after reading this impassionate attack against the
"... gaggle of well-upholstered ladies in the front row of the audience, all past the age of traveling to war zones and who apparently represented Lebanese non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. Forget the "N," these were GO ladies. They clapped, they cheered, they smiled. They just loved the ambassador. What they didn't do was ask questions or show any interest in what was happening in Darfur. They knew, you see: It's an American plot, a pure invention by the occupiers of Iraq.
But where was America in all this? The report was Amnesty International's and Abu Ghraib is a continent away from Darfur. ..."
I found myself compelled to look for some more articles by this presumably slim and able-bodied "veteran reporter" and human rights activist (of the GO HRW, see below).
Daily Star, 30-Sep-03
"... Arab commentators have had no shame in urging their Iraqi brothers, exhausted by three major wars and more than a decade of sanctions, to start a new war “of liberation” against their liberators. Western commentators critical of the war have luxuriated in the failures of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) failures that condemn Iraqis to protracted hardship. ..., in the words of a British Arabist, “even the most optimistic and moderate Iraqis fear the very real prospect of civil war.”
Not those I know. ...
In mid-summer, I spent over a month in Iraq. What I found there did not correspond to what was being reported most crucially, that the liberators were widely perceived as occupiers. That simply wasn’t true. In Baghdad, where US forces had permitted widespread looting (although not as much as reported) and where security and services were virtually nonexistent, attitudes toward the Americans were mixed. ...
Today, the line being peddled is that there is growing popular support for a war of resistance against the CPA and Iraqis working with it. It is said that Iraq is a security-free zone threatened with “Lebanonization.” Bad news sells; good news doesn’t. ...
It is worth stating the obvious, so momentous is it: For the first time in almost half a century, Iraq has no executions, no political prisoners, no torture and no limits on freedom of expression. ..."
http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/showArticle3.cfm?article_id=8664This really does sound impartial, doesn't it? Even though one might get the idea that the lady's perceptions were not borne out by reality.
She also has some experience with old ladies. In another piece she relates this:
"Inside story
Riefenstahl, the Nuba and me
It began with a phone-call out of the blue - Leni Riefenstahl asking for help to get back to Sudan and the Nuba tribe she loved. Julie Flint recalls her three-year relationship with the notorious German film-maker
Thursday September 11, 2003
The Guardian
It must have been the closing days of the last millennium, or the opening days of this one. I was at home in London with a friend, the Nuba rebel leader Yousif Kuwa, when the telephone rang and a sharp, rather croaky voice said: "Hello, my dear. I am Leni." "Leni Riefenstahl?" I said. And the voice said: "Yes." I turned to Kuwa and whispered: "It's Leni Riefenstahl!" ...
I knew who Leni Riefenstahl was, of course - Hitler's favourite film-maker, a protege of the Third Reich who had first visited, and fallen in love with, the Nuba in the 1960s and had published two remarkable books about them. ..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,1039697,00.htmlWell, Ms. Riefenstahl had of course fallen in love with Hitler, too, before she fell in love with the Nuba. And never really understood why anybody would criticize her for making those widely received Nazi propaganda films (little wonder she was Hitler's "favourite film-maker"), for which she never felt the need to repent or even apologize. Yet this apparently was neither a concern for Ms. Flint. She rattles on and on about the Nubas and what Riefenstahl (guess who's on the phone, Riefenstahl!) would tell her in this croaky voice.
And since Ms. Flint of HRW is so outspoken on these massacres in Darfur, and on the ruthless government that condones or incites them, let's remember how coy and timid her organisation kindly asked the US government, with all due respect, taking into account "considerations of international peace and security" that obviously warranted the sanctions, to ease, pretty please, some of the restrictions on the oil-for-food programme in pre-occupation Iraq.
It is true, HRW informed their government that the death rate of children more than doubled, due to the sanctions. But I never heard or read anything from HRW claiming the US government was willfully ("it's worth it", Albright) committing genocide, despite an estimated (by the responsible UN persons) 1 million deaths.
Therefore, and finally, a few timely remarks on Human Rights Watch, from Global Research in Canada:
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Human Rights Watch, the US foreign policy establishment-connected rights watchdog, is an ardent exponent of holding human rights abusers to account. The group argues that the prosecution of violators makes clear to dictators, tyrants and despots, that there's nowhere to hide. This is arrant nonsense. For one thing, leaders of the de facto world government need not worry about hiding, since they have no fear of ever being prosecuted; they control, or at the very least, have an enormous influence over, prosecutions and the bodies that carry them out. And since HRW's key members are drawn from the US foreign policy establishment, it's a pretty safe bet that the organization's view of the world closely resembles that of Washington. Would HRW call for the prosecution of US leaders? Of course not. The mild slap on the wrist the organization gave NATO leaders for the war of aggression on Yugoslavia – which was an egregious assault on both the principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello – is proof enough. The rights group mildly admonished NATO leaders for ignoring humanitarian law, when, in fact, the US-led coalition committed the greatest crime of all according to the Nuremberg laws – initiating a war of aggression. On top of that, NATO forces deliberately destroyed civilian infrastructure, a flagrant war crime. Vital allies of the US also have no fear either, a point Israeli leaders -- who, in connection with the Palestinians, oversee a human rights horror show and war crimes extravaganza -- can readily attest to. Who really has nowhere to hide are leaders of countries that are not allies, satellites or dependencies of the US. This includes anyone who presides over a closed or largely state-owned economy who refuses to bow to demands to accept what's euphemistically called "democratic" or "economic reforms" – elevating the profit making interests of corporate America above the material and social security requirements of the domestic population. Renitent leaders will eventually be indicted on some charge, whether genuine, exaggerated or trumped up, to justify an inevitable predatory US war to pry open markets and elevate US corporate interests. To be sure, there is nowhere for these leaders to hide, but that hardly has anything to do with human rights abuses or war crimes, and everything to do with the world's de facto government concealing the pursuit of corporate America's interests behind the pursuit of justice. In this, Human Rights Watch is also an instrument of the de facto world government's imperialism.
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/GOW407A.html