Who is behind Human Rights Watch?

[IndianaGreen]

In response to that handful of DUers that are peddling a fatally flawed HRW document on Venezuela, let's take a look at HRW.

Who is behind Human Rights Watch? (2004)

Paul Trenor

Under President Clinton, Human Rights Watch was the most influential pro-intervention lobby: its 'anti-atrocity crusade' helped drive the wars in ex-Yugoslavia. Under George W. Bush it lost influence to the neoconservatives, who have their own crusades. But the 'two interventionisms' are not so different anyway: Human Rights Watch is founded on belief in the superiority of American values. It has close links to the US foreign policy elite, and to other interventionist and expansionist lobbies.
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Human Rights Watch operates a number of discriminatory exclusions, to maintain its American character, and that in turn reduces internal criticism of its limited perspective. Although it publishes material in foreign languages to promote its views, the organisation itself is English-only. More seriously, HRW discriminates on grounds of nationality. Non-Americans are systematically excluded at board level - unless they have emigrated to the United States. HRW also recruits its employees in the United States, in English. The backgrounds of the Committee members (below) indicate that HRW recruits it decision-makers from the upper class, and upper-middle class. Look at their professions: there are none from middle-income occupations, let alone any poor illegal immigrants, or Somali peasants.

Human Rights Watch can therefore claim no ethical superiority. It is itself involved in practices it condemns elsewhere, such as discrimination in employment, and exclusion from social structures. It can also claim no neutrality. An organisation which will not allow a Serb or Somali to be a board member, can give no neutral assessment of a Serbian or Somali state. It would probably be impossible for this all-American, English-only, elite organisation, to be anything else but paternalistic and arrogant. To the people who run HRW, the non-western world consists of a list of atrocities, and via the media they communicate that attitude to the American public. It can only dehumanise African, Asians, Arabs and eastern Europeans. Combined with a tendency to see the rest of the world as an enemy, that will contribute to new abuses and continuing civilian deaths, during America's crusades.

<snip>

HRW Council

The Human Rights Watch 'Council' is primarily a fund-raising group. However, its members no doubt expect some influence on HRW policy, for their $5 000 minimum donation. The Council describes itself as "...an international membership organization that seeks to increase awareness of human rights issues and support for Human Rights Watch.
At first Council membership was secret, but the list is now online: it partly overlaps with Board and Advisory Committee members. The interesting thing about the Council is that it shows how much HRW is not international. It is Anglo-American, to the point of caricature. The Council is sub-divided onto four 'regional committees'. You might expect a division by continents (the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia-Pacific). But instead the 'regions' of the HRW global community are New York, Northern California, Southern California, and London. There is also a three-person 'Europe Committee At-Large' but it does not appear to organise any activities.

Although Human Rights Watch claims to act in the name of universal values, it is an organisation with a narrow social and geographical base. If HRW Council members were truly concerned about the welfare of Africans, Tibetans or eastern Europeans, then they would at least offer them an equal chance to influence the organisation. Instead, geographical location and the high cost restrict Council Membership to the US and British upper-middle-class.

http://the-peoples-forum.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=4397

[Captain Hilts]

1. I don't need HRW to tell me that Chavez is a corrupt dictator. nt

[IndianaGreen]

2. Chavez is neither corrupt nor a dictator, unless of course one watches Faux News

There!

[Captain Hilts]

3. Sorry! Don't watch that crap. Try again. nt

[LynnTheDem]

6. Well gee, that's certainly a new definition of "corrupt dictator"!

:rofl:

[rch35]

4. What about HRW's criticism of Washington ally, the conservative

government of Colombia?

Too far right, or too far left, they both turn into the same thing. He hasn't necessarily gone too far yet, whatever that means, but I am glad his push to expand his powers got turned down at the polls.

[Peace Patriot]

5. HRW is just another warmongering corporate 'news' monopoly,

from what I have seen. They might as well be the Associated Pukes, Rotters or the Wall Street Burnall, with regard to South America. Their recent report on Venezuela is reminiscent of fascist hit pieces against FDR. The fuckwads who do HRW's "reports," like their Corpo/fascist masters, can't stand a leftist (majorityist) gaining sufficient power in government to control Corpo/fascist looters on behalf of ordinary people.

Venezuela has one of the best democracies in the western hemisphere, and possibly in the world. Its president, Hugo Chavez--empowered by big majorities of Venezuelan voters, in an election system that puts our own to shame for its transparency--has not only harmed no one, invaded no one, threatened no one, and jailed no one unfairly, he has been running a scrupulously lawful and beneficial government for ten years, with programs aimed at maximum citizen participation in government and politics, wiping out illiteracy (nearly 100% successful), wiping out poverty (extreme poverty reduced by over 50%, general poverty reduced by over 30%), providing universal health care (very successful, local medical centers established in numerous poor areas never before served by government), new access to education, land reform (well-structured program using mostly government lands, addressing food self-sufficiency), and chronically neglected local manufacturing and regional infrastructure. Chavez has also re-negotiated Venezuela's oil contracts from rightwing governments' previous split of 10% to Venezuela, 90% to multinationals, to the current 60/40 split in favor of Venezuela--profits that benefit social justice programs. Venezuela's economy has grown by nearly 10% over the last five years, with the most growth in the private sector (not including oil). Alleviating poverty, boot-strapping the poor and generating a healthy economy are essential, bottom-line requirements of democracy. If you are poor, powerless and without hope, how can you participate in the political life of your country?

As for free speech, most of Venezuela's TV/radio news media remains in rightwing Corpo hands (and produces a constant spew of often rancid criticism--a la Faux News). There is no large pro-Chavez newspaper in the country. All are anti-Chavez. The rightwing regularly and freely engages in street protests. There is NO repression of free speech. (One Corpo TV station lost its broadcast license for actively participating in the 2002 violent rightwing military coup attempt--something most other governments in the world would have done (review of licenses to use the PUBLIC airwaves, and non-renewals or denial are routine in most countrys--with licenses lost for much less cause than the Chavez government had).

As for messing with the courts, ha, ha, ha! That is really ironical for a U.S., pro-Corpo NGO to be criticizing in another country--after our own bought and paid for Supreme Court crowned Bush king in 2000. But the best analogy is FDR. With millions of people homeless, jobless and starving in the U.S., during the Great Depression, the fuckwads on the Supreme Court, appointed by the rich fuckwads who caused the Great Depression, declared one "New Deal" program after another "unconstitutional." FDR then proposed to "pack the Supreme Court" (as the fascists called it). The Constitution does not specify the number of justices (9 is arbitrary); Congress can increase the number; FDR proposed that Congress do so, so he could appoint new, young justices more in sympathy with the starving masses, to balance the court. The rightwing screamed bloody murder, and called him a "dictator" (the word they now use on Chavez), and raised such a stink that FDR withdrew the proposal. But his pressure on the court caused one justice to change his mind about the "New Deal"; thus Social Security was saved.

Imagine a U.S. without Social Security now--and you can understand what the issues are, and what the stakes are, in Venezuela (which, like other South American countries, experienced a "great depression" recently, induced by U.S. Corpo fuckwads, the World Bank/IMF, U.S.-dominated 'free trade' and the greed of the rich). Millions and millions of people are in dire poverty in South America; millions have been driven off small farms into urban squalor, by rightwing policy. It has been a grave humanitarian crisis, with South Americans working hard, first to achieve transparent elections, and second, to elect leaders who will do something about this great injustice. Now it's happening for them--the great, most profound empowerment of the poor, through peaceful, democratic means, that has ever occurred, and Corpo/fascist tools like HRW and other propaganda machines find nothing but fault with it, picking on the most minor and rare instances of government failures, flaws or bad decisions--items that would drown in the putrid ocean of corruption and government abuse of power here.

What is worse, psyops groups like HRW may be contributing to a Corpo war strategy in South America, aimed at regaining global corporate predator control of the oil and other resources. The intense and relentless disinformation campaign against Chavez and other South American leftist leaders smells like the preliminary to war, and there is considerable evidence that a war strategy is being implemented. It is on-going in Bolivia, and involves U.S.-Bush funding and organizing the fascist minority in oil rich provinces to secede from the national governments (civil war, in other words), taking the country's oil wealth and other resources with them--and causing untold mayhem and harm. Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, says that this Bushwhack strategy is in progress in three countries: Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. Last week, the fascist secessionists rioted in Bolivia, and machine-gunned 15 to 30 unarmed peasant farmers who supported the government, including children and pregnant women, as well as beating up numerous poor people, trashing social organization and government offices, and blowing up a gas pipeline.

HRW-type disinformation encourages fascist rioters, thugs, white separatists, the rich and their Corpo/Bush backers. And it further helps to put our own people to sleep, while our lawless government starts Oil War II-South America.

All I can say is, for God's sake, get informed. Don't be fooled again! And get on election reform here, because that is the key to everything.