Still nothing compared to china. But nice try.

What? Somehow people in the west getting arrested for protesting against genocide, is acceptable/redeemable just because another country is presumably worse??? Do you actually care about freedom/human rights at all or are you just abusing those concepts to feel superior relative to other countries and to play petty tribal us-vs-them politics?

Usually not arrested for protesting. It usually for trespassing or vandalisation or something else. Or sometimes something stupid like blocking traffic

When $NON_WESTERN_COUNTRY arrests people for, let's say, "picking quarrels", people here usually see that as just an excuse for cracking down on activities that go against government interests. But when western countries do the same, people take those excuses at face value???

didn't say it was ok to arrest people protesting. Just that it's nothing comparable with non-democratic countries like china or russia. You can protest in front of the white house. Just don't try that in moscow or beijing.

You can do stuff in front of the White House as long as you're a nobody and it doesn't actually threathen powerful interests. How many of these protests where nobody was arrested, actually resulted in change? What's the point of protesting if nothing ever changes? Thousands of children have already been killed in Gaza, but we can protest in front of the White House while the killing continues, and that makes us better than $OTHERCOUNTRY. Why are you content with a circus like that? What's even the point of comparing with $OTHERCOUNTRY if you don't have effective power to change for the better at home? Shouldn't we set higher standards for ourselves?

I think it's really, really weird that some people care more about how bad $OTHER is than problems at home.

i think a wide majority of americans are perfectly fine with the way israel responded after oct 7, and that is why the US policy doesn't change.

I'm happy a handful of people protesting can't impact a policy, that would be anti-democratic.

Yes, publishing confidential documents that expose government crimes, including war crimes. On the one hand, people argue for things like free speech and human rights, but on the other hand, the same people play petty semantics games to cover up their own society's shortcomings. Are you truly a supporter of free speech and human rights, or are you just anti-$OTHER_GROUP? Behavior like this are actively harmful to the ideals of free speech and human rights.

The documents Assange published also included lots of information on civilians in places like Afghanistan who had worked against groups like the Taliban. That put those people at risk of retaliation.

It's not really very pro human rights to go around doxing the people who are working for human rights in those places. There was nothing in the government crimes or alleged crimes in the documents that needed to be released before the documents had been thoroughly reviewed and the information on people not involved redacted.

> It's not really very pro human rights to go around doxing the people who are working for human rights in those places. There was nothing in the government crimes or alleged crimes in the documents that needed to be released before the documents had been thoroughly reviewed and the information on people not involved redacted.

This is the big difference I see with the Edward Snowden case, the papers that published the leaked documents attempted to redact any information that could put people at risk.

Assange and Wikileaks just went fuck it and didn't even try to stay politically neutral.