Two Kinds of Amnesty

I’ve become bogged down with other work today, so I offer these two brief  pointers to coverage elsewhere.

I plan to write again soon on the fatal drift of Amnesty International away from its original wisdom and spirit. The latest, very great series of misadventures has been covered much more in England, where they have been transpiring, though The Nation has covered it here with predictable misunderstanding. Oliver Kamm, whose blog you should be reading, commented yesterday for the Times Online about the resignation of Gita Sahgal. The fundamental argument that Amnesty would easily see were it not now ideologically blinded:

Someone who has suffered the restriction of liberty does not become thereby the friend of liberty. Disastrously for itself and those who depend on its support, Amnesty is no longer the friend of liberty either.

Then there is the Republican Party, offering at every turn new dimensions to the disingenuous. Pretend it will, in itself and in its relations with the TEA Party movements, that it is the friend of all those ordinary folk concerned about the nation’s fiscal health, but it remains as always the both sponsor and interference runner for money writ large, not men and women. The President tries to pursue financial reform, the Dems tried to bring the Pubs in – after 2008 there should be some commonality of intent on this issue – but rather than constrain the behaviors that nearly brought us all down, the Republicans refuse to consider planning (a good thing for leaders to do) for a repeat. Just let ’em all fail. The chips fall where they may. Never mind who’ll be under them.

AJA

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