Redstate

First, I wonder if there is a legitimate reason for AI to keep its donors anonymous and if they have provided such a reason.  One that comes to my mind is that some of their donors might live in places (not the US) where support of a group like AI might lead to harassment, imprisonment, or worse by their governments.  I think it only fair to offer that point.

Second and this is the larger issue IMO that you way want to consider particularly when/if you cross-post this at Obsidian Wings.  I don't think it was fair to include the comments by "Human" unless you can provide some foundation other than his/her claim to be a member of Amnesty International.  I've done my own search and have found nothing on this individual and unless you can show something to tie him/her directly to AI - it comes off as a cheap shot that can be used as an excuse to disregard the rest of your well-written post.  Sort of like happened to AI when they accused the United States of running a "gulag." ;)

With enough of voices, we can advocate for change and move this group away from the fringes.

About as feasible as changing North Korea by asking freedom lovers to move there.

The one thing that liberal zealots have which conservatives lack is a driving compulsion to control, especially institutions which are situated such that they can dictate terms "for your own good".

That compulsion is one of the reasons, not the only reason, but a large part, of why liberals control the legacy media, academia, and (duh!) the governments of urban states or areas.   And of course innumerable NGO's including self-labelled "non-partisan" ones.  The left's involvement in politics is inherently active, ("I know what's wrong with the world!"), the right's reactive, ("Would those idiot lefties just leave me alone?!?").

It would take a million conservatives joining AI and screaming to even put a dent in Ms. Khan's worldview.    Sorry, I think my efforts are better placed supporting institutions which directly and effectively advance conservative agendas, rather than trying to apply life support to a terminally diseased dog of liberal lunacy.

I'm not a current AI member and I stopped eating Ben & Jerry's a long time ago.  I agree with Thorley on the point about "human" but to me, his/her/its moonbat rhetoric is beside the point.

The idea that I think you're really getting at is that AI isn't about to disappear any time soon and that if conservatives want to have any say at all in what they produce, they need to do something other than b****ing and moaning -- they need to have a stake and a voice in the organization -- and I agree with that.  People will say: these lefty organizations proliferate like dandelions and you'll waste your money.  To a certain extent that's true, but standing outside the organization is no way to get your voice heard, either.  

It's like Hunter Thompson joining the NRA.  What's the tariff?  I have money coming soon to RedState and when I do it, I'll chip in to the Conservative American Wing of Amnesty International.

Mighty healthy Terminally Diseased Dog, it looks to me.  

Since I just sent in a contribution to RS, later this week I'll join the bandwagon and put the receipt for AI here.

Enough people have already called me crazy that I really don't listen to them any more.  There is a logic to what Mr. Bird is proposing here.  You can't influence an organization without being a member of it.  Let's see if we can get 1,000 DKos fanatics to join the NRA.  

If a country is particularly dangerous for a donor, then those folks can be left unnamed.  I did post this at OW word for word, including Human's contribution.

That reminds me.  I'll be sending a few of my sheckels over to Redstate next paycheck.

If Amnesty International is truly a democratic organization, then what this group needs is not shunning and derision and dismissal.

That's a big if. I'd read the bylaws first; I suspect there are provisos to cripple this kind of challenge.

Welcome Charles to Amnesty International.  You will probably discover that a majority of American AI members, like me, are indeed liberal leaning and tend not to be Republicans, but what brings us together in common cause is a repugnance to mistreatment of prisoners and other human rights abuses irrespective of the putative ideologies of the abusers or the abused.

Your concerns about transparency and fairness deserve a hearing, and I am 100% in favor of your recruiting more conservatives for membership, because if we stick to our mission, ideology truly should not matter.

My own impression remains that AI is by and large very fair in its reports of abuses, and curries no favors based on ideology.  Looking at their home page, both immediately after this story broke, and now, I see that they continue their work in exposing abuses in countries around the world, no matter what ideology those countries espouse.  Currently I see concern about abuses in Egypt, China, Mexico, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Thailand, and justice for the former Milosovic regime of Yugoslavia.  Oh and there is a relatively small link labeled "USA: Betraying human rights Information for journalists related to the US reaction to the Amnesty International Report 2005".  It would almost be strange NOT to have something about it, given the furor raised by OUR leaders to it.  That said, I remain confident that if you asked any of the leaders of AI which governments they felt were the worst abusers of human rights, the USA would not be even close to the top.  I personally thought the "gulag" comment was ill-considered, even though I am outraged by our policy for international prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere.  Being outraged doesn't mean that I am not aware that abuses are much worse elsewhere, but I do feel America should be setting a very high standard.

In response to your observation that the total number of cases that AI has reported on out of the US is considerably higher than other countries which have poorer human rights records, I don't find that to be shocking or indicative of the bias that you do.  The US is a very big country in physical size, in population, and most importantly in influence.  There are also a lot of Americans in AI who are understandably going to be particularly concerned about American abuses.  If you added up all the AI cases reported in sub-Saharan Africa, or Southeast Asia, or some other region of the world more comparable in size (though certainly not influence) to the United States, the numbers comparisons look very different.

Another approach to your comparisons would be to scale the reports by population.  Taking out my handy pocket atlas (it's out of date but the populations should be somewhat proportional) and dividing the number of AI reports by the number of millions of residents and multiplying each by 100 to make for whole number figures, every country on your list except for North Korea, to which you noted AI was denied any access, has more reports per capita than the United States, and this is in spite of more difficult access to these states than the US.

• 233 Turkmenistan
  
• 215 Syria
  
• 170 Sudan
  
• 114 Libya  
  
• 59 Saudi Arabia
  
• 45 Cuba
  
• 35 Myanmar
  
• 29 USA
  
• 0 North Korea

I agree with you absolutely that AI should be spending a lot more effort on Saudi Arabia, and I intend to join you in suggesting that.  I also agree that now that they have access to Libya, we need more reports, not fewer (there were 17 in 2004 & 5 so far in 2005).  But number of reports is not the only measure, and if it weren't for Alberto Gonzales approved policies in handling our foreign detainees, AI wouldn't have nearly so much fodder to work with on the US.

Finally the large number of reports on the United States appears to be the result more than anything else, of the action alerts related to the use of the death penalty.  You may not agree with AI's opposition to the death penalty, and I am not entirely unsympathetic to those who support it for the most extreme cases, but opposing it is not partisan, and you wouldn't get far with mounting a campaign to get AI to reverse its opposition on this issue.  That's just one of their issues, and they routinely issue action alerts about known cases, and there are a lot of known cases of people to be imminently put to death here.  I for one am glad that at least it is above board here, such that there can be a report.  The fact that there are zero reports from North Korea is scarcely an endorsement of that awful regime.

Finally, before I leave I've got to mention that it has been a delight to discover RedState.org where discourse is championed over sound bites and invective.  As a liberal I intend to be respectful of your community, but really appreciate the opportunity to enter a dialog with you all.  On the whole I am very positively impressed with what I see here and sense that the core group of posters are very decent individuals who want what is best for our society and our nation.  Though I will often disagree with what that is, motives are important, and open discussion is vital for progress.  What Charles says about Amnesty International, is equally true of any group which operates in good faith: rather than shunning, derision, and dismissal, we should engage in dialogue and reasonable discourse.  Thanks to the folks at RedState for providing such a venue.  (And your no profanity rule rocks - I wish they would adopt it at DKos.)

"The US is a very big country in physical size, in population, and most importantly in influence.  There are also a lot of Americans in AI who are understandably going to be particularly concerned about American abuses.  If you added up all the AI cases reported in sub-Saharan Africa, or Southeast Asia, or some other region of the world more comparable in size (though certainly not influence) to the United States, the numbers comparisons look very different."

China-largest population in the world 1,298,847,624 and a 6.5 rating from freedom house (compared the the US's 1) had 4 stories in 2005.  How does this fit into your population idea?

India (2.5 and a 1,298,847,624 population) 12 stories.

Indonesia (a 3.5 rating and a similar population to the US 238,452,952) has 2 in 2005-isn't this one of those countries that executes you for drug crimes-and it only gets two reports?

Brazil a 2.5 rating 184,101,109 4 articles in 2005

Pakistan a 5.5 rating pop of 184,101,109 had 5 articals in 2005.

Russia a 5.5 rating and a pop of 184,101,109 had 6 but one was about how a human rights exhibition "moved" the crowd.  ARe you really going to tell me, that Russia of the Chechnyan war and the owner of the real gulags hasn't done anything to deserve more reports than the US in 2005?

I would keep going, but I think you are getting the picture.  

In my reply I said "another approach" - I didn't say the right approach or even a better approach.  It was fair to point out that the original comparison ignored the scale of the various nations' size and influence, so I simply scaled the number of reports to population to see how that would look.  CB went out of his way to pick 8 nations with the worst human rights records and choose the numbers he used to make it sound like AI focuses more on the US than all of them except Sudan combined, which I say is simply not the case.  I also pointed out that the high number of US cases has to do with AI's opposition to the death penalty combined with the open information on death penalty cases here.  Faulting AI for doing the job it sets out to do because it might make the numbers of reports per country unrepresentative of the abusiveness per country impresses this reader as pedantic nitpicking.  Again look at their home page and tell me this is an anti-American or anti-Western organization.  The article on China is more prominent than the one on the US.  And frankly, our method of interrogation, our willingness to incarcerate people, including some who are probably innocent for years without charges, and our willingness to render other prisoners without any proof of guilt to countries where we know that they will probably be tortured are sadly very deserving of the attention AI is giving them.  You can argue that it is overwrought to call it "the gulag of our times", but this observer finds it plenty shocking and disgusting, and the attempts to discredit AI because they call attention to uncomfortable truths don't wash with me.

I ask all conservatives to join me in joining Amnesty International.  With enough of voices, we can advocate for change and move this group away from the fringes.  We can press the International Council to revisit its priorities, to establish a fair rating system for the countries it covers, to open its finances and to more openly disclose how it reports on countries and how much they spend covering those countries.  Who's with me?

Sorry, I don't see where you've made anything close to a convincing case that my support would have any ameliorative effect on this organization which has a clear political agenda (incompatible with my own), demonstrates an uneven (to put it mildly) track record of pursuing its own stated goals, and issues and vehemently defends (admittedly) baseless and fabricated  accusations of atrocities and war crimes against America and Americans in order to get face time in the media and boost its fundraising efforts.

Merely paying this much attention to AI because of their recent childish tantrum over imagined American gulags is already more reward than they deserve for their behaviour.  Suggesting that we should further reward them and their reprehensible tactics by contributing our time, money, and energy to them is just not rational.

You do not encourage improvement by positively reinforcing bad behaviour.

Thanks for your comments, Walker.  If you want to talk about "scaling", then it would not be unfair to include China, which is also "not free" according to Freedom House, and 17 articles were written in 2005.  At 1.2 billion people, that's a ratio of 0.14.  I admit that the numbers of articles does not directly translate to what their priorities are, but it is a indicator of where their energies are directed.  Unfortunately, since they don't disclose how they allocate their resources to the respective countries, how is a member to really know?  Would it not be unreasonable that AI would--given that it holds 20% of the earth's population and is decidedly unfree and has low tolerance for dissidents--spend 20% of its budget on China?

I can't do it.  I'm glad I checked out their website before sending any money.  They're one of the NGOs pushing for the U.S. ratification of the International Criminal Court -- I had forgotten that, and I can't give my money to them because of it.  Sorry, Charles.  I really didn't realize that until this morning, but I should have known.

and I have to say the dumbest thing the US could do is sign on to that one.

is my point.

Feed him with $25 bucks and all you've got is a bigger dog who still has rabies-brain.

One word: competition.  If you really want to "change" AI, put them out of business, (yes, business), with a competing organization.

I thought that Charles, my two areas of disagreement notwithstanding, made about as eloquent of a case for trying to reform as I've seen anyone make it.  If he wishes to pursue this, I wish him and anyone else who makes the attempt the best of luck.

That being said, the comments here, while not a scientific barometer by any stretch, seem to overwhelmingly be against trying to "reform" Amnesty International and in favor of either creating a competitive organization and/or writing off AI entirely.

AI's latest antics show that they are not a credible organization and their politics are clearly on the far-left of the political spectrum with this absurd obsession with trying to ban capital punishment, support for the ICC, and calling for the arrest of American officials which are not the positions of rationale people.  The attempt to rationalize their disproportionate emphasis on the mote in the eye of the United States compared to the forest in the eyes of countries that wouldn't tolerate their views shows an utter lack of good faith on their part which is more institutional than just the work of a few rogue leaders.

They have nothing useful to offer and trying to "reform" them only gives them a validation they do not deserve.  They've already discredited themselves with the majority of the country.  Let them sleep in the bed they've wet.

has succeeded in doing in one report what it took the American Bar Association 20 years of hard work to accomplish, self-marginalization.

if AI is calling for the arrest and trial of US leaders over Gitmo, has AI made the same calls for Castro, Mugabe, Kim Jong Il, Vladimir Putin etc?

"trying to ban capital punishment, [and] support for the ICC," contrary to your belief are the position of quite a few rational people and countries.  99 countries have ratified the ICC and 139 are signatories.  The United States itself signed on to the ICC until President Bush announced the U.S. was "unsigning" it. And according to Amnesty International, 124 countries have banned the death penalty "in law or practice" and 97% of all executions are carried out in four countries, China, Iran, the U.S. and Viet Nam.  Now you may be comfortable being in the company of those three nations, but I'm not.

As for "calling for the arrest of American officials", AI was merely pointing out that by continuing to pursue current policies American officials could certainly put themselves at risk of prosecution.  As a matter of fact a group asked the German courts to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes under German law and Rumsfeld had to delay a trip to Germany until the German court rejected the case.  (German law allows the prosecution of noncitizens for war crimes committed by anyone anywhere in the world even if no Germans are involved.)  

when they, in essence, convicted the USS Vincennes and other U.S. ships of unlawful conduct proved Bush correct.  Of course this was nothing new for the ICJ since for over 20 years they've been telling, retrospectively, our government what it can and cannot do legally for self defense.  Having it in the background makes it rather hard for ICC supporters to say "give it a try...everyone else is."

civilian airliner on a scheduled flight is a pretty serious blunder.  Even the U.S. admitted to "crew error".

And I made no judgement on the ruling.  I only pointed out that we have the ICJ to look at so no one has to give the ICC the benefit of the doubt even if scores of others will.  

We have the ICJ not limiting their judgement to recompense but making declarative statements on how the actions related to national security.  You have the same thing with the Mexican nationals CONVICTED of murder in the U.S.  You have the same thing with their ruling on the legal status of the wall built in Israel.  You have a body that initially dealt with territorial disputes now passing down decisions meant to impact internal policy.  Granted it's not intolerably bad with the ICJ since it mainly deals with treaty obligations and applicability of international law but the ICC will adjudicate and punish citizens/soldiers.  I'm a libertarian so uniform liberty regardless of residence is important to me but not at the expense of sovereignty.  Extraordinary cases where we have the power to prosecute can be handled as they have been in the past.  Extraordinary cases where we don't have the power to prosecute will end up the same as they always have.  

I'll go ahead and apologize for hijacking this thread since I'm sure this will spiral further and further down the rabbit hole with the following....

The really despicable part is that the United Nations wants us to abide by a standard they themselves have never attained.  They could have pushed Saudi Arabia to hand over Idi Amin but never did.  They could have pushed France to give up Bokassa but never did.  They could still push Zimbabwe to give up Mengistu but they won't and never will.  I won't even go into "unlawful" unilateral invasions(Idi, Cambodia, Bangladesh, etc.) that have done more to end genocidal regimes than anything the UN has ever done.  And the abomination of the Milosovic trial pretty much puts the lie to whether, even if they did act consistently, the result would be in any way beneficial.  They managed to turn a petty tyrant into a national hero(couple months ago polling showed him more popular than the man who replaced him).  I can only imagine how well they'd do at that with Saddam in the dock live on Al Jazeera.

It is a high time to see a republican with brains and the guts to stand up for what's right and proper and worthy of respect.

ICC was originally an American idea. We started the process at the United Nations. We were the main proponents of the ICC. And WE WERE BLOODY PROUD OF ICC. - Now that this government has brought US to lows never before seen, we are spewing sh*t and excuses at anything that might mean we have to cooperate with others, or respect the promises and commitments that we have made.

As we did before.

The reality is: WE ARE F*CKING the rest of the world and our word as much as we can, where ever we can. And most of it is happening to make money for business cronies with connections. If you follow these things, you know, and I for one do not include FRAUD in my list of American values.

You can not earn the respect of others that way.

Keep our word. Keep our values. Keep the respect.

You can try to look away and advocate for Jesus, but what gives you away is your deeds. Your deeds in reality are what your true values are, and your deeds will tell if you're true to your word and keep what you say. If you can't keep your word, then you're not worth my respect, the respect of Americans or the respect of others, and you should not expect to get it.

I distincly remember we were promised a SMALL government. Now where the f*ck is it, I can't see

it from the fat overgrown elephant in our living room?!!

didn't sign the ICC.  The Senate has to ratify any treaties that we enter into.  Bill Clinton signed it at the end of his second term knowing that he would not have to take any political heat for its failure to pass the Senate (which was a given).  It was one more land mine he set for Bush.

Is the problem amnesty or the US (lack of) human rights for suspected terrorists? Have that thought ever crossed your mind?