Notes on Human Rights Watch
Macdonald Stainsby

published in the Variant, Winter, 2004

The organization Human Rights Watch (HRW), much like counterpart Amnesty International (AI), is cited often by individuals and organizations of all political creeds and persuasions. Whether it is far-right opponents of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez or leftist solidarity activists working on helping the beleaguered Palestinian people, it seems a citation from HRW is so respected that it takes on the air of non-ideological and non-partisan, making it so that they stand above the fray of politics. But is this really the case? Well, one of the main issues that can be brought up is simply how the organization pigeon-holes these matters. To deal with this point, I found simply one article on the HRW main webpage (hrw.org) and dissected from there.

The article in question is available at:
http://hrw.org/editorials/2003/nigeria120403.htm
And right from the start, it is too deeply woven with imperialist ideology to simply take apart when a line appears that is in favour of Western imperial interests. The White Man’s burden approach to the “Human Rights” and International law implications implied therein are simply astounding. It is not so much what is said but rather how things are framed. The ideology of HRW, much like the major bourgeois media, as has often been said, is like the pane of glass you don’t see, but which really determines the appearance of what you are looking at.

Continue reading →

So this is my rant on Palestine

(I wrote this originally as a semi-public email, after a first visit through Israel, Palestine and Jordan. I have to call this “creative venting.” It was a therapeutic write up.)

May 6, 2011
I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. I knew I would finally be able to go to Palestine and see things for myself, but the last thing I wanted to do was write some gooey, sappy stuff about what I saw, how life was so bad, and how shocked I am. Besides all of that, I had been friends with both Palestinians and many internationals who had spent time here for many years and knew a lot of all of this already anyhow, right? Besides, I never went to Palestine for a reason: I didn’t have a reason. That was my reason for not going; the stories of some privileged urban white dude from a privileged country causing havoc and basically forcing the local people out of the goodness of their hearts to babysit someone who was there supposedly also out of the goodness of their hearts was “not on” as far as I was concerned. So I had no reason to be here, and would have likely been a burden and did not come.

Continue reading →