James Petras, eminent social historian, has José Miguel Vivanco’s number…and he calls it:
Read the whole thing. You’ll never be fooled by the words “human rights” in an organization’s name again.José Miguel Vivanco served as a diplomatic functionary under the bloody Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet between 1986-1989, serving no less as the butcher’s rabid apologist before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. His behavior was particularly egregious during the regime’s brutal repression of a mass popular uprising in the squatter settlements of Santiago in 1986-1987. With the return of electoral politics (democracy) in Chile, Vivanco took off to Washington where he set up his own NGO, the Center for Justice and International Law, disguising his right-wing affinities and passing himself off as a ‘human rights’ advocate.
Wow, I guess the lamestream corporate media didn’t have time to vet this guy’s credentials as they were tripping over themselves to throw turds at Chavez.
I had a feeling that this yuppie creep had connections with Pinochet. Helping the dictator cover-up fascist repression of Chile’s most oppressed people gives another layer of meaning to the vaunted “Human Rights Watch”(us kick the subordinant classes in the face).
Dispicable. And I hope Chavez takes up this information on one of his progams soon.
The lamestream corporatist media don’t have the attention span of a gnat. All they see is the words “human rights” in the company name (for a company it is, and its business is generating defamatory reports of anyone the US corporate elite don’t like, the better to justify undemocratic and antidemocratic measures against that person.) They can’t be bothered to remember who Vivanco was before he morphed into a human-rights mogul. Or maybe they do remember, but they’ve been paid to fudge. After all, their business is generating defamatory reports on anyone the US corporate elite don’t like, too.