. For those whose vision is not obscured by their own committed advocacy, the map of how Amnesty International lost its way over the past decade and more is there to be read. From irreproachable defender of human rights to clearly ideological activist on behalf of one vision of political development, an organization now easily […]
Myanmar, Not Forgotten in the Darkness
. During the 1990s and into the next century, I was a member of a local Amnesty International group. We were a rich and varied assemblage: Iranian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Swedish, Jewish and other American-born, Spanish; businessmen, professors, students, JPL employees, journalists, future lawyers. Among the central tasks of a local Amnesty group is to take […]
Mainstreaming Bias
Among the most common complaints of those at the political edges – those on left or right who perceive themselves not to hold the reigns of institutional power – is that the mainstream media, along with other power centers, shapes our perceptions. It shapes and distorts our perception of reality in varied ways, including selection […]
Amnesty International Action File Dies “a Martyr” in Afghanistan
Back in May I wrote about Gita Saghal and her eventual resignation from Amnesty International because of its unseemly association with Moazzam Begg and his Cage Prisoners organization. You can catch up on that story here, too. Now, Harry’s Place reports on one of the AI and Cage Prisoners poster boys, Abu Rideh, a UK […]
Ship of Fools 1
One of the questions of the Normblog profile, of which I was the subject a little while back is What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? I responded like a blogger. The excesses of the international Left that are in part responsive to the […]