Posner
Claims Obama
on Sri Lanka
Is Success,
Wal-Mart's NYU
Safe
Space?
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, March
4 -- When
Michael H.
Posner, soon
to leave the
US
State
Department's
top human
rights post,
spoke at the
Council on
Foreign
Relations on
Monday evening
he bragged
about the
Obama
administration's
rights work in
Myanmar, Egypt
and even
Bahrain.
Inner
City Press
asked Posner
about the
Obama
administration's
failure to
act in 2009 as
40,000 people
were killed in
Sri Lanka, and
only
recently
moving on UN
Human Rights
Council
resolutions
that seem
unlikely to
hold anyone in
the Rajapaksa
brothers'
government to
account.
Posner
said, instead,
that Sri Lanka
is a success
because it
shows that the
administration's
thinking can
evolve if a
government
doesn't make
progress. But
what about the
40,000 killed?
Posner
recounted that
recently Jacob
Zimmerman from
his office,
along with
the Department
of Defense's
Vikram Singh,
went to Sri
Lanka and
ostensibly
talked truth
to power.
Meanwhile,
as
shown by Inner
City Press, Sri
Lankan
military
leader
Shavendra
Silva was
giving a talk
before US
Marines, and
hobnobbing
with
Supreme Court
justice
Antonin Scalia.
Posner
acknowledged
that the US
did not
support, more
closely after
the
bloodbath on
the beach, any
commission of
inquiry. In
another
answer, he
said that for
the US, or
Obama,
pursuing
national
security
and human
right is the
same thing.
This
seems
unlikely,
taking the
relative
silence on the
crackdown on
opponents and
tweeters there
as
an example.
Most
of the
questioners,
selected by
Slate's Jacob
Weisberg, were
already
known to
Posner. He was
asked about
labor rights
in Myanmar,
and gave
a preview of
what he'll say
in his next
job at NYU's
Stern School
of
Business.
There, he
said, he wants
to create a
“safe space”
for
businesses to
talk. Doesn't
the UN's
Global Compact
already do
that?
There's more
than enough
safe space for
businesses.
Posner
did chide the
American
Chamber of
Commerce for
opposing moves
to
expand
workers'
rights in
China. When
asked about
Dennis
Rodman's
trip to North
Korea, he
quipped that
he liked
Rodman when he
was with
the Chicago
Bulls, since
he's a fan.
He
noted that of
the 100
largest
economies in
the world, 50
are
businesses. He
said “we have
an ambassador
to Benin, but
no
ambassador to
Wal-Mart.” But
the Obama
administration
now has an
ambassador
FROM Wal-Mart,
just as it has
one from
Citigroup in
Jack
Lew. Safe
space, indeed.
Watch this
site.
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