Asia and Eastern Europe are off the list for me too. China is willing to kidnap people out of Thailand [1]; people being arrested over political tweets [2]; Russia can poison people [3], shoot them [4], or have them accused of fake crimes[5].

I really hope the U.S. never comes close to this and hope I see this trend reversed in my lifetime. But people should be aware that it can happen in a modern society and is already happening in large parts of the world.

[1] http://time.com/4371283/hong-kong-bookseller-china-detention...

[2] http://mashable.com/2016/11/26/zunar-arrested-malaysia/#AHwL...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/world/europe/russia-vladi...

[4] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-unaccountable-de...

[5] http://www.dw.com/en/russian-court-finds-alexei-navalny-guil...

Well, the US can drone-kill people (including bystanders irrelevant to the primary non-tried target), abduct them from all over the world and transport them with no trial to Guantanamo, allows cops to shoot innocent people (e.g. for walking while black) at a record rate (compared to even developing world dictatorship standards) without much repercussions, and let's not get started with people forced to go to jail with BS accusations and plea deals or stuff like "three strikes" that can put people on life for ...stealing a pizza thrice.

Just because these people are not all local citizens or white, doesn't mean they are not wronged.

And all that's under Obama, so not much hope for those getting better under Trump...

Starting with "Well," suggests it somehow negates my point though.

I think "Also" would be more appropriate, which kind of acknowledges the problems in other countries I cited while also pointing out very real weaknesses in America's justice system.

This might seem pedantic, but the common reply I see to "this country does bad stuff" reduces to "well this country does bad stuff too!" It's not a productive argument because it tries to deflect attention and normalize the actions in question. Instead, we should be focusing on how to address all of these issues, because they definitely exist.

Can you explain how exactly the U.S. has yet to "come close to" your list? Your post created the very "us vs them" separation you now claim to disagree with. The child post was fairly clearly just answering that statement

And while we're talking deflection, you are the one who took a thread about the US border and its impact on travellers and made it about civil rights abuses by the rest of the world. Yes, they are all important; no, it is usually not possible to solve them all at once.

Show me a similar incident to the Chinese booksellers thing in America. Or anyone being killed because they represented the political opposition. Miles away.

But that's not even my point. My point is: read the links listed; I'm not traveling to those countries; I hope the world becomes less crazy. That's all!

> And while we're talking deflection, you are the one who took a thread about the US border and its impact on travellers and made it about civil rights abuses by the rest of the world

Huh? I posted some links above. People should read them and make up their own mind, in addition to the OP. It's not a "one or the other" kind of thing, not sure why it would be.

I think it's valid to see things its perspective though, because people who say "we shouldn't turn it into 'yes, but X does this too'" are often using it as an excuse to continue to point fingers only towards one side, and not even the worst acting one...

It's not pedantic if you care about being rational. This act is a common logical fallacy called the "tu quoque fallacy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Why is this a fallacy?

Suppose country A is accused of doing something bad. It's logically irrelevant to that question whether some other country B also has done something bad.

To see it more clearly, take the same fallacy on an individual level. Person A is accused of murdering someone. Is it a valid defense to say "Well, my neighbor Person B also murdered someone, therefore it's OK that I did"? No, of course not. It's totally irrelevant whether someone else -- even the accuser -- has also murdered someone.

Yet making this fallacious counter-accusation is often effective in terms of emotional (i.e. irrational) manipulation of the audience, particularly when they are predisposed against B in some way.

The US has kidnapped people from Italy, and assassinated its own child citizens. The US (and most western countries) are already close to this, it's just that most citizens felt they were immune up till now.

This kind of overreach should always be opposed, no matter who it is done to, or where, because once it is acceptable to assassinate people with missiles, kidnap opponents, or record everyone's digital life whenever information crosses the border, all it takes is the wrong sort of people to take power and all the mechanisms are in place to control and oppress entire populations.

Less humans kill other humans now than ever in the past. I wonder if the media is to blame for the fear mongering?

https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...

The recent rise in nationalism after the 2008 crash is eerily similar to post 29. Globalisation has caused discontents, even if they are unjustified and the solutions proposed by demagogues are absurd and damaging, they appeal to some. Re the media, no I don't think so, humans are tribal and not very rational.

Really? Try talking to locals there not just about gays but also about refugees or even gypsies...

People aren't necessarily against refugees, per se, but more against the idea of accepting anyone who declares himself to be a refugee, without checking that he is, in fact, one. Things are made worse by a few "refugee" cases where the "refugees" preferred to move away and live as illegal immigrants in Germany than as legal refugees in Hungary or Romania (a status which includes state aid, as meager as it may be in these countries).

The third point is really complicated and it does include discrimination but also a lack of trust and respect for the others from both sides. A lot of it has to do with the difficulties of integrating a very tight-knit nomadic culture into a modern, sedentary society where property rights are clear and respected.

Even if I've never posted anything on FB that they'd find objectionable, it's possible someone I know from the US posted privately ('close friends only', for example) "Man I wish someone would put a bullet in Trump's head", feeling as though it was a safe place to vent. Suddenly they're getting investigated by the secret service, and possibly deported, because I gave up my Facebook login because "I have nothing to hide".

This is ridiculously insidious. For every one person whose Facebook info they get, they get to collect previously inaccessible data on potentially hundreds of people, none of whom agreed to share their data with the government, or even knew that it was happening. With one Facebook login the government can start building profiles on hundreds of people, and with each successive login that net expands.

I do believe that immigration services look at your account exclusively for their goals of evaluating immigration. They ask you to unlock your account because for them it's objectively simpler to ask that information from you than to get it from the other government agencies that have that information but won't disclose it because formally they shouldn't have it. There's no "the government", it is an amalgamation of many organizations that have conflicting goals and don't coordinate, so it's reasonable to expect that "the government" has some information and at the same time "the government" (i.e. other parts of it) don't have it and need to request it from you or do without.