February 26, 2007
Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party
Including A Review of Weighing the Evidence: Lessons from the Slobodan Milosevic Trial (Human Rights Watch, December, 2006)
By Edward S. Herman, David Peterson, George Szamuely
Part 1: Introduction — The Role and Biases of Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) came into existence in 1978 as the U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee. Early documents affirmed that its purpose was to "monitor domestic and international compliance with the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Final Act." [1] But though a private U.S.-based organization whose vice chairman once stated "You can't complain about other countries unless you put your own house in order," [2] its main focus was on Moscow. Thus its literature also affirmed that founding the Committee "was intended as a gesture of moral support for the activities of the beleaguered Helsinki monitors in the Soviet bloc," and its early work was well geared to advance the U.S. government's policy of weakening the Soviet Union and loosening its ties to Eastern Europe. [3] While the organization has broadened its horizons and grown enormously since its $400,000 seed money from the Ford Foundation, it has never sloughed off its close link to the Western establishment, as evidenced by its leadership's affiliations, [4] its funding, [5] and its role over the years. Because of its institutional commitment to human rights and its broad purview, however, HRW has done a great deal of valuable work, as for example in helping to document the character and effects of the Reagan era wars across Central America, where its Americas Watch reports on the U.S. support for the Nicaragua Contras, the Salvadoran army and death squads, and Guatemalan state terror were eye-opening and led to intense hostility on the part of the Reaganites and Wall Street Journal editors. [6]
Continue reading "Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party"...
February 22, 2007
Designing the Zoo
The "International Community" Plan for Kosovo
By Diana Johnstone
PARIS — After nearly eight years of uneasy occupation of the province of Kosovo that NATO wrested from Serbian control by 78 days of bombing in 1999, the "International Community" (a fancy name for governments that follow the lead of the United States) is eager to shift responsibility for the intractable situation to someone else. The way out could be a false "solution" that may provoke either Serbs or Albanians, or both, to react in ways that can be blamed for the impending disaster.
February 19, 2007
How to be a Washington Expert
Just Learn to Read Your Talking Points
By Werther*
It is a moss-encrusted truism that in order to be an expert in Washington, one only has to know an infinitesimal amount more than the average TV-watching ignoramus. The imperial capital boasts a greater density of pseudo-experts, jumped-up grad students, egomaniacal publicity hounds, and partisan false flag operatives than any patch of territory since the Rome of Elagabolus.
Straus/CDI Panel Discussion
The official invitations go out tomorrow, but for those in the DC area who read EP's blog, I'd like specially to invite you to a panel discussion I've organized on Iraq, under the auspices of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, to be held at the National Press Club on Wednesday, February 28th, from 2:00-4:00 p.m. The moderator is Alton Frye. Panelists are Ted Carpenter, Helle Dale, Ed Peck, Frank Anderson, and Doug Macgregor. It's an outstanding panel and this should be a most informative and enlightening discussion. I will try to record the proceedings as a podcast for EP, but due to my obligations to make sure all runs smoothly may not be able to. We'll see. RSVP to me here to put your name on the attendance list.
‡ For better balance, late Tuesday I swapped out Ambassador Ed Peck (with his prior kind consent — it was his idea to be a place-holder, as he knew I was looking for another "pro-surge" perspective) for Frank Gaffney. Hopefully, and to the extent the event gets publicized, its lively discussion will help break the larger debate over Iraq into more manageable chunks. Also, and this is very good news, I've arranged with the NPC for the podium microphones to be accessible such that it will be easy (knock on wood) for me to record the event and I do intend to make it into a podcast.
February 13, 2007
De-fund A New "Preemptive" War
By Chuck Spinney
One of the enduring myths propagated by the American political establishment is that foreign policy is bipartisan and that domestic politics stops at the water's edge. Actually, foreign policy in the United States has always been shaped by a strong and very often decisive domestic political dimension. [1] Nowhere is the influence of domestic politics more apparent than in the interaction between the culture wars and the conduct of the Iraq War, whether it be the Politics of Fear and demonization practiced by the President, the neocons, and their right wing cronies in the Republican party or the Politics of Fright and pusillanimity practiced by morally-challenged apparatchiks and triangulators among the Democrats.
February 6, 2007
Pre-emptive Strike Against Chirac
By Diana Johnstone
PARIS — Four years ago, French President Jacques Chirac saw the Iraq disaster looming and openly warned against it. It was by far the best thing he ever did in his political life, and he is not to be allowed to do it again.
Today another, potentially even greater disaster is looming as Israel and the United States ostentatiously prepare to bomb Iran on the pretext of preventing "a second holocaust". But this time around there is a curious absence of the public opposition and mass protest demonstrations that preceded the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
February 5, 2007
Windows Vista
In a word: it's crap. Why do I have it then, you may ask? Well, I had a small Windows box running XP that I built about two years ago — useful for checking how EP looks to the majority of visitors. That (Maxtor) hard drive, however, died a few weeks ago. An opportunity, I thought, to try Vista. So I bought a Toshiba laptop, which in the past I've had four or five Toshiba laptops, I'm familiar with them, and I think they're usually a good balance of function and economy. This one came loaded with Vista Home Premium. The eye-candy is only OK. In operation it's a sort of souped up XP. But as usual, per Windows, Redmond engineers have decided for you certain things that may well quickly become extremely annoying. One example: I had to change the access code to my home wireless network because Windows didn't like my old one. Or another: Firefox for whatever reason developed a vertical jitter, making it unusable. Obviously, M$ wants you to stay put in Internet Explorer. Quite a few things like that. I still need a Windows box so I'm keeping the Toshiba, but I'd echo a bit of advice I saw from a tech writer (I forget who) the other day. The introduction of Windows Vista is a perfect time for Windows users to switch to Mac! The thing about Macs is, they just work...
Barbaro, Rest In Peace
I'm still saddened by Barbaro's tragic death. I trust that the decision to put him down was the right one — it would have made no sense to require he live indefinitely in extreme pain — and we all know it was not easily made. But apart from feeling bad for and missing this magnificent animal I've wondered how the accident might have happened. If you, like me, love to watch horses run, then you should read this article, which compares US racing with European racing. It seems, indeed, things are not as they should be.
February 4, 2007
How Much You Pay For Defense Spending
The roughly $620 billion that the administration expects to spend on defense in FY 2008 (regular appropriation of about $481 billion plus a $140 billion war supplemental) is such a huge figure it's difficult to comprehend. Here's one way to see it, which I offer gratis to anybody who thinks it's worth repeating: Take the $620 billion and divide by the number of currently employed workers, 146 million (estimate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics), then divide by the accountant's rule of thumb that a working person works an average of 2,000 hours per year. The result is about $2.12 per hour on average for a typical worker. That seems like a huge expense to me. How many workers would want to pay that much, if asked, for "defense"? Probably not many.
The Construction of Totalitarian Self-Righteousness
By Diana Johnstone
News item: The German presidency of the European Union is preparing to introduce legislation requiring that:
"Each member state shall take the measures necessary to ensure that the following intentional conduct is punishable: 'publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivializing of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined in'... the Statute of the ICC (International Criminal Court)*."
The essential purpose of this law is to establish a "European identity" as the conscience of the world.
Continue reading "The Construction of Totalitarian Self-Righteousness"...
February 1, 2007
Paying the Piper
First Maher Arar got an apology from the Canadian government plus $9 million in compensation. Then a Spanish judge ordered Spain's intelligence service to declassify its records concerning CIA rendition flights. And then a German court issued arrest warrants for 13 people — presumably CIA operatives — in the abduction and torture of Khaled el-Masri (pictured above). Meanwhile, a European parliamentary committee approved a report alleging that European governments had full knowledge of US rendition flights. And an Italian judge is considering whether to pursue charges against 26 Americans, 25 of whom are thought to be from the Agency. A rough week! Far from fading away, as the Tyrant's thugs may have hoped last year, if anything these cases are multiplying, becoming ever more serious, with potential penalties emerging in sharp outline. As I observed over a year ago: the judicial process in Europe is not subject to American political control. Odds are good that at least some American persecutors and torturers will be held to account.
Distributed Denial of Service Attack
Yesterday and today servers at BlueHost have been under a DDOS attack. BlueHost believes it's aimed at them, not at any of their clients, which may well be the case though I'm slightly paranoid about who might use an army of zombie bots for what (trifling) purpose... BlueHost is working to resolve the problem but has no estimate of how long it may take for countermeasures to be effective. Sorry for the hopefully very temporary sporadic loss of service.
