After leaving the British diplomatic service because of my commitment to Human Rights, and horror at their abuse by the US and UK in the “War on Terror”, I applied for a job at Human Rights Watch. I travelled to New York for a job interview, which was chaired by Kenneth Roth. Rather to my surprise, it revolved almost entirely around Israel, and whether I would agree with the proposition that Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israelis were a major threat to human rights, which HRW should work against.
I replied that any criminal attack on a person was in effect an intrusion on their human rights. That in my view “terrorism” consisted of activities which had always been illegal, such as murder or conspiracy to murder, and that the “anti-terrorism” industry was already massive without Human Rights Watch joining in. I felt that HRW could best operate by continuing to expose abuse of power by authorities.
I didn’t get the job.
Anyway, HRW have now produced a useful paper cataloguing the fact that all recent “terrorist plots” in the United States have been agent provocateur operations initiated by the massive anti-terror industry to keep itself in business. Some convicted terrorists were even ideologically opposed to terrorism before being brainwashed into it by FBI agents.
This is all important and true, but the problem is that most of us have known this for years. HRW also steer clear of some of the glaring inconsistencies in the Tsarnaev narrative.
A completely different subject, but another example of the mainstream catching up with this blog eventually, Scotland on Sunday
has noticed the fact that Jean-Claude Juncker supports Scotland’s membership of the EU. The interesting thing is that the journalist, Andrew Whitaker, has apparently spoken to the same source that I spoke to two weeks ago, and got almost precisely the same answers.
“However, a high-ranking EU official last night stated Junker “would not want Scotland to be kept out”. The source said: “He’d be sympathetic as someone who is from a smaller country…
Scotland would be “exempt” from the process as it is already a signatory to core requirements for nation states in areas as such employment rights and equality legislation because of its 40-year membership of the EU as part of the UK.”
The fact is that the source I spoke to (apologies convention is they can’t be named) was absolutely the obvious place to go. Plainly James Cook of the BBC and now Andrew Whitaker eventually got there, but only after the entire media in Scotland had run with the opposite and entirely untrue story. But it was not at all difficult to discover the truth. It took me twenty minutes, ten days before any journalist even thought of it. Now we finally have some belated journalism happening by people who, unlike me, are actually paid to do it.
““Dont you think it strange that the majority of his interview didnt focus on,say,Iraq,Guantanamo,Abu Ghraib,extraordinary rendition,torture etc?”
Given that Craig’s position on those matters would have been pretty well known what would have been the point. I suspect that HRW are looking for people who are prepared to defend human rights whoever is the abuser – so I would see it as perfectly logical that they would ask potential employees about their stance on human rights regimes to whom they might be sympathetic.”
________________________
Exactly. That was what I was getting at in the last para of my comment at 19h01, but you expressed it better than I did.
Thank you, Resident Dissident.
rearranged;
Simply put the concept is:
Without a constant vigilance and supervision/testing/checking of probity of the narrators and observing that officialdom toe the line and stay on message. There exists the danger that the whole edifice is liable to crash down, best keep on juggling and sifting, which lickspittle is given the right jobs.
* zionists have many enemies, in fact everyone is “antisemi……” but they don’t know it; Michael Jackson was signing “anti-semi…” songs , then there is the douglas murray who goes on record;
Or as it is put so succinctly by this “writer”;
Everyone in the World Hates the Jews
Fedup – I never expected you to appreciate that there can be more than one side to an argument or to understand that ends cannot be used to justify means – unless you have anything sensible or original to contribute might I suggest you stop your ever so predictable drivel.
Jives
It is a common technique in management interviews to get people talking about how they would support an organisations objectives in less than obvious situations – the candidate will have already rehearsed the answer for the obvious.
The unpredictable zionist scum supporter, whose tunnel vision is so obtuse, that is is a miracle it can see the keyboard to type, yet in a leap of (as yet unknown sciences) takes a flight of fancy and verily believes can examine any subject without first weighing it up; will it be good for the “tribe”? Hence the almost unpredictable suggestion, well slap my thigh, well I never, now I must go and self harm I suppose after that!!
Does your tunnel vision stop you from seeing the laughing stock that you have become?
Do I sense an HRW goblin at this huddle who understands the word ‘exemption’ is too close to the meaning of absolution??
Roth is the CIA Station Chief in Happyclappykumbayatown
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/11/the-revolving-door-at-human-rights-watch/
This page, just prior to the current reprisals, shows that HRW is aware of and unequivocally condemns, the shooting of unarmed civilians by Israel, among a list of other documented actual offences against actual law. Before deciding that HRW is a tool of Zion, it might be as well to realise that it requires hard and credible evidence of a crime in order to pursue the matter, also that partiality in favour of the Palestinians, terrible as their condition is, must be seen as being as counterproductive to the overall aim – policing human rights worldwide – as partiality in favour of the extremely well-armed and comfortable Israelis.
http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/04/24/israel-stop-shooting-gaza-civilians
I cannot validly comment on Craig’s interview, but I have myself been turned down flat for jobs for which the candidate had already been selected. Asking questions inviting the wrong answer is a standard technique, as any academic easing a promising student into a nice little earner will confirm. If sufficiently pissed. And if Craig’s opinion of Israel’s response to The Rockets was already known…who did get the job, Craig? And were they markedly pro-Zion? My guess is that they weren’t, and that they just, er, had connections.
So it goes, unfortunately.
Even for an evil paid Zionist shill such as myself I have to say the bias on Sky News this evening was pretty appalling. “A further five Israelis have died today” it reported. A further? Not a mention of the far higher numbers of Palestinians killed – almost 5 minutes of reporting and you got the idea the entire state of Israel was about to be destroyed by Hamas. Can’t abide that.
Some clever interviewing if you ask me. You have to weed out the single issue obsessives from the genuine human rights campaigners.
(which is not to say HRW isn’t contentious: http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/12/watch-human-right-watch-a-tribute-to-professor-richard-falk/
for one side, and the distinctly Zionophile UN Watch on the other.
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/UN_Watch )
Was that a balancing act Ba’al? I am sure you ticked the
Softship Post Link @ 21 Jul, 2014 – 11:06 pm…
In my book the corpus of facts is the ‘..hard and credible evidence of a crime…’
Mark, right, but…something like HRW bases its work on law. And that means lawyers. I’m saying that its operatives (leaving aside the vexed questions of who funds it and where its management is sourced) have to be pretty rigorous as to facts – people like us are permitted the luxury of a view coloured by natural justice; they have to make the issue stand against every weasel tactic a corrupt and vicious regime can find to exonerate itself. I’m saying it’s not easy. And I’d add that international organisations promoting human rights are not so thick on the ground that an admittedly imperfect one should be damned completely.
…I did click the link, and followed the issue back a little way. It seems to represent an ongoing pissing contest between Roth and Falk, neither of whom I would trust to run a beetle drive. Frankly.
Yes, Ba’al and Mark. The ICC and UN are bureaucracies and that animal runs like a sloth on codeine. The lawyers muck it up even more as every jot and tittle must be lined up like ducks at a shooting gallery before anything gets done.
So the US state Dpt. revolving door, is just that then?
Craig mused a while back as to whether to publish a novel or history? Stella Rimington’s novel in which the terrorist turned out to be a rogue Mi6 officer suggests a novel is sometimes the way to go. i don’t know why she wrote that – perhaps it was a case of 5 sticking it to 6, or just to add a dramatic twist, or perhaps she had a point she wished to make? Anyway the HRW useful paper has reminded me of this.
HRW shows secret recipe for making terrorists.
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/usterrorism0714_ForUpload_0_0_0.pdf
Unanimously passed.
http://www.innercitypress.com/unsc1mh17resoicp072114.pdf
Now watch who lets the routine dispute resolution provisions take their course – the Montreal Convention and the Chicago Convention both mandate dispute resolution. And watch who tries to rush them and short-circuit them with charges and sanctions and armed interventions.
“And watch who tries to rush them and short-circuit them with charges and sanctions and armed interventions.”
Don’t be so cryptic. If perchance, you feel a need to disclose please remember those who have sacrificed everything, including their very lives.
perchance, their very lives? What are you, from days of yore?
Yeah. I’m old school, but also new wave, as Carlin so eloquently put it.
Now about that little secret you seem to be harboring……
This is not TWA 800 or UA 93. This is not some FAA milquetoast you can push around, this is senior Russians and Malaysians and French and OSCE field staff who don’t take shit. You can’t just tell Lockheed Martin to turn off SPY 1 or spoof CMOC. The wheels are grinding very very fine and they’re going to be hard to stop. Anyone who doesn’t want that will stick out. For now that is absolutely all there is to know.
Malaysia is a peaceful and prosperous Islamic state with a mixture of Chinese and Indian sub -continent ethnics in its population. Its capital city Kuala Lumpur is the home of the War Crimes Tribunal.
The Tribunal has recently found Israel guilty of Genocide and crimes against humanity of the Palestinian peoples.
Malaysian Airlines has lost 2 aircraft in recent months Mh370 and MH 17, both under mysterious circumstances.
Cannot these Malaysians get the message ,or has it got to be spelled out.
Bullshit. No need to change your encrypted email like you were a target. You got nothin….
Craig,
You said:-
” I replied that any criminal attack on a person was in effect an intrusion on their human rights. That in my view “terrorism” consisted of activities which had always been illegal, such as murder or conspiracy to murder, and that the “anti-terrorism” industry was already massive without Human Rights Watch joining in. I felt that HRW could best operate by continuing to expose abuse of power by authorities.”
That is how they work. That kind of “human rights” agenda is one that is compliant with a hidden purpose. It does not address the real issues that should be addressed when the truly challenging issue arise. It does to some extent respond, react, and even affect in some ways the trajectory of how global debates on these issues advance. But – yet – there is a deep commitment to the mainstream of what is the projected “respectable” way of doing things. Two death threats and one indication of arson on my home – as Frank Sinatra would say – I did it my way – and still do -but – off the watch list – or – a potential victim?
They do lack credibility.
CB
Heavens to Betsy, you’re obtuse.
“Obtuse”? – never.
Cryptic – maybe.
Habbabkuk,Res Dis,Anon,
You guys can tag-team n best buddy back scrstch all you want but your arguments remain most unconvincing.
It seems Craig was less interviewed than partisanly vetted.
For any defenders of HRW here.
‘HRW has not extended similar consideration to Venezuela. In a 2012 letter to President Chávez, HRW criticized the country’s candidacy for the UN Human Rights Council, alleging that Venezuela had fallen “far short of acceptable standards” and questioning its “ability to serve as a credible voice on human rights.” At no point has U.S. membership in the same council merited censure from HRW, despite Washington’s secret, global assassination program, its preservation of renditions, and its illegal detention of individuals at Guantánamo Bay.
Likewise, in February 2013, HRW correctly described as “unlawful” Syria’s use of missiles in its civil war. However, HRW remained silent on the clear violation of international law constituted by the U.S. threat of missile strikes on Syria in August.
The few examples above, limited to only recent history, might be forgiven as inconsistencies or oversights that could naturally occur in any large, busy organization. But HRW’s close relationships with the U.S. government suffuse such instances with the appearance of a conflict of interest.’
http://www.alternet.org/world/nobel-peace-laureates-human-rights-watch-close-your-revolving-door-us-government?paging=off#bookmark