Comments on: Human Rights Watch Suspends Garlasco for Inconvenient Hobby

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:38:36 +0000

Sorry, a misbehaving Firefox plugin caused that link problem. It’s fixed now.

Yes, I saw Garlasco’s HuffPo piece, thanks.

By: Robin

Robin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:50:09 +0000

Richard,
Your link above goes to the Seattle Times, not the NYT article you are referring to.

Is this the one you are citing?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/world/middleeast/15nazi.html?_r=2&ref=global-home

Oh, Garlasco posted a very interesting essay here which pretty much goes hand in hand with what your theory is on what some see as his unacceptable hobby.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marc-garlasco/human-rights-watch-invest_b_284075.html

By: gabrielle

gabrielle — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:03:39 +0000

people – in general – are obsessed with the holocaust. look at how many books publishers put out in a year on the subject. while i personally wouldnt want nazi memorabilia in my home, i think there are many ways to be a collector of nazi history – whether it be through books, news clippings, or clothing. intent must count for something. thanks for posting. you are a trusted voice.

By: sean

sean — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:31:36 +0000

I think it’s hard to escape the fact that being the author of a collector’s book with two swastikas on the cover and being photographed with an iron cross sweatshirt poses political problems for anyone in the public light, much less someone who works for HRW. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, and his medal collection may be completely innocuous, but it’s completely politically tone deaf.

I don’t know Garlasco, but as someone who studies genocide and can understand a fascination with the brutal and macabre (I spent a good part of my vacation last year at gacaca courts and genocide sites in Rwanda), even I find the sweatshirt and medal collection kind of creepy. And if I were his boss, I would have put him to work somewhere like El Salvador or Cambodia where a fascination with the German military and in particular the Wehrmacht wouldn’t cause the rest of the organization so many problems.

Garlasco is perfectly free to have whatever hobby he wants, but he shouldn’t act surprised that a fascination with Nazi memorabilia would be used against him. Such a bad call by him and HRW gives credence to the pro-Israel groups like Camera and NGO-Monitor, etc. and makes documenting Israeli war crimes even more politically difficult than it already is.

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:01:44 +0000

Yes, & pack away that Porsche as well. It’s now treif.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:26:45 +0000

I own a Miele washing machine – am I in trouble?

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:28:57 +0000

I didn’t say it was a “requisite.” I said it followed fr. his military background. So I was in effect saying just the opposite. There are plenty of people in this world doing sensitive jobs in various fields who have slightly off-putting, strange or even obsessive hobbies. I don’t see that the nature of those hobbies disqualifies them for those jobs. Yes, if you or I were military analysts for HRW we might deliberately stay away fr. such a hobby as Garlasco’s. But then again we’re not career military as Garlasco is. I think it’s sometimes really hard to put yrself in the head of someone who has a diff. cultural background that yours. When we try to do so using the yardstick of our own personal experience we sometimes come a-cropper, which is what I think happened to Helena. That’s a shame in a way because Quakers are some of the most empathic human beings I’ve met. It hasn’t worked in this instance though.

By: Kat

Kat — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:45:27 +0000

“…even if one accepts your rather bizarre (in my eyes) translation of that into its being a kind of requisite prologue to Mr. Garlasco’s type of investigatory work.”

I thought something like this, too. That maybe you need people like this to do that kind of job. That stroke me as odd, especially for a human rights organisation. But after a while I thought that it is no requisite, as you call it, but that it’s usefull to have someone like this. As long as this interest does not reflect some kind of admiration or a violent tendency, which does not seem to be the case here, I cannot understand, why the fact, that someone who works as an expert on military collects memorabilia in connection to family members, does hurt his professional reputation.

I found the opposite rather bizarre. This is a headline in the Guardian:

“Human Rights Watch investigator accused of collecting Nazi memorabilia”

To me, this sounded ridiculous. Like: “man accused of collecting stamps!” He’s collecting military stuff – so what? Was his work accurate until now? Did he say anything, that shows he is a Nazi? As long as this is not the case this guy should be allowed to do his job.

Regarding the picture of Cobban being applauded for her spineless behaviour – I don’t see it as her being free of dogma, she acts quite dogmatically here. Which is the reason why she gets standing ovations from dogmatics. If Helena Cobban decided to wilt under such a pressure, she is not the right person anymore for her job, because this kind of pressure will always be brought to human rights organisations. But at least the accusations were not that ridiculous: Being a memorabilia collector…

Human Rights Watch should stop reacting to nonsense like that and just go on doing it’s job.