The following is an email exchange that I recently had with Quentin Lewis, who blogs at When Elvis Died.

Here it is:

On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 8:34 AM, Quentin Lewis wrote:

Hey man,

What’s this shit about Human Rights Watch issuing a negative report on Chavez, and him expelling their officers? Do you have a good read on any of this? I tried to find out more information, but it’s hard to wade through the bourgeois “Chavez hates freedom” bullshit.

Quentin

On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 2:33 PM, William Stodden wrote:

I would say a good site to check for news on LA, and especially Cuban allies is Presna Latina. It is like the Cuban AP. It is generally more credible than some sources reporting about Latin America. Their primary weakness is that they neglect to write stories that are negative about LA, and primarily Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.

That said, PL doesn’t have anything about this report in it that I found. I haven’t read the whole report, but here is the whole 200+ page pdf link from HRW:

http://hrw.org/reports/2008/venezuela0908/venezuela0908web.pdf

Glancing at it briefly, I will say it confirms my belief that human rights, as we think of them, is a industrialized northwestern construction. Read the rest of this entry »