{"id":499,"date":"2004-05-18T04:27:47","date_gmt":"2004-05-18T08:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=499"},"modified":"2004-05-18T04:27:47","modified_gmt":"2004-05-18T08:27:47","slug":"state-dept-sees-the-cloud-ignores-the-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=499","title":{"rendered":"State Dept. Sees the Cloud Ignores the Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday, May 17, 2004, the U.S. State Department released its annual Human Rights Report presumably on behalf of all Americans including this extremely embarrassed one. Lorne Craner, assistant secretary of State overseeing human rights, made the following statement<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“People understand we’re not perfect. If they thought we were perfect, they would have given up on us after things like My Lai and Watergate and Iran-Contra,” he said, referring to the 1968 massacre in Vietnam and scandals from the 1970s and 1980s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lorne suggests these people accept our status and interventions by choice not coercion and that the United States merely hit a few sour notes over the course of one or two spotty decades. While somewhat interesting he’s noted a period with an acutely familiar cast of characters memories do exist that are longer than his<\/a>. While I realise he is first and foremost an underling doing the bidding of malignant culprits the absurdity of his summation is compelling in its utter fecklessness.<\/p>\n

The report was unusually anticipated for the same reason it was delayed; due to “technical difficulties” related to the emerging reports of prisoner abuse at the hands of U.S. forces. Yet it “mentions no human rights violations by U.S. forces or their allies.” Craner said, “the Abu Ghraib scandal was a cloud that was obscuring what we were trying to do?. We want to punch through the cloud and say, ‘We’re not going to give up.’ “<\/p>\n

Dry your tears, boys and girls, this picnic buster will dissipate if you choose to destroy it. America’s bestial actions<\/a> while pursuing its self-serving interests are anomalies, cumulus interruptions in an otherwise gloriously sunny day. America, like Mary Poppins, is above and after all a do-gooding innocent dispensing spoonfulls of sugar to mask the awfull medicine. It’s not torture. It’s supercalifragilisticexpialidocious<\/a>.<\/p>\n

U.S. Red Cross chief quits<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

Sources in the community of non-government groups that work with the Red Cross told Reuters they believed Girod was unhappy with his own organisation and with the U.S. government.<\/p>\n

“My reading of it is that he felt they (the Red Cross) should have gone public with their report. He never told me he was quitting, but I think he was very upset about the situation,” one source said.<\/p>\n

Sources also said Girod came away dissatisfied from a meeting on the abuse issue with U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, a 24-page ICRC report was leaked to the media in which the Red Cross said the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers was “in some cases tantamount to torture.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The course of this administration is littered with resignations<\/a> from people who’ve refused to take their medicine. Lorne Craner’s, unfortunately, isn’t one of them.<\/p>\n

Craner said foreigners have told U.S. officials that, despite their disapproval of the scandal, they still wanted the U.S. government’s help.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Craner said, some of the governments named as rights violators have objected to criticism, citing the prison scandal. He declined to disclose which ones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s the rub, the irritating chafing causing even the most stalwart to contract a rash. Like willfull children we insist upon staining history with indelible magic markers so the unspeakable might become routine in an increasingly brutal world. The hypocritical dealings of the U.S. remain a bottomless source of enabling measures others use to justify thuggish authority. Common decency has become the folly of weak-willed dreamers.<\/p>\n

Craner maintained that U.S. efforts to promote rights have not been hurt by the U.S. shutdown of an anti-American news outlet in Iraq, or by U.S. pressure against Al Jazeera, the Arab-language satellite TV channel. Those outlets, he said, violated international journalistic standards by inciting their audiences to violence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No mention of the journalists who’ve been killed<\/a> or detained and tortured<\/a>. But of course if America determines you’re an evildoer these are your just desserts.<\/p>\n

The report said Israel’s human rights record in the West Bank “remained poor, and worsened in the treatment of foreign human rights activists.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Amnesty denounces Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes as war crime<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

What will it take to get an accurate weather report in America?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday, May 17, 2004, the U.S. State Department released its annual Human Rights Report presumably on behalf of all Americans including this extremely embarrassed one. Lorne Craner, assistant secretary of State overseeing human rights, made the following statement: “People … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-83","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}