Talk:Human Rights Watch

22:30, 11 July 2007 Ed Poor (Talk | contribs) (→Founders - all Jewish sounding names, what does that mean? Anything?)

Well, Ed, it could mean nothing, or it could point to the American Jewish community's long history of commitment to human rights, progressive politics, and democracy - dating back from before their involvement with the struggle of economically and racially marginalised African Americans during the Civil Rights era, to the longstanding Jewish commitment to persecuted minorities arising from the Jewish experience of the pogroms and the Holocaust. PFoster 23:08, 11 July 2007 (EDT)

US or not US

I've removed the US for now, stating that an organisation is biased against an entire nation is a very serious accusation, which must be supported by a citation (even if it is true it must be supported because of its nature). However, after doing a bit of research it seems a lot of opinion is directed the other way, that HRW is biased in favour of the US, this is just one example. EQ 09:11, 18 August 2007 (EDT)

Call for a substantial rewrite

This article is too "balanced" in the wishy-washy Wikipedia style. On top of that, it doesn't even flow well.

Let's determine what percent of their efforts is dedicated to criticizing the two best countries in the world for human rights: America and Israel. Then let's decide determine how much they criticize those with the worst human rights records.

If it's clearly disproportionate, then let's expose them. --Ed Poor ^Talk 21:13, 28 August 2007 (EDT)

• Human Rights Watch purports to be "strictly non-partisan" in orientation and maintains that it "does not favor any political force." In practice, HRW has often operated as a partisan organization, dressing up its decidedly leftwing political preferences in the language of human rights. [1]

Or, seen in a different light, the left wing of the political spectrum puts more value on human rights than the right wing. Which is not to say that the right wing has no respect for human rights, but it tends to allow things like national security to be superior.

I'm not trying to judge anybody's opinion, except for the opinion that HRW is "clearly" not what it says it is, "by all accounts." Sorry for the wishy-washyness, but sometimes there really are two sides no matter how distasteful the other side is. Aziraphale 21:59, 28 August 2007 (EDT) <-doesn't taste very good either...

That is not the point of the article or even supported by any evidence you have shown. It simply is not true that the left puts more value on human rights than the right, if by "left" you mean U.S. Liberals and by "right" you mean U.S. Conservatives. It is actually just the other way around!

The left (or Liberals) are inconsistent and hypocritical in their statements on human rights. They over-emphasize (or even fabricate) atrocities by democratic countries while minimizing or denying atrocities by dictatorships.

The whole point of the article is that HRW pretends to care about human rights, but is actually distorting the situation to score political points against America and its chief Middle Eastern ally, Israel.

Not to make this personal, but if you (or anyone) really cares about human rights they ought to have one consistent standard that they apply to all countries. --Ed Poor ^Talk 10:54, 29 August 2007 (EDT)