Här en som åtminstone försöker hålla en vetenskaplig ansats. Klipper in lite men dokumentet bör läsas i sin helhet. Får vi nu se ad hominem-attacker i tråden eller ett sakligt resonemang kring innehållet?
Syria: the human rights industry in 'humanitarian war'
Tim Anderson
January 2018
Citat:
3.1 Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is a New York based corporation funded mainly by other US
corporations and foundations. Unlike the National Endowment for Democracy, it is not
directly government funded; however it works closely with Washington. In 2010 billionaire
George Soros donated $100 million to the agency (Strom 2010), no doubt giving Soros
significant leverage in the group. Indeed, after HRW founding member Aryeh Neier left the
group to become President of Soros’s Open Society Foundation, Ken Roth rose to Executive
Director. He remained in that position for the next 25 years (1993-2018). The HRW budget in
2016 was $76 million and its assets were $234 million (HRW 2016a: 15). It maintains close
links to the Democrat side of US politics and to the foreign policy elite group the Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR). On the board and a former chairperson is James Hoge, editor of
Foreign Policy magazine from 1992-2009. Many other HRW board members are from the US
corporate elite. Some donors insist that the group focus on a particular area. In 2016 about
90% of the company’s assets were ‘restricted’ by donors (HRW 2016b); that means restricted
in time or dedicated to particular projects.
HRW can therefore be said to represent a corporatised, US based lobby on rights issues,
catering to the wealthy and closely aligned to US foreign policy (Anderson 2010). Despite its
refusal of government funds, conflicts of interest are apparent. For example, HRW director
Ken Roth regularly attacks US foreign policy enemies, but has been criticised for saying little
about President Obama’s killer drone program (Bhatt 2014b). The main objects of HRW in
Latin America, for many years, were Cuba and Venezuela; mostly ignoring Colombia, key
US ally and the biggest killer of journalists, trade unionists and lawyers (Anderson 2010). At
times the political motivation has been explicit. The 2008 HRW report on Venezuela under
the late President Hugo Chavez mainly focused on issues of political discrimination in
employment and the judiciary (HRW 2008). It was criticised by more than 100 academics
(including this writer) for not meeting ‘even the most minimal standards of scholarship,
impartiality, accuracy or credibility’ (Acuña et al 2008). HRW responded: the report was
written, according to HRW Director for the Americas, José Miguel Vivanco, ‘because we
wanted to demonstrate to the world that Venezuela is not a model for anyone’ (Roth 2008).
The political agenda was clear.
A similar letter, a few years later, met a similar response. 130 academics led by two Nobel
Peace laureates asked HRW to close the ‘revolving door’ it had with the US Government
(Pérez Esquivel et al 2014). They again criticised HRW for ignoring gross abuses by US
Government, while singling out US foreign policy opponents, such as Venezuela. The critics
demonstrated repeated interchange of US officials (presidential advisers, US ambassadors,
military, and CIA and State Department staff) with HRW, demanding that the group close its
‘revolving door’ by banning or imposing ‘cooling off periods’ for ‘those who have crafted or
executed U.S. foreign policy’ (Pérez Esquivel et al 2014). Roth (2014) rejected any idea of a
conflict of interest, saying HRW had a great diversity of staff. Nor did he see any problem
with HRW having Javier Solana, a former head of NATO on its board (Bhatt 2014a). Only
with the transition from Obama to Trump (that is, from a liberal to a realist regime), did the
more Democrat-aligned HRW shift ground. Indeed the US, for the first time in 27 years, was
listed as a ‘major human rights abuser’ when Trump had been in office for just a few days
(Moran 2017).
https://counter-hegemonic-studies.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/TA-hum-war-18-1.pdf
Och ja, jag vet vem Tim Anderson är. Hursomhelst, jag själv har bara skummat igenom texten. Ska läsa den ordentligt så fort det lugnar ner sig här där jag är.
