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/world/asia/myanmar-roh...