not so SMART power of PEN

 If one needed even more proof of how " Human Rights" are  just a political ploy  to further Western interestsm here it is.  Human Rights are a proven  weapon in the assorted arsenal used to push the strategic needs of  those with power . Power they want to hold on to  at any  Human cost.  

Threatened with Censorship and Ouster by PEN’s Henchmen

Sign the Petition to Remove Suazanne Nossel

by John V. Walsh, May 08, 2013

Print This | Share This

In the vast and ever expanding firmament of Western Human Rights NGO’s, PEN, America Center, the writers’ organization, is far from the most luminous and ordinarily barely visible. But a dark side of PEN came clearly into view with the hiring of Suzanne Nossel as its executive director. And the same dark side is becoming all too apparent in organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, both of which have also employed Nossel in the past.

Nossel is former Undersecretary of State under Hillary Clinton and advocate of “Smart Power,” the title which she gave to an article in Foreign Affairs some years back and which emerged as a catch phrase for State’s policies under the bellicose Clinton. InNossel’s words, ““To advance from a nuanced dissent to a compelling vision, progressive policymakers should turn to the great mainstay of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy: liberal internationalism…(which) should offer assertive leadership — diplomatic, economic, and not least, military — to advance a broad array of goals…” (Emphasis, jw)

In fact Nossel’s appointment is an epiphenomenon, like an unsightly rash or foul odor that warns of a long festering disorder inside. Nossel’s appointment may be seen as the most visible and overt symptom of Western subversion that goes back to the very founding of the “human rights” NGO’s, as James Peck demonstrates in his meticulously researched study, Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights. So like many symptoms that may seem minor at first, it attracts our attention as to its underlying meaning. And if one looks more carefully at PEN’s web site, one finds evidence of the underlying rot. There one finds not one mention of Julian Assange or Bradley Manning but a good deal about Pussy Riot and Ai Weiwei, as well as Cuban and Iranian dissidents. And that is certainly just as the U.S. State Department would want it.

It is time for the human rights movement to return to the ideals of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and to end its succor to the US Empire. And to remember that human rights begins at home.

So what can be done now? For starters we can all sign the petition addressed to the president, officers and trustees to remove Nossel. It is a small first step but a concrete one. Sign here and send to your contacts, high and low, far and wide.

http://original.antiwar.com/john-v-walsh/2013/05/07/threatened-with-censorship-and-ouster-by-pens-henchmen/