Venezuela expels Human Rights Watch campaigners - bravo!

quote:Venezuela's government expelled senior members of U.S.-based Human Rights Watch late Thursday after the group released a report saying President Hugo Chavez's government was undercutting democracy and fundamental rights in the country. ...

Both human rights campaigners had been acting at the behest of the U.S. government, the foreign minister said.

In a report released earlier Thursday, Human Rights Watch said Chavez's government had used a 2002 coup by opposition leaders and army officers as "a pretext for a wide range of government policies that have undercut the human rights protections" laid out in the constitution. ...

The New York-based group said Chavez "has encouraged his subordinates to engage in discrimination by routinely denouncing his critics as antidemocratic conspirators and coup-mongers — regardless of whether or not they had any connection to the 2002 coup."

Human Rights Watch, an ideological arm of the U.S. ruling classes, has been getting a free ride for too long in world media. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of the end for this false-flag organization.

[ 20 September 2008: Message edited by: unionist ]

If we can't trust HRW, is their an organization we CAN trust when it comes to reporting on human rights. I don't think it's wise to trust what governments say about themselves. I mean, look at the way Canadians have been tricked by our governments.

Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party

Human Rights Watch and hate rituals

Human Rights Watch's shameful position on Gaza
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quote:Human Rights Watch distinguished itself during the attack on Lebanon with a set of spurious attacks on Hezbollah for allegedly deliberately targeting civilians with its rocket-fire. It later emerged that while Israel's claims that Hezbollah hid its rocket launchers among civilians were bogus, Israel had certainly located prime military targets right among its population centres. HRW blithely insisted that this made no difference to its claim that Hezbollah indiscriminately attacked civilians. The point isn't really that HRW and like organisations are inconsistent in their determination of criminality. On the contrary, they are consistently biased toward the purlieus of power when they systematically fail to acknowledge or take account of prior, ongoing aggression. In the almost exclusive emphasis on the civilian-military distinction (which matters, I make no bones about it), they reproduce an ideological formation which holds that the incineration, shredding and dispersing of those designated combatants is perfectly acceptable: even if there are other options; even if the war need never have taken place; even if the murder is being perpetrated by aggressors who have it within their power to terminate hostilities at any point. - Source

It rots your brain.

quote:Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
...is their an organization we CAN trust when it comes to reporting on human rights[?] I don't think it's wise to trust what governments say about themselves.

Good question.

Independent of those who finance it?

ETA: To improve my understanding, please give me an example of an independent human rights organization within Canada that can hold Harper to account - if he does something really dictatorial, that is.

[ 20 September 2008: Message edited by: unionist ]

quote:Originally posted by M. Spector:
CMOT, Venezuela is a liberal democracy. It is in fact far more democratic than Canada. If anybody is to "hold Chбvez to account" it is the people of Venezuela.

We don't have any "human rights" organizations in Canada that hold Stephen Harper to account. The ones we do have are too busy "holding to account" the countries that don't fall within the control of the axis of weasels.

Sounds like you favor a laissez faire approach to other countries' human rights standards: Canadians shouldn't worry about Venezuelan or American human rights issues (and Venezuela and America should ignore what goes on in other countries as well).

Personally, I generally agree that that would be ideal.

quote:Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Who finances B'tselem?

Here are the institutional donors - including the Ford Foundation.

B'tselem does a good job IMO, but it operates within strictly defined limits. It focuses on wrongdoing in the Occupied Territories, which is important and necessary, but seems to ignore the injustice involved in the 1948 expulsion and the apartheid nature of the state itself.

quote: including the Ford Foundation.

Would that be Gerald or Henry?

[ 20 September 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

It's OK, I now know wich ford started the foundation.

[ 20 September 2008: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

quote:Originally posted by Stargazer:
Big difference there. The US is busy either trying to bomb the shit out of other countries, or directly overthrowing democratically elected leaders they do not like (Chavez is a case in point. See also Cuba). Venezuela spends its time HELPING other countries (even the US) while the US does Sweet FA to actually assist anyone but themselves.

Funny that as a lawyer, you can't figure out this huge difference.

May I direct you to two key words in what I wrote: "should" and "ideal". I wasn't describing what is actually happening but, instead, what should be happening.

Capiche?

quote:Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
The people in a state cannot throw a government out if they don't know what that government is doing in the first place. Governments need watch dogs. Otherwise true democracy is not possible.

Canada doesn't have a watch dog. So how come we know so much about what our government is doing? Hell, we even know all about what the governments of Venezuela, Zimbabwe, the USA, and Iran are doing, to the extent that we seem to have all sorts of advice to offer them about human rights.