In its typically superb manner, the British Helsinki Human Rights Group (with which I am honored to be associated) has added its own analysis of the rather awkwardly-timed release of the State Department's annual Human Rights Report earlier this month.
Among the many gems in the BHHRG analysis is the following:
The report singled out the usual suspects for censure: Cuba, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Belarus, even though there is no photographic evidence of troops from these countries tormenting prisoners or POWS in their custody before taking pornographic snaps of them. As for poor Belarus, it has never invaded another country or suffered a civil war. However, by refusing to obey its imperial masters in the US and EU over matters such as economic reform, it became the victim of much dishonest humbuggery about ‘human rights’.
As BHHRG notes, Georgia is listed as a top performer in the human rights department after its glorious "revolution of the roses" (curiously, as BHHRG has pointed out in the past, roses are not available in Georgia at the time of year of the "revolution of roses" and therefore had to have been brought in with scarce hard currency -- or by a sympathetic foreign government...) all the while slipping up and admitting that Georgia under Saakashvili (Shevardnadze's former justice minister) is as bad as it was under his former boss "Bloody" Eduard Shevardnadze (OK, not in so many words). But hey...he's pro-American, and everyone knows to make a tasty human rights omelet one must break a few eggs.
