Historically Illiterate Amnesty International
Driving through the Sierra tonight, I caught a blurb on the radio tonight that almost did what no deer has been successful in doing to date: drive me off the road.
Guantanamo has become the gulag [of] our time. . . .
One might expect this from some ignorant W hater still clinging to the hope that the Supreme Court will reverse Bush v Gore, but this came from the increasingly irrelevant Amnesty International.
I'll leave the exquisite fisking to Beldar, but a tease is in order:
Amnesty International's website informs us that Ms. Khan "studied law at the University of Manchester and Harvard Law School, specialising in public international law and human rights." I respectfully submit that she should have studied more history. Now, there are indeed some reasonable parallels to Soviet gulags and police-state practices that can be found on the island of Cuba. But, shamefully, they've gone on for decades before 9/11, and they're found in that other so-called "workers' paradise" that's outside the fences of the American base there.I'm more interested in trying to understand the "new perspective" "the first woman, the first Asian and the first Muslim to guide the world’s largest human rights organization" brings to Amnesty International. After all, what is Amnesty International saying about Darfur and the ongoing horrors in the Sudan? Since a myopic focus on the US and Israel gets more press attention (and donations?), Atlas Shrugs notes Amnesty International is saying nothing -- even as the Sudanese government arrests those documenting rapes.
The country head of a Dutch branch of an international aid agency has been arrested by Sudanese authorities over the publication of a report detailing hundreds of rapes in Darfur. Sudanese security forces detained Paul Foreman of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), for failing to hand over evidence on which the report was based. It was the first such action taken against an aid agency chief since the start of Sudan's Darfur conflict in early 2003.Thanks to Roger Simon for making me "angry at Amnesty International.... again". UPDATE: Chrenkoff notes Amnesty International has spoken on this previously, but observes dryly:
Sadly, the media has not been particularly interested in the problem, either, seeing that the American soldiers are not the perpetrators.And it certainly doesn't get the press that a good old-fashioned America = Gulag whopper does either. UPDATE II: Austin Bay has more righteous grumbling from Dennis Byrne in the Chicago Tribune.