CNN gets credit, despite littering its article with assertions to the contrary, for standing up for America's normally proud human rights record even if it just involved letting the people in authority get a word in edgeways. The article ended with an interview with Lorne Craner, the US State Department's assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor.
Craner said while he was personally disgusted by what happened at Abu Ghraib, the fact the United States was dealing with the prison abuse was proof the country maintains credibility in promoting and defending human rights around the world.
"The point here is that we have institutions that hold people to account if they go wrong. And as I said before, other people don't have that," Craner said.
"You know, when there is a new Tashkent Times that can carry pictures of torture in Uzbekistan, or when the Sudanese parliament can call a defense minister and grill him for six hours, or when a Burmese president publicly condemns and holds people accountable for torture in Burma, then we're going to be getting somewhere."
Big thumbs up Mr Craner.
Oh. A very funny post over at moorewatch.com as the fallacious one awaits the much-false-hyped release of his latest film - Fahrenheit 911.
I bought Stupid White Men to read on the plane to Hong Kong ages ago. It was funny, except for the fact that he opened with a totally naive pile of steaming bullshit re: the constitution of the United Kingdom, after that I began to heap on the salt as I read.
I watched Bowling for Columbine, that wasn't bad apart from the part where he started linking NATO's intervention in Kosovo to the Columbine school killings.
He sealed his fate in my book by calling Tony Blair the Worst Briton, prompting me to write a letter to The Times with the expectation of it being rejected (such letters are written more for catharsis than anything else, as most will attest).
The problem was he struck out and I don't care how funny you are, if you print lies once I'm not going to read/watch anything else you do. The fact that I gave him the benefit of the doubt and watched his oscar-winning film only to have my faith abused again was just a kick in the teeth.
Sorry, you can't drag me to a movie theatre so I can pay to have his rich fat ass made even fatter. The centre left do ourselves no favour when we take his words as anything other than a crude, if inaccurate attempt at political satire. I don't care how much you hate Bush it's not worth being lied to again.
Later
John
Posted by John Swaine at May 18, 2004 04:36 PM