[R-G] Waging Democracy On China

[Anthony Fenton]

Swans Commentary » swans.com July 28, 2008
Waging Democracy On China
Human Rights and an Endowment for Democracy
by Michael Barker
     (ed. Michael Barker has just submitted his doctoral thesis, and  
is currently co-editing a book with Daniel Faber and Joan Roelofs that  
will critically evaluate the influence of philanthropic foundations on  
the public sphere.)

(Swans - July 28, 2008)   Rather than undertaking a destructive  
military war against China, the world's leading imperialists, United  
States' power elite, are instead waging a "democratic" war. Modern-day  
imperialists implement the double truncheon of human rights and  
democracy to bring "problem" states into line along with the  
traditional strategy of fabricating enemies to be destroyed. In this  
regard some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) -- working hand-in- 
hand with the most influential liberal foundations -- have served a  
critical role in effecting imperial humanitarian interventions. Two  
particularly prominent examples of imperial NGOs are the National  
Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Human Rights Watch.

It is problematic that while most imperial organizations are well  
known and renounced by the broader progressive community, the work of  
Human Rights Watch, in particular, is still widely celebrated on the  
Left, even though the organization's modus operandi have long been  
delegitimized by writers like Edward S. Herman, and its intimate links  
to the key democracy manipulating organization, the NED, have been  
well established. Unfortunately, the links between progressive  
publishing house, Seven Stories Press, the NED, and Human Rights Watch  
provide a useful illustration of the blind spot that the progressive  
community has for "democratic" warfare. This is because while Seven  
Stories Press publishes a range of excellent radical books it also  
proudly publishes Human Rights Watch's annual report. (1)

With the Beijing Olympics just around the corner, it should be  
entirely expected that the NED/Human Rights Watch propaganda offensive  
would be ramped up. Fulfilling a critical part in this propaganda  
campaign is Human Rights Watch's latest book, China's Great Leap: The  
Beijing Games and Olympian Human Rights Challenges (Seven Stories  
Press, 2008). This publication was edited by Minky Worden, who  
currently serves as Human Rights Watch's Media Director, (2) and is  
notably also a member of the imperial brain trust that goes by the  
name of the Council on Foreign Relations -- which is, the elite  
planning group to which Human Rights Watch owes its origins.

[...]

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