Page 347 - Volume 2_CHANGES_merged_with links

Intellectual Lynch-mobs

An obstacle to progress

"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're

misinformed."
Mark Twain 415
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"There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion."
Winston Churchill 416
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"He who controls the media controls the minds of the public."

Noam Chomsky 417
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"When we judge or criticize another person, it says nothing about that person; it merely says
something about our own need to be critical."

Winston Churchill
***** ***** *****

Intellectual Lynch-mobs

It’s entirely possible that some who read the following paragraphs will 'rush to judgement'.
So let me clarify some of my views. We live in a time when 'human rights' organisations are

extremely relevant. I am a believer in the role that the main Human Rights INGOs can play.

My 'argument', if it is even that, is not about your existence or your operations. My
concern, and is a deep one, is more of your 'editorship'.

I wonder whether you have 'matured' in a way that matches the much greater voice

your organisations now have than in those earlier days of barrier-breaking activists. I
wonder if a lack of maturity on your part actually increases the unwillingness of at least

some African states to reject 'out of hand' your interventions. And thereby perhaps enables
 their most repression-minded politicians to play a bigger role than otherwise might have
been possible
 those of Africa's countries which are, even if only de facto, 'one party' states to deepen a
determined impermeability to your well-meaning criticism

I wonder if a lack of maturity on your part fails to examine the consequences of how your

'leadership behaviour' influences the now hundreds and thousands of 'satellite' 'human
rights' organisations that fill the 'air waves' in Africa's countries.