By NATHAN GOODMAN - Counterpunch

Human rights organizations shouldn’t be in the business of handing out awards, accolades and executive positions to human rights abusers...Resistance to war, occupation and mass incarceration includes opposing organizations that falsely claim to fight for human rights.

By Dru Oja Jay - March 25, 2013

Canada's Conservative government announced last Thursday that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) will be merged into a new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, ending any formal independence development and trade previously possessed...The Canadian government's involvement in "development" has one primary purpose. To advance Canadian interests, including all the things Canada does to deepen poverty in the world.

By Liam Barrington-Bush - rabble.ca

Since its birth, the management field has largely served to reinforce the social and political status quo, manipulating the vast majority of those who fall victim to it...In traditional leftist working class politics, 'management is the problem'...But there's another side to our relationship with the subject. It is exemplified in the fact that much of the organized left has long-embraced the same breed of top-down managerialism that most of us associate with industrial capitalism.

By GARRY LEECH - March 14, 2013

Over the past thirty years, Human Rights Watch has become one of the most recognized non-governmental organizations in the world due to its global promotion of human rights. But despite its claims to be an advocate of international human rights law, the reports issued by Human Rights Watch over the past decade have increasingly exhibited a bias towards certain rights over others...As a result, it routinely judges nations throughout the world in a manner that furthers capitalist values and discredits governments seeking socialist alternatives.

By Joe Emersberger - March 06, 2013

The death of Hugo Chavez provoked HRW to immediately (within hours) smear the Chavez government's legacy...If that isn't harsh enough, in a tweet sent out in June of 2012, Ken Roth, executive director of HRW, described Venezuela as being one of the "most abusive" in Latin America. Ecuador and Bolivia were the other two states that Roth singled out.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) deserves credit for saying Israel violated the laws of war. Stopping short of full disclosure marred its report. Palestinians deserve much better. They've waited for too long for justice.

Feb 10, 2013 - CBC News

An evangelical organization that describes homosexuality as a "perversion" and a "sin" is receiving funding from the Government of Canada for its work in Uganda, where gays and lesbians face severe threats...[T]he federal government is providing $544,813 in funding for Crossroads Christian Communications — an Ontario-based evangelical group that produces television programming — to help dig wells, build latrines and promote hygiene awareness in Uganda through 2014.

By Olivia Ward - Toronto Star

An Amnesty report released Wednesday says that [UN] committees on racial discrimination, prevention of torture and children’s rights found “a range” of “ongoing and serious human rights challenges,” especially for indigenous peoples...“By every measure, be it respect for treaty and land rights, levels of poverty, average life spans, violence against women and girls, dramatically disproportionate levels of arrest and incarceration or access to government services such as housing, health care, education, water and child protection, indigenous peoples across Canada continue to face a grave human rights crisis...”

By Raphael Ahren - The Times of Israel

“Asylum seekers are persecuted relentlessly. The occupation of the West Bank and the regime of discrimination are bolstered by doublespeak and efforts to silence opposition. Affordable housing is nowhere to be found and water has become a luxury. Large social protests are no longer permitted in the public sphere and the police and judicial authority are privatized while the High Court of Justice becomes less accessible...”

- Association for Civil Rights in Israel 2012 Report

From November 28 - December 1, Porto Alegre, Brazil hosts the WSF Free Palestine (WSFFP).

By DANIEL KOVALICK - Counterpunch

...[Amnesty International's] journey to becoming an appendage of the U.S. and NATO recently became complete with its appointment of Suzanne Nossel as the new Director of Amnesty International USA...Nossel openly advocated...“soft power” projection by the U.S. when she served in her last job as Assistant Secretary for International Organizations at none other than the U.S. State Department...AI has sadly forgotten that the wielding of such power by the rich countries to bully the weak is forbidden by the UN Charter...It is those prohibitions which must be enforced first and foremost to truly protect human rights.

By DANIEL KOVALICK - Counterpunch

For some time to come, Libya shall stand as an enduring symbol of the West’s hypocrisy, and indeed duplicity, on the issue of human rights. While the West, and especially the United States, justified its aerial bombardment of Libya last year on the pretense of saving civilians from a possible, future...attack by Gaddafi forces, the West is silent about the real and ongoing attack of the new Libyan regime upon the town of Bani Walid.

Post-9/11, America declared war on Islam. Injustice triumphed. So did hate and fear. Innocent Muslims became fair game. Guilt by accusation became policy.

By DIANA JOHNSTONE - Counterpunch

Since the end of the Cold War, the work of Amnesty International has become more complicated and more difficult...This has brought an organization whose core is Anglo-American under conflicting pressures...In the case of U.S.-backed “color revolutions”, human rights organizations such as AI and Human Rights Watch are enlisted...to denounce general abuses which may or may not be seriously documented. The United States has increasingly managed to take control of AI for its own foreign policy campaigns.

By Jared Sacks - August 24th, 2012

For those who have begun to take civil disobedience into middle class spaces, the logic goes that it is better to be vilified and taken notice of than to be given ‘lip service delivery’ from the government. In other words, the escalation of protests by poor black communities is an indication of the complete lack of democracy for anyone who can’t afford to purchase their right to a voice in the elite public sphere.