I have mixed feelings about Amnesty.
They have the standard leftist blind spot on anything
that America and Israel are doing,
and they are not trustworthy on those issues.
But on other parts of the world they are fairly objective.
They are willing to criticise
communists,
Muslims, Arabs
and black Africans,
for example
(whereas many on the left won't).
Amnesty were objective (and pioneering) in attacking Saddam when he was
an ally of the west.
But they lost their objectivity when he became
an enemy of the west.
The Trouble With Amnesty, December 8, 2002
- Amnesty are so anti-war,
they don't want anyone to actually
depose
the worst human-rights abusing regimes.
Now that someone is
doing something about Iraq,
they suddenly want to
keep Iraqis oppressed.
Also
here.
Amnesty for Iraq, April 24, 2003,
by Christopher Archangelli
- Amnesty's poor performance during the war,
when Iraq's losing strategy consisted almost entirely of war crimes,
yet Amnesty still kept focusing on the Allies.
Amnesty "sells out" on Iraq
(also here), Mar 2003
- i.e. They sell out to their mainly left-wing members
by allowing politics to decide what abuses they highlight,
rather than highlighting the worst abuses, no matter who did them.
Summary:
"in 2006, Amnesty singled out Israel for condemnation of human rights
to a far greater extent than Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Egypt,
and other chronic abusers of human rights.
During the year, Amnesty issued 48 publications critical of Israel, compared to 35 for Iran, 2 for Saudi Arabia, and only 7 for Syria."
I also don't agree with Amnesty on the
death penalty for murderers.
Amnesty use this issue to focus a disproportionate amount of attention
on the free democracy of America,
which gets more of their attention than many utterly
unfree tyrannies.
Amnesty are happy to partner with people who hate human rights
and support human rights abusers like the Taliban.
Amnesty sacked the head of their Gender Unit,
Gita Sahgal, in 2010
for complaining about their relationship with Moazzam Begg.
Amnesty, 1 Dec 2011, calls for the arrest of former U.S. President George W. Bush
for waterboarding jihadists.
As if that's a big crime.
Why don't they call for the arrest of U.S. President Barack Obama for killing jihadists without trial?
It seems agenda-driven
to call for Bush's arrest but not Obama's arrest.
Amnesty's campaign for Mohmoud Abu Rideh
(or Mahmud Abu Rideh)
illustrates why I no longer support Amnesty.
At some point, Amnesty switched from defending foreign democrats and human rights campaigners
to defending all prisoners - including
violent people who despise democracy and human rights.
The useful leftie idiots who joined the above campaign
got him freed in 2009.
In 2010, oddly enough, he was
killed fighting with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Shame on Amnesty for defending jihadis like this
and helping them do their evil work.
Amnesty hosts an
anti-Israel hatefest in London, May 2011.
This featured
Islamic terror supporter
Abd al-Bari Atwan,
who supports nuking the Jews of Israel:
"If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight."
See also
Michael Weiss
and
Richard Millett
on Amnesty's Islamist partner
Middle East Monitor (MEMO).
I will never donate to Amnesty again!
Again, I still support Amnesty - for the work they do outside of their leftist blind spots.
I do not trust anything they say about America or Israel.
But they still do good work elsewhere in the world.
The "gulag" comment, though, must represent Amnesty's lowest moment ever.
Rudolph J. Rummel
estimates that 39 million innocent people
died in the Soviet gulags.
Amnesty's Idiocy
by John Podhoretz, on the difference between Guantanamo and a real gulag.
"Maybe the people who work at Amnesty International really do think that
the imprisonment of 600 certain or suspected terrorists is tantamount to
the imprisonment of 25 million slaves.
The case of Amnesty International proves that well-meaning people can make morality their life's work
and still be little more than moral idiots."
The Jawa Report,
on what the Soviet gulags were really like.
"For Amnesty International to stoop to the low of making such a comparison
reveals their ignorance of history
and their political bias against the United States.
...
Shame on you Amnesty International, I will never take your accusations seriously again."
Austin Bay
is more like me
- he wants to save Amnesty, not just condemn it.
"Amnesty International is paying a hard price for its PR cheap shot, and it should.
.. Amnesty's current leadership inhabits a self-referential echo chamber, and over the next few months
will find that there is such a thing as bad publicity
...
The gulag accusation hurts the organization, and at some level its leaders know it.
Amnesty's leaders could beat their own mistake by coolly retracting the gulag comparison
and then insisting they stand for the human rights of prisoners everywhere,
even the rights of mass murdering terrorists. Now that would be a tough, principled action
- accepting responsibility for a mistake and then making a plea for the fair, just treatment of prisoners.
But I doubt if the organization's leaders have the class and wits to do this.
...
This entire, sad incident suggests that Amnesty's leadership cadre desperately needs some real diversity."
People who were actually in the gulag
criticise Amnesty:
Pavel Litvinov:
"By any standard, Guantanamo and similar American-run prisons elsewhere do not resemble,
in their conditions of detention or their scale, the concentration camp system
that was at the core of a totalitarian communist system."
Natan Sharanksy
describes Amnesty's gulag analogy as
"typical, unfortunately".
James Taranto,
November 21, 2006,
on a case where a jihadi is refusing to have a required heart procedure
done at Guantanamo because he thinks its medical facilities are inadequate.
"The poor terrorist has to get a lawyer to keep those monsters at Guantanamo
from performing life-saving surgery on him.
You see why people keep comparing Guantanamo to Nazi Germany. The parallels are eerie."
MacBride himself was a Nazi collaborator
during WW2.
See
[Girvin, 2006]
and
[McMahon, 2008]
and below.
He collaborated with
Eduard Hempel,
Nazi ambassador to Ireland.
His half-sister
Iseult Gonne
(also a Nazi collaborator)
was married to
Nazi collaborator and propagandist
Francis Stuart.
In 1982, MacBride, a former Nazi collaborator,
was chairman of the International Commission to enquire into
alleged violations of International Law
by Israel
during its invasion of the Lebanon.
Justin Moran is
Communications Co-ordinator at Amnesty Ireland.
John Connolly, 8 Mar 2012,
wrote a post about him
that inspired me to look further into this character,
and what Amnesty's choice of him as its public face
reveals about its prejudices and blind spots
on human rights.
His "Activities and Interests" include
Irish Ship to Gaza, No to English Queen in Ireland, Communist Party of Ireland, Nobody likes a Tory, Is Margaret Thatcher Dead Yet?, Martin McGuinness, Martin McGuinness For President, An Phoblacht,
Robert Fisk on The Independent, Sinn Féin shop,
Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and
Ilan Pappé.
He is "friends" with
loads (and I mean loads!)
of people from the human rights abusing group
Sinn Fein
(who killed nearly 2,000 people in terrorist attacks,
and last killed in 2007).
This is not surprising because he is a former
prominent member of
the human rights abusing group
Sinn Fein
himself.
He was Chairperson of Dublin Sinn Féin.
He has an anti-Israel past
and is "friends" with
anti-Israel campaigners
Fintan Lane
and
Freda Mullin Hughes.
He is also "friends" with
Yousef Al-Helou,
who works for the terrorist (and human rights abusing) state of Iran
in
Gaza.
Justin Moran,
Communications Co-ordinator at Amnesty Ireland,
was formerly
a prominent member of the human rights abusing group
Sinn Fein.
He was Chairperson of Dublin Sinn Féin.
The above is from
Dublin Sinn Fein newsletter, 22 June 2007.
(Sinn Fein's terrorist wing
last killed in 2007.)
The above also shows he was an anti-Israel activist.
His facebook shows that he is still a strong supporter of Sinn Fein today.
Amnesty Ireland has no credibility with people like this speaking for it.
Just to confirm it is the same guy:
(Left) Justin Moran
of the human rights abusing group
Sinn Fein in 2007.
(Right) Justin Moran
of Amnesty Ireland today.
His facebook shows that he still supports Sinn Fein today.
Martin McGuinness calls for the death penalty for "informers".
His organisation executed
hundreds of "informers"
without any evidence
or any trial,
and without defence barristers.
Justin Moran of Amnesty supported (and still supports) this organisation.
He openly supports Martin McGuinness on his facebook.
In this
piece on China, July 16, 2009,
Justin Moran
of Amnesty
claims to be opposed to the death penalty.
He also claims to be in favour of the right to "a fair and open trial".
Where was the fair and open trial of
Paul Quinn
when your organisation applied the death penalty to him in 2007?
Or the hundreds of others
your organisation
killed without trial?
Amnesty Ireland has no credibility with people like this speaking for it.
Justin Moran
of Amnesty International (Ireland)
looks forward to the death of
Margaret Thatcher, Dec 2011.
His organisation (SF-IRA)
failed to kill her in 1984 when it
bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
Justin Moran signs a
2004 petition
calling for a boycott of Israel.
The future spokesman for Amnesty International Ireland
calls for the ethnic cleansing of the 550,000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
He also wants a boycott of Israel:
"The undersigned also urge all citizens of Ireland to support a boycott of all Israeli goods and services".
Disgusting:
HRW hosts fundraiser in 2009 in Saudi Arabia
(and here),
one of the worst human rights abusers in the world.
While there, they pander to the local anti-Israel bigotry.
(As if Saudi hostility to Israel is based on human rights!)
Natan Sharansky
on HRW backing Saudi Arabia against Israel:
"Here is an organization created by the goodwill of the free world to fight violations of human rights, which has become a tool in the hands of dictatorial regimes to fight against democracies."
Islamic fundamentalism
HRW makes apologies for gay-hating religious fundamentalists.
After a vicious assault by Muslim immigrants on gays in Holland,
Scott Long
(more here),
director of the "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Program"
at HRW, shamefully says:
"There's still an extraordinary degree of racism in Dutch society.
Gays often become the victims of this when immigrants retaliate
for the inequities that they have to suffer."
Adam Shapiro's tweet of
27 July 2012 tells me all I need to know about "Front Line Defenders".
"As an Arab who wants to purge Arab societies of the scourge of extremism and terrorism, I have come to realize that Islamists aren't the only obstacle and that the far-left are also an obstacle, perhaps an even larger obstacle, because they have emboldened the Islamists, Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah in particular, and as a result, the Islamists have increased in strength. We are feeling the result of the far-left's assistance and support of the Islamists in the Arab world. I have seen far-left rhetoric that is supportive of these Islamist groups from once mainstream and formerly liberal groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch by their disproportionate criticism of Israel, yet their silence regarding Hamas and Hezbollah. I can no longer call these groups liberal when their words and actions are supportive of Islamist groups who seek the destruction and genocide of others."
- Algerian secular Muslim
Omar Dakhane, 7 Mar 2012, says the left-wing turn taken by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch aids and encourages human rights abusers in the Arab world.
of Liberty
is Islamist
Azad Ali.
Since 1995.
