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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 10:11 pm (UTC)
I don't know the rights and wrongs of the charges against Amnesty but I don't trust your source. The Investigative Project is run by one Steven Emerson, who has made a career of peddling anti-Islamic rumors to the radical right. He was dinged on this all the way back in 1999 (http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1443) and of course has had a field day since 9/11. Also, of course, people imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay are at most alleged members of al-Qaeda--there have been no fair trials. Since torture has been used there, even the confessions of inmates are in question.

If you want to read the Times of London's article on Gita Sahgal, who is the source of the charges, it is here (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7026143.ece). There's a case there, I think. Unfortunately, the Times is a conservative newspaper and likely to be sympathetic to Sahgal's views for reasons other than their merits. Salman Rushdie has spoken in Sahgal's defense, which I credit more. Discussion and response in The Guardian (http://browse.guardian.co.uk/search?search=Gita+Sahgal+&year=2010&sitesearch-radio=guardian&go-guardian=Search), which is the more left of the major British papers. Let's not blast the group before the case against them has been more thoroughly mooted. Amnesty has many enemies among authoritarians and war criminals, and it is easy to expand minor charges to full-blown scandals in the media without ever actually proving anything. Especially, the UK elites are now feeling the heat for the war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and grasping at straws.

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