USA Politics Thread - *No gun debate*

[Acecombat 0]

Quote[/b] ]Nemesis, the story about the kids who claim to have been treated well at Gitmo is interesting.

Yeah interesting .... interesting as to why the hell are minors are being classified as enemy combatants .

Big deal of they treated a bunch of kids alright , for most of us thats a given its not as if its some big favour the worlds been bestowed upon.

[Nemesis6 0]

Ah, the link to the story about the Afghan boys is located here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1163436,00.html

[Ares1978 0]

Yeah interesting .... interesting as to why the hell are minors are being classified as enemy combatants   .

Well, I'm just taking a wild stab in the dark here, but maybe they are being classified as enemy combatants because that really is what they are? Sometimes, anyway.

[Nemesis6 0]

Here you can find a list of "abuses" against a prisoner at Guantanamo - http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs....sed.pdf

It's one out of many pages, but the "abuses" includes these points:

Quote[/b] ] * subject to [unspecified] "mental stress and pressure"

* "willfully misdirected ... to pray north"

* deprived of "comfort items"

* subjected to an [apparently failed] "attempt to withdraw Qur'an"

* able to hear two guards having sex, while they "assumed he was asleep"

* distracted from his prayer by the "sharp intake of breath" of a female MP who'd been "sexually fondled".

* offered a plate of pork

* the object of a conspiracy "to keep detainee ignorant of detainee's allotted Tuesday recreation"

* subjected to a "partially successful" attempt to administer injections "under the guise of immunisation", designed to "unhinge detainee's mental and emotional stability"

* had his peanut butter eaten by a guard "right in front of him".

Man, sounds... uhh, brutal?

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]2. Balschoiw, I'm sorry but Amnesty international is hardly a group to be taken seriously. The pussies consider shouting or raising your voice torture.

Source ?

Last time I checked the AI defintion of torture is the same as the the UN definition of torture, a paper and defintion agreed upon by all UN member countries.

Quote[/b] ]Well, I'm just taking a wild stab in the dark here, but maybe they are being classified as enemy combatants because that really is what they are? Sometimes, anyway.

Judge yourself:

Quote[/b] ]Naqibullah and Asadullah were arrested one night in November 2002, in Musawal village, Paktia province, by around 30 American special forces soldiers. More than 30 local men were also arrested, and remain in Guantanamo.

Naqibullah, the local imam's son, said he stumbled into the raid while cycling from a friend's house. Asadullah is from a village three days' walk away, in neighbouring Logar province, but was working for a local farmer along with several men who were also arrested.

It seems likely the Americans were looking for a local commander, Mansoor Rah man Saiful, who had fought against the Taliban for years, but joined the radical Islamists when America attacked Afghanistan. If so, they were unsuccessful: Mr Saiful is still at large.

The captives were taken to Bagram airbase, a short helicopter ride away. Naqibullah grins as he mimes the Chinook's whirring rotary blade; but he was less relaxed at the time. "It was terrifying, I didn't know what was happening to me," he said, seated cross-legged in a small reception room, cut into a thick fortress wall. "There were many of us in a small cell. Some men were screaming to be let free."

Naqibullah was interrogated every day at Bagram. "They kept asking me, 'Do you know the Taliban? Do you know al-Qaida? Have you given them shelter? Have you given them food?'," he said.

"I told them, 'I don't know these people, and I am too young to give anything to anyone without my father's authority'." After two weeks, Naqibullah said, he was asked whether he had any objection to being taken to "another place".

"I said, 'What can I do? You will take me wherever you want to'." That night, bound, blindfolded and fitted into orange overalls, he was loaded on to a cargo plane and flown non-stop to Cuba. Naqibullah's first 10 days in Guantanamo were the worst of his life, he said. He was put in a tiny cell with a single slit-window as his interrogation continued. Then everything changed. "I was taken to an American general who said, 'We will educate you and soon you will go home'. And my situation improved."

Remember what Rumsfeld said ?

Quote[/b] ]Donald Rumsfeld, had described Guantanamo's inmates as "hard-core, well-trained terrorists" and "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth."

You be the judge.

As for Nemesis:

You are 17. You have the experiences of a 17 year old teenager. That´s a fact. I don´t care if you like torture or not. I even don´t care if you even can understand the principles of psychological and/or physical torture. From your comments I doubt that. If you think it´s all fun, ok. Obviously the UN carta on torture has a different opinion. If you will accidedently be kidnapped while cycling to a friend and put to Gitmo you can have your share of fun then. I think it´s at least disturbing that people do not even try to get a glimpse of the things they feel to comment. Torture does have a lot of faces. While some of the things may sound funny, I guarantee you that they are not.

You want it straight ?

I know it´s hard to read sources. But that´s why I post them.

As you are to lazy, here´s an excerpt for you:

Quote[/b] ]1. General supplementary observations on definitions of torture and use of torture under interrogation, including deaths in custody (Articles 1 and 16)

Evidence continues to emerge of widespread torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees held in US custody in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Iraq and other locations. While the government continues to assert that abuses resulted for the most part from the actions of a few "aberrant" soldiers and lack of oversight, there is clear evidence that much of the ill-treatment has stemmed directly from officially santioned procedures and policies, including interrogation techniques approved by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for use in Guantánamo and later exported to Iraq.(2) While it seems that some practices, such as "waterboarding", were reserved for high value detainees, others appear to have been routinely applied during detentions and interrogations in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and Iraq. The latter include hooding, stripping and shackling of detainees in painful positions as well as using military dogs to intimidate blindfolded detainees; prolonged isolation, deprivation of food and sleep and exposure to extremes of temperature also appear to have been common practice to punish detainees for failing to cooperate or to "soften them up" for interrogation. (3)

Many of the techniques listed above, even if applied in isolation or for limited periods, would in Amnesty International’s view violate the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under Article 16. Such techniques have reportedly been used against "war on terror" detainees in combination and for prolonged periods, causing severe pain and suffering (physical, mental or both) and, being inflicted intentionally by officials for the purpose of obtaining information, thereby amount to torture.(4) Some of the approved techniques, such as forced shaving of facial and head hair, stripping and the use of dogs to inspire fear, appear to have had a specific discriminatory or racist application in the case of Muslim detainees.

It is now known that at least 34 detainees who died in US custody have had their deaths listed by the army as confirmed or suspected criminal homicides. The true number of such deaths may be higher as there is evidence that delays, cover-ups and deficiencies in investigations have hampered the collection of evidence.(5) In several cases, however, substantial evidence has emerged that detainees were tortured to death while under interrogation (revealed, for example, in military autopsy reports, investigation records and recent court testimony). What is even more disturbing is that standard practices as well as interrogation techniques believed to have fallen within officially sanctioned parameters, appear to have played a role in the ill-treatment, as the following cases illustrate:

* Two Afghan detainees, Dilwar and Habibullah died from multiple blunt force injuries inflicted while they were held in an isolation section of Bagram US airbase in December 2002. Army investigative reports later revealed that both men were kept hooded and chained to a ceiling while being kicked and beaten during sustained assaults by military personnel. A soldier who acknowledged inflicting more than 30 consecutive knee strikes to Dilawar (a slight, 22 year old taxi driver) as he stood in shackles, told investigators that the blows were standard operating procedure for uncooperative detainees. An army criminal investigation report said both deaths were caused primarily by severe trauma to the men’s legs, adding that "sleep deprivation at the direction of military intelligence soldiers" was also a "direct contributing factor" in Dilwar’s death.(6) Army medical examiners found the prolonged shackling had also contributed to his death.(7) 7 low-ranking soldiers, charged variously with assault, maltreatment, dereliction of duty and making false statements eventually received sentences ranging from five months’ imprisonment to reprimand, loss of pay and reduction in rank.

* Abdul Jaleel died in January 2004 in the US Forward Operating Rifles Base in Al Asad, Iraq, after being kicked and beaten during interrogation. He was tied by his hands to the top of a door frame and gagged when he died. The autopsy report recorded death from "blunt force injuries and asphyxia". A senior army official admitted Jameel had been "lifted to his feet by a baton held to his throat" causing a throat injury that "contributed to his death". (8) Military commanders rejected a recommendation by army investigators to prosecute soldiers involved, on the ground that his death had been the "result of a series of lawful applications of force in response to repeated aggression and misconduct by the detainee".(9)

* Major-General Abed Hamad Mowhoush, formerly of the Iraqi army, died during interrogation in the US detention facility in Al Qaim, Baghdad, in November 2003. An autopsy recorded cause of death as asphyxia and smothering due to chest compression. Mowhoush died after being rolled back and forth in a sleeping bag, which was placed over his head and bound with wire, while one of his interrogators sat on his chest. According to testimony in a subsequent court case, use of the sleeping bag was part of an approved "stress position" designed to play upon a detainee’s claustrophobia. It was also reportedly interpreted by officers as falling within the "fear up harsh" tactics that may still be found in military operational manuals. There is evidence that abusive interrogation techniques at the Al Qaim facility were routine and authorized.(10)

The US military initially reported that Mowhoush had died from natural causes. However, several months later, in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, four US soldiers were charged in the death. Only one went to trial and was sentenced to a reprimand, $6,000 forfeiture of pay plus 60 days’ restriction of movement. There is evidence that Mowhoush was subjected to a brutal beating two days before his death by personnel from other agencies, including the CIA, none of whom has been charged.

* A 27-year-old Iraqi male died while being interrogated by US Navy Seals in April 2004 in Mosul, Iraq. During his confinement he was hooded, flex-cuffed, deprived of sleep and subjected to extreme cold conditions, including the use of cold water on his body and hood. The exact cause of death was "undetermined" although the autopsy stated that hypothermia from wet and cold conditions may have contributed to his death.(11) His treatment included various techniques similar to those authorized by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld in his April 2003 memorandum including "environmental manipuation (e.g. adjusting temperature)", hooding and sleep deprivation.

Despite the shocking nature of the treatment described in the above cases, the government still has not referred to any any of the reported abuses as "torture", nor were any of those prosecuted charged with torture. As we noted in our previous submission, the Schlesinger Panel also took an apparently narrow definition of torture. Inquiries into into detention practices such as the Church inquiry found no link between ill-treatment of detainees and authorized interrogation techniques, despite the fact that many of the authorized techniques in and of themselves constituted treatment proscribed under international standards in general, and the Convention in particular.(12)

The lack of clarity as to how the USA defines torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment was also reflected in the final report of a high level military investigation into complaints by FBI agents about abuses they allegedly witnessed of detainees in Guantánamo Bay between October 2002 and March 2004, a summary of which was released in July 2005. The report found that requiring one "high value detainee" to be led around by a leash tied to his chains, placing a thong on his head, forcing him to wear a bra and to stand naked in front of a female interrogator, insulting his mother and sister, and using strip searches as an interrogation technique was "abusive and degrading" in its cumulative effect "particularly when done in the context of the 48 days of intense and long interrogations", but that this did not rise to the level of "prohibited inhumane treatment". The investigation found that while all these tactics applied together could be considered abusive and degrading, each of the tactics was "authorized" under the Army field manual guidelines for the "pride and ego down" and "futility" approaches. Pentagon and U.S. Southern Command officials have reportedly told Congress and reporters that the approaches were consistent with the field manual.(13) The investigation (which did not involve interviews with any detainees) recommended no action in respect of most of the FBI’s complaints on the ground that they were either unsubstantiated or the treatment fell within authorized procedures. It did not review the legal validity of the various interrogation methods which included techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual and the "more aggressive" techniques approved by the Secretary of Defense in his memorandum of April 2003 for use when "necessary".(14)

Enough said...

[turms 0]

Its funny that amnesty international doesnt mention the boy who was supposedly captive in guantamo, alltough they mention this:

Quote[/b] ]At least three detainees who were under 18 when first detained remain in Guantánamo. They are Mohammed C, a Chadian national picked up in Pakistan, who was transferred to Guantánamo in January 2002 when he was just 15, Omar Khadr, aged 15 when captured in Afghanistan in July 2002, and Yousuf al-Shehri, whose alleged ill-treatment during force-feeding is described above. Mohammed C and Omar Khadr have alleged that they were tortured in US custody, including being beaten, placed in painful shackles, threatened with dogs and subjected to sleep deprivation; Omar Khadr also states he was threatened with rape and had pine solvent poured on him. Throughout their detention, they have been held in the same harsh conditions as adults, including prolonged solitary confinement in Camp V. Neither has been provided with rehabilitation or educational programs consistent with international standards for the treatment of juveniles in custody.

Source: Amnestys report (a littlebit extensive thatn department of defence´s

EDIT: im confident that guardians "article" is bull.

[Acecombat 0]

Yeah interesting .... interesting as to why the hell are minors are being classified as enemy combatants .

Well, I'm just taking a wild stab in the dark here, but maybe they are being classified as enemy combatants because that really is what they are? Sometimes, anyway.

Combatants who broke down to maybe who knows a simple drive to a local cuban mcdonalds (do they have one btw?) , and started regurgirating sugar coated pills of their fealty to the american nation .... wow we definitely need some more of those impressionable and guillable types in the AQ militia

Way to spend the tax dollars , wasting time and effort in captivating minors .

[Ares1978 0]

Quote[/b] ]Well, I'm just taking a wild stab in the dark here, but maybe they are being classified as enemy combatants because that really is what they are? Sometimes, anyway.

Judge yourself:

Actually, I prefer not to judge on the basis of just one story. It doesn't exactly prove or disprove the existence of underage combatants now does it.

Acecombat,

Yes, but their burgers date back to 1962.

[harley 3 1185 0]

It's a well-known fact that whilst being a good source of news, the Guardian is a true left-leaning newspaper. That's Left, not Liberal. To my mind, the former is the worse, whilst in the U.S. the latter term is affixed to anything on the left like a dirty word.

[walker 0]

Hi all

Quote[/b] ]Obviously many US voters will now be asking this question:

"With the untrustworthy NeoConMan entryist group, ready to risk national security for petty spite in control of the US Republican party, how can any one feel safe to vote republican?"

Ok then what do you suggest they do, vote for the Democrats?

Fuck that stupid idea.

The real question you should ask is,

"With the untrustworthy feudalistic and socialist lawyers and business men in control of the Republican and Democratic parties, how can any one feel safe voting at all?"

As a member of a democratic nation you must vote or not vote according to your conscience.

This is a forum, one of thousands, for debating US politics it is one of the many palces where we all test our ideas of politics. As with any good place of debate it exposes us all to the ideas of those we might not agree with. At its best a place of debate does change minds and under democracy how whether people vote.

As a US voter your choices are:

Vote Democrat

Vote Republican

Vote Green

Vote Independant

Write in your vote

Heck I think you are allowed to vote commie

You can of course not turn up in protest

Or even turn up and spoil your ballot (hope electronic voting has not stopped this it is a great democratic tradition. If it has the paper electronics need to be altered to allow null votes. I supose write in could be used to say I vote for none of these theiving b*stards)

I have heard that some on the republican right who might have considered voting republican and can not now bring themselves to do so are talking of starting a third party.

It is policy failures on Iraq and gross fraud like this that is driving those who might have considered voting republican away.

Quote[/b] ]October 24, 2005 Issue

Copyright © 2005 The American Conservative

Money for Nothing

Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors’ pockets.

by Philip Giraldi

The United States invaded Iraq with a high-minded mission: destroy dangerous weapons, bring democracy, and trigger a wave of reform across the Middle East. None of these have happened.

When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure—corruption. Large-scale and pervasive corruption meant that available resources could not be used to stabilize and secure Iraq in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), when it was still possible to do so. Continuing corruption meant that the reconstruction of infrastructure never got underway, giving the Iraqi people little incentive to co-operate with the occupation. Ongoing corruption in arms procurement and defense spending means that Baghdad will never control a viable army while the Shi’ite and Kurdish militias will grow stronger and produce a divided Iraq in which constitutional guarantees will be irrelevant.

The American-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority could well prove to be the most corrupt administration in history, almost certainly surpassing the widespread fraud of the much-maligned UN Oil for Food Program. At least $20 billion that belonged to the Iraqi people has been wasted, together with hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Exactly how many billions of additional dollars were squandered, stolen, given away, or simply lost will never be known because the deliberate decision by the CPA not to meter oil exports means that no one will ever know how much revenue was generated during 2003 and 2004.

Some of the corruption grew out of the misguided neoconservative agenda for Iraq, which meant that a serious reconstruction effort came second to doling out the spoils to the war’s most fervent supporters. The CPA brought in scores of bright, young true believers who were nearly universally unqualified. Many were recruited through the Heritage Foundation website, where they had posted their résumés. They were paid six-figure salaries out of Iraqi funds, and most served in 90-day rotations before returning home with their war stories. One such volunteer was Simone Ledeen, daughter of leading neoconservative Michael Ledeen. Unable to communicate in Arabic and with no relevant experience or appropriate educational training, she nevertheless became a senior advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad. Another was former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer’s older brother Michael who, though utterly unqualified, was named director of private-sector development for all of Iraq.

The 15-month proconsulship of the CPA disbursed nearly $20 billion, two-thirds of it in cash, most of which came from the Development Fund for Iraq that had replaced the UN Oil for Food Program and from frozen and seized Iraqi assets. Most of the money was flown into Iraq on C-130s in huge plastic shrink-wrapped pallets holding 40 “cashpaks,†each cashpak having $1.6 million in $100 bills. Twelve billion dollars moved that way between May 2003 and June 2004, drawn from accounts administered by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The $100 bills weighed an estimated 363 tons.

Once in Iraq, there was virtually no accountability over how the money was spent. There was also considerable money “off the books,†including as much as $4 billion from illegal oil exports. The CPA and the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Board, which it controlled, made a deliberate decision not to record or “meter†oil exports, an invitation to wholesale fraud and black marketeering.

Thus the country was awash in unaccountable money. British sources report that the CPA contracts that were not handed out to cronies were sold to the highest bidder, with bribes as high as $300,000 being demanded for particularly lucrative reconstruction contracts.

The contracts were especially attractive because no work or results were necessarily expected in return. It became popular to cancel contracts without penalty, claiming that security costs were making it too difficult to do the work. A $500 million power-plant contract was reportedly awarded to a bidder based on a proposal one page long. After a joint commission rejected the proposal, its members were replaced by the minister, and approval was duly obtained. But no plant has been built.

Where contracts are actually performed, their nominal cost is inflated sufficiently to provide handsome bribes for everyone involved in the process. Bribes paid to government ministers reportedly exceed $10 million.

Money also disappeared in truckloads and by helicopter. The CPA reportedly distributed funds to contractors in bags off the back of a truck. In one notorious incident in April 2004, $1.5 billion in cash that had just been delivered by three Blackhawk helicopters was handed over to a courier in Erbil, in the Kurdish region, never to be seen again. Afterwards, no one was able to recall the courier’s name or provide a good description of him.

Paul Bremer, meanwhile, had a slush fund in cash of more than $600 million in his office for which there was no paperwork. One U.S. contractor received $2 million in a duffel bag. Three-quarters of a million dollars was stolen from an office safe, and a U.S. official was given $7 million in cash in the waning days of the CPA and told to spend it “before the Iraqis take over.†Nearly $5 billion was shipped from New York in the last month of the CPA. Sources suggest that a deliberate attempt was being made to run down the balance and spend the money while the CPA still had authority and before an Iraqi government could be formed.

The only certified public-accounting firm used by the CPA to monitor its spending was a company called North Star Consultants, located in San Diego, which was so small that it operated out of a private home. It was subsequently determined that North Star did not, in fact, perform any review of the CPA’s internal spending controls. Today, no one can account for billions of those dollars or even suggest how the money was spent. And as the CPA no longer exists, there is also little interest in re-examining its transparency or accountability.

Bremer escaped Baghdad by helicopter two days before his proconsulship expired to avoid a possible ambush on the road leading to the airport, which he had been unable to secure. He has recently been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honor he shares with ex-CIA Director George “Slam-dunk†Tenet.

Considerable fraud has been alleged regarding American companies, much of which can never be addressed because the Bush administration does not regard contracts with the CPA as pertaining to the U.S. government, even though U.S. taxpayer dollars were involved in some transactions...

http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_10_24/cover.html Follow link for the full text

This is the kind of thing that so sickens US voters enough that they ask the question:

"With such an untrustworthy NeoConMen entryist group controlling the US republican party how can any one feel safe to vote republican?"

Kind Regards Walker

[Nemesis6 0]

I have no problem admitting that The Guardian is rediculously biased normally, but in this one instance, I think they're telling the truth, as, for once, they're not spewing out pro-left propaganda.

On another note: God forbid Amnesty International actually start focusing about some jails where the prisoners are truly abused. One example mentioned: Burma. But what about China and all those Asian nations. Well, China in specific. You know, when you find the police beating a woman to death for giving out bibles on a street corner, something is wrong. But then again, I doubt Amnesty had anything to say about that.

[Nemesis6 0]

EDIT: Remove me

[Ares1978 0]

On another note: God forbid Amnesty International actually start focusing about some jails where the prisoners are truly abused. One example mentioned: Burma. But what about China and all those Asian nations. Well, China in specific. You know, when you find the police beating a woman to death for giving out bibles on a street corner, something is wrong. But then again, I doubt Amnesty had anything to say about that.

No, they were busy with issues like "Protester against forced abortion sent to prison camp".

So what's wrong with beating missionaries to death? Religious freedom doesn't apply when it's the bible that's shoved down your throat?  

[Balschoiw 0]

It´s funny that you don´t even try to verify your claims Nemesis. You´d be surprised:

AI China Index

Quote[/b] ]EDIT: Remove me

[Nemesis6 0]

I never said Amnesty International didn't do work in those areas. What I'm saying is that they could spend their resources better than they do. The fact that they choose to focus all their resources on Guantanamo when there are much, much, much worse places around proves that they have an agenda.

[theavonlady 2]

Absolutely, Nemeis.

Quote[/b] ]Without Amnesty

By Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu

FrontPageMagazine.com | June 3, 2005

Patriotism was, in Samuel Johnson’s 18th century world, ‘the last refuge of a scoundrel.’ Johnson did not say patriotism was scandalous, but charged corrupt public figures with using patriotism to excuse their crimes. It appears, early in the 21st century, that ‘human rights’ will be the last refuge of modern scoundrels who twist the truth to suit their political agenda. Amnesty International’s bizarre statements calling America ‘the leading purveyor and practitioner of torture’ and threatening leading Americans with arrest for war crimes if they travel abroad lean that way.

These statements by William Schultz, AI US executive director, are just the latest in a trend. Amnesty has been pushing the envelope of propriety for a long time. It has developed a deserved reputation as a hard-left, anti-American institution more concerned with promotion of its own political agenda than with succor for the oppressed. Its not as if the world suddenly has a dearth of oppressed people for whom AI could legitimately speak. But rather, the organization has cynically ignored those hapless souls in order to aim its venom at America. And make not mistake, Amnesty’s accusations are the most loathsome and despicable imaginable. Especially offensive is Amnesty’s calling the terrorist prison in Guantanamo an American ‘gulag.’

As the Wall Street Journal notes, compared to the Soviet gulag in which millions died, "this is just one more sign of the moral degradation of Amnesty International." It is worse than lack of principle or judgment to use a highly charged word like ‘gulag’ recklessly; a word with such a terrible connotation. It is an intentional distortion of fact.

Furthermore, Amnesty’s failure to speak up when such a word fully applies is an immoral, criminal omission for an organization that professes in holier-than-thou terms to be speaking for those with no voice.

In contrast to its incessant attacks on America, for at least the past 10 years Amnesty has give a pass to the world’s worst human rights violator: Kim Jong Il’s North Korea. In 1995 a story broke in the Los Angeles Times about the extent of North Korea’s death camps and the extraordinarily large percentage of the population that was imprisoned in them. (At any given time Kim Jong Il holds an estimated 300,000 prisoners out of a population of approximately 22 million.) Prisoners are sentenced without trial, executions are frequent, human beings are subject to experimentations with poison gasses, slave labor is common, there is no medical attention for the prisoners, and starvation is rampant. Prisoners are worked, often to death, in so-called ‘economic zones’ under slave conditions, and are forced to do extraordinarily heavy labor in mines, roads, and tunnels without proper equipment or adequate food. They die unmourned and lie in unmarked graves.

The LA Times story was based on testimony from two North Korean defectors – both later testified before Congress about their experiences in a real gulag, Kim Jong Il’s prison. One defector, Kang Chol Hwan, authored a book, Aquariums of Pyongyang, that fully described his horrific personal experiences and ultimate escape from the hellhole of North Korea.

Significant in the Times story was a brief note that both of these defectors had described their experiences to Amnesty International. To the shock of those who knew the full story, Amnesty categorically rejected their sworn testimony on the grounds that it was "untrustworthy." How can AI have arrived at such a stunning verdict? Because both Kang and the other defector were then living in South Korea. Amnesty had had South Korea in its sights for years even though the military government had collapsed in 1987 – a full eight years previously – and democracy was blooming there. Such an arbitrary decision to ignore Kim Jong Il’s concentration camps was not unique to this occasion.

Over the next few years a succession of witnesses and escapees including the noted Doctors Without Borders member, Dr. Norbert Vollertsen, testified in several venues about the government-sponsored horrors taking place in North Korea. Vollertsen even brought a series of shocking photos with him showing starving children in striped prison uniforms terrifyingly similar to photos of Nazi death camps. Amnesty ignored and dismissed Dr. Vollertsen’s reports.

Similarly, testimony from Sun Ok Lee, herself a former Party member in North Korea, falsely accused and sentenced to six years in forced labor camps. One would think that her autobiography, Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman, along with reams of Congressional testimony detailing her brutal experiences would be sufficient to get at least an expression of interest from Amnesty, but it has not been so.

A bit of background may show some of the reasons why Amnesty International is willing to expose nits in the eye of the United States but overlook logs in communist dictatorships abroad. The US executive director of AI, William Schultz, has been with the organization for several years. He was influential in rejecting the 1995 North Korean defector’s testimony. Schultz is also reported to be affiliated with groups such as the Unitarian Universalist Association that was extreme in its condemnation of South Korea during the 1970s and 1980s but mute in any judgment about the brutality occurring north of the DMZ in the evil twin, North Korea. Many of his colleagues have visited North Korea, celebrating such occasions as Kim Il Sung’s birthday and enthusiastically participating in seminars on the ‘Juche Ideology.’

The blatant hypocrisy displayed by Amnesty International and William Schultz is absolutely unacceptable. To ignore completely as Amnesty has done the hapless situation in North Korea in a real gulag and of escaped refugees who are forcibly repatriated back to North Korea from China to certain imprisonment or execution, is reprehensible and inexcusable. This immoral stance is exacerbated by the crocodile tears the organization sheds over detained terrorists bent on mass killing of innocent held in a detention center.

The Journal summed it perfectly: ‘A "human rights" group that can’t distinguish between…death camps and detention centers for terrorists who kill civilians can’t be taken that seriously." A pox on Amnesty International for abrogating its responsibility to the suffering people of the world in order to further its hard left political agenda. We have seen more than enough hypocrisy and anti-Americanism from Amnesty for us to take counter action: as a start AI ought to have its IRS status investigated for improper behavior by a so-called educational, charitable group. Concomitantly American media needs immediately to pull all Amnesty public service announcement fundraising appeals off the air. Our charity can better go to organizations like the Defense Forum Foundation and the North Korea Freedom Coalition that are legitimately working to free the oppressed peoples of North Korea.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lt. Col. Gordon Cucullu has been an Army Green Beret lieutenant colonel, as well as a writer, popular speaker, business executive and farmer. His most recent book is Separated at Birth, about North and South Korea.

[EiZei 0]

I never said Amnesty International didn't do work in those areas. What I'm saying is that they could spend their resources better than they do. The fact that they choose to focus all their resources on Guantanamo when there are much, much, much worse places around proves that they have an agenda.

Maybe it's because amnesty can't openly operate inside places like Myanmar, China or north korea? It's kind of hard to join organizations that publicly oppose your goverment out there.

[walker 0]

Hi all

Of course one might not take the word of some posting in this forum as the gospel truth on Amnesty International and in the spirit of finding out go to the Amnesty International website and five seconds later in the 2005 Amnesty International Report on North Korea one would find:

Quote[/b] ]North Korea

Covering events from January - December 2004

The government continued to fail in its duty to uphold and protect the right to food, exacerbating the effects of the long-standing food crisis. Chronic malnutrition among children and urban populations, especially in the northern provinces, was widespread. Fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, association and movement, continued to be denied. Access by independent monitors continued to be severely restricted. There were reports of widespread political imprisonment, torture and ill-treatment, and of executions.

Background

Relations between North and South Korea cooled during the year. In July South Korean navy ships fired at a North Korean ship that had crossed the western sea border. Notwithstanding, in October, South Korea pledged to support a World Food Programme (WFP) emergency operation in North Korea aimed at 6.5 million vulnerable people, most of them children and women. In addition, South Korea promised 1.2 million tons of rice in the form of concessional loans to North Korea.

The third round of six-party talks (involving North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the USA) aimed at persuading North Korea to cease its nuclear weapons programme met in Beijing in June, but little progress was achieved. North Korea refused to attend a fourth round scheduled for September. North Korea warned in October that it would use “war deterrent force†if the USA brought the nuclear dispute before the UN Security Council.

In October, the US President signed into law the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004, which provided humanitarian assistance and for North Koreans to be granted asylum in the USA.

International scrutiny of human rights record

In April, the UN Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution expressing deep concern about continuing reports of systemic, widespread and grave violations of human rights. A Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea was appointed in July.

In June, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) expressed concern at the limitations on civil and political rights of North Koreans, including children. It also expressed concern that the minimum age for voluntary enlistment in the armed forces was 16 and that school children were taught to assemble and dismantle weapons. The CRC raised concerns about the independence and impartiality of the authorities taking sentencing decisions in the juvenile justice system.

Denial of access

Information and access continued to be highly controlled. A three-member delegation of the CRC was allowed unprecedented access in April. However, despite repeated requests, the government continued to deny access to the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in North Korea and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food as well as to AI and other independent human rights monitors.

In October, the WFP announced that its staff in North Korea were not permitted free access to monitor aid distribution for “security reasonsâ€. This continued obstruction by the government and denial of access to monitors undermined accurate assessment of the population’s need for food assistance.

Freedom of expression

Severe restrictions on freedom of expression and association persisted. The news media was controlled by a single political party, which journalists were coerced into joining. According to reports, at least 40 journalists since the mid-1990s have been “re-educated†for errors such as misspelling a senior official’s name. Radio and television sets were tuned to receive only state broadcasts and those who listened to foreign radio stations risked being punished.

Freedom from hunger and malnutrition

Millions of North Koreans continued to suffer hunger and chronic malnutrition. Continued government restrictions on freedom of movement and information, lack of transparency and hampering of independent monitoring meant that food aid may not always have reached those most in need.

Rations from the Public Distribution System – the primary source of staple food for more than 70 per cent of the population – were reportedly set to decline from the already insufficient 319g per person per day in 2003 to 300g in 2004. Urban families reportedly spent up to 85 per cent of their incomes on food. Such households were heavily dependent on inflation-prone private markets, where staples cost 10 to 15 times more than in the government-run system.

Much of the population was afflicted by critical dietary deficiencies, consuming very little protein, fat or micro-nutrients. The CRC expressed concern about increasing infant and child mortality rates, high rates of malnourishment and stunting in children, and alarming increases in maternal mortality rates. It also expressed serious concern about lack of access to clean drinking water and poor sanitation.

The acute food shortages forced thousands to cross “illegally†to China’s north-eastern provinces. Those repatriated faced detention, interrogation and imprisonment in poor conditions.

Torture and ill-treatment

North Koreans forcibly repatriated from China were detained and interrogated in detention centres or police stations operated by the National Security Agency or the People’s Safety Agency.

Three North Korean nationals – Chang Gyung-chul, his brother Chang Gyung-soo and their cousin Chang Mi-hwa – were arrested by Chinese Security Police in Shanghai, China, in August 2003. They were taken to Sinuiju City, North Korea, for interrogation, then transferred to the National Security Agency detention centre in North Hamgyung Province.

In September 2004 Chang Gyung-chul and Chang Gyung-soo were each sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, apparently because of their unauthorized departure from North Korea. The unusually harsh sentence was attributed to the fact that their mother, Shin Jong-ai, who is now a South Korean citizen, was earlier imprisoned on similar charges.

Beatings were reportedly common during interrogation. If prisoners were caught communicating, they were beaten with wooden sticks or iron bars. After the beating, cold water was reportedly poured over the prisoners’ bodies, even in the middle of winter. Some prisoners were reportedly subjected to “water tortureâ€, where they were tied up and forced to drink large quantities of water.

Conditions in detention centres and prisons (which were severely overcrowded) worsened, partly as a result of the lack of food. Food shortages also reportedly resulted in deaths from malnutrition in political penal labour colonies or “control and management placesâ€. Prisoners charged with breaking prison rules had their food cut even further.

In June, the CRC expressed concern at reports of institutional violence against juveniles, especially in detention and in social institutions.

Executions

Reports of public executions continued to be received, although fewer in number than in previous years. Executions were by firing squad or hanging. The UN Commission on Human Rights resolution on North Korea expressed concern at public executions and the imposition of the death penalty for political reasons. Reports also suggested that extrajudicial executions and secret executions took place in detention facilities.

Women in custody

Women detainees were reportedly subjected to degrading prison conditions. Women detained after being forcibly returned from China were reportedly compelled to remove all clothes and were subjected to intimate body searches. Women stated that, during pre-trial detention, the male guards humiliated them and touched them inappropriately. All women, including those who were pregnant or elderly, were forced to work from early morning to late at night in fields or prison factories. Prisons lacked basic facilities for women’s needs.

North Korean asylum-seekers in Asia

Hundreds of North Koreans tried to enter foreign diplomatic missions and foreign-run schools in Beijing. More than 100 were in diplomatic missions, waiting for permission to leave China. In October, the Chinese government claimed that the diplomatic missions involved were too tolerant.

In July, at least 468 North Koreans flew from Viet Nam to South Korea, becoming the biggest single group of North Korean asylum-seekers to arrive there since the division of the peninsula. More than 5,000 North Koreans had reached South Korea and been granted South Korean nationality.

In October, Mongolian authorities detained two North Koreans seeking to reach the USA. They were attempting to fly to South Korea from where they hoped to take advantage of the US North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004.

The CRC expressed concern at reports of North Korean street children in Chinese border towns. It was also deeply concerned at reports that children (and their families) returning or deported back to North Korea were considered not as victims, but as perpetrators of a crime.

http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/prk-summary-eng

One might then conclude that certain people were trying to perpetrate a lie on the forum and come to a view about such a persons trustworthiness whenever they post.

Having thus researched the matter and further cosidered the things we all know have happened as they are reported by the US Armed Forces. And for which full reports videos and photographic evidense exists.

Having considered that such torture as has been found has angered those in the US Armed Forces as actions that denegrate the US millitary.

One might then ask what kind of sicko says it is OK?

One might ask whether such people can realy consider themselves US citizens?

One might ask who is so corrupting the US body politic that the sociopaths who commit torture think they can possibly get away with it.

This is the kind of thing that so sickens US voters enough that they ask the question:

"With such an untrustworthy NeoConMen entryist group controlling the US republican party how can any one feel safe to vote republican?"

Kind Regards Walker

[theavonlady 2]

Of course one might not take the word of some posting in this forum as the gospel truth on Amnesty International and in the spirit of finding out go to the Amnesty International website and five seconds later in the 2005 Amnesty International Report on North Korea one would find:

Quote[/b] ]North Korea

Covering events from January - December 2004

Yes.

Now why don't you read the article I posted again. You might notice it states:

<span style='color:red'>In 1995</span> a story broke in the Los Angeles Times..............

And later on:

Significant in the Times story was a brief note that both of these defectors had described their experiences to Amnesty International. To the shock of those who knew the full story, Amnesty categorically rejected their sworn testimony on the grounds that it was "untrustworthy." How can AI have arrived at such a stunning verdict? Because both Kang and the other defector were then living in South Korea. Amnesty had had South Korea in its sights for years even though the military government had collapsed in 1987 – a full eight years previously – and democracy was blooming there. Such an arbitrary decision to ignore Kim Jong Il’s concentration camps was not unique to this occasion.

So, Walker, what did Amnesty do from 1995 until their 2004 report was prepared? That is the question.

Of course one might not take the word of some posting in this forum as the gospel truth on Amnesty International.

But we already knew that.

[Nemesis6 0]

Maybe it's because amnesty can't openly operate inside places like Myanmar, China or north korea? It's kind of hard to join organizations that publicly oppose your goverment out there.

Maybe they shouldn't call themselves Amnesty International if it is indeed the case that they cannot properly operate in the places they monitor.

In all the time they've been accusing the Americans in Guantanamo of human rights abuses, they could have gathered support and/or pressured some of the worse off third-world countries to allow them access to their prisons instead of beating an old horse that, apparently, seems to be relatively fine.

I'll summerize it as such: They could have spent all their time bashing America on actually doing something in the third world, where human rights have no place.

Note to Walker - You can't talk to me, but you CAN participate in the discussions I start.You obviously still care about what I have to say, and that's cool, I guess. It's not that big a step, but it's a start.

[walker 0]

Hi all

First of all an aside to Avon

So, Walker, what did Amnesty do from 1995 until their 2004 report was prepared? That is the question.

Easiest of all is to consult an Amnesty International 1996 report which is when the anual report is compiled for 1995. The online reports on North Korea go back as far as the 1995 report on the year 1994 to 1995 the others between those dates are there for anyone to see.

http://www.amnestyusa.org/countri....05BB4F6

before then you have to go to a public library to get a copy.

One could do a search going back to 1995

http://www.amnesty.org/results....sortBy=

Having thus proven that Amnesty International was fully active in reporting on North Korea as with any other country that tortures, and that no country has a right to a get out of such a report not even the nations you or I live in.

One could then get back to the point of this thread the US Politics Thread.

Hi all

With money from Iraqi oil and US tax payers money and suposedly destined for Iraq, that was suposedly in the care of TBA, disapearing in the billions of dollars, voters may ask themselves are any members of the White House staff showing conspicuous and unexplained wealth?

Quote[/b] ]Rove's Unexplained Personal Wealth

by citizendc

Tue May 02, 2006 at 07:17:07 AM PDT

Have you ever wondered how a man who owns a $1,500,000 house in DC, a $1,000,000+ house in Florida and a $48,000 cottage in Texas manages to survive on $161,000 a year federal salary?  It's odd.

Would it raise questions that same man had sold a property to a shell company controlled by his former business partners and that man made between $250,000 and $750,000 profit?

Maybe it would raise further questions if those former business partners that bought the property were raking in millions of political dollars from the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, the RNC and multiple other Republican candidates?  Would that just be a coincidence?  Well, those are a string of coincidences that happened to Karl Rove.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/2/10177/11404

Follow link for the full lowdown on Karl's strange sources of income

Once you have done that one might come to the question that many US voters are asking:

""With such an untrustworthy NeoConMen entryist group controlling the US republican party how can any one feel safe to vote republican?"

Kind Regards Walker

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]Maybe they shouldn't call themselves Amnesty International when, if it is the case, that they cannot properly operate in the places they monitor. Or maybe their time spent hitting the only target that they actually have access to with all they've got.

In all the time they've been accusing the Americans in Guantanamo of human rights abuses, they could have gathered support and/or pressured some of the worse off third-world countries to allow them access to their prisons instead of beating an old horse that, apparently, seems to be relatively fine.

I'll summerize it as such: They could have spent all their time bashing America on actually doing something in the third world, where human rights have no place.

You´re having fun talking bull ?

AI has a total of 1.8 million members worldwide and bureaus in countries that accept their presence. AI covers a total of 150 countries and runs various campaigns presently.

What you are so upset about is a result of direct actions of US authorities and members of the US military and governmetal branch. Thgis report is/was conductewd for the UN that will begin their investigations on US cases this friday. The US is focussed by the UN on a regular pattern, as all the other member countries of the UN are.

Are you so egocentric not to see that AI is conducting reports on a vast number of countries and not exclusively the US ?

Can´t you click a link and find out ?

This is no private AI vendetta against the US, it´s a summary of things that US branches comitted and there´s little to debate.

AI and ICRC are not granted open acess to neither Gitmo nor other US run detention facilities. If there´s nothing to hide, why not grant full access ? You don´t actually believe the "liberal" claim you´re spilling here, do you ? There´s a world outside the US and AI operates in a lot more countries than your beloved US. "Liberal" per your definition is bound to the US defintion of liberal which is humbug. I guess the only country where "liberal" is that much abused and falsificated is the US.

Pls don´t try to transport that expression to AI, as you´ll make yourself look like someone who is unable to look over his coffeemug.

Again,

AI is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion. It does not support or oppose any government or political system, nor does it support or oppose the views of the victims whose rights it seeks to protect. It is concerned solely with the impartial protection of human rights.

AI is a democratic, self-governing movement. Major policy decisions are taken by an International Council made up of representatives from all national sections.

As you´re so unwilling to accept the fact that AI is doing a lot more than criticizing your beloved TBA, here you get some of the current campaigns that they run:

Stop violence against women

Control Arms

Stop torture

Death penalty

Human rights defenders

Refugess and migrants

International Justice

Globalization

Childsoldiers

UN

Those are only a glimpse of the campaigns running.

Get your facts straight and stop trying to tell us nonsense.

Edit:

Just thought about it. By your definition a US citizen can´t really be a US citizen as he does not live in all states. So he/she can only be a a citizen of a certain state. As he can´t live in all towns of the state he´s just the citizen of the village x. So basically no US citizen is really a US citizen and therefore should not be allowed to comment and act on things that are a matter of the US.

[theavonlady 2]

And regarding Amnety's 2005 report, their slanted agendas still shines through:

Quote[/b] ]Amnesty: For North Korea

By Patrick Devenny

FrontPageMagazine.com[/u] | June 22, 2005

The far-Left is nothing if not tenacious. Not only has Amnesty International condemned the United States in the harshest possible terms -- in the middle of a war when international image is vital -- but its most recent report spends more time criticizing the rogue pranks at Gitmo more harshly than the death camps run by the North Koreans.

Rather than apologizing after referring to the American detention center in Guantanamo Bay as a gulag, Amnesty International has attempted a unique maneuver to break out of its public relations death spiral. The “non-partisan†advocacy group has taken to calling actual gulag survivors and begging for their endorsement of Amnesty's statement. In an editorial published in The Washington Post on June 18th, Soviet gulag veteran Pavel Litvinov recounted how a senior Amnesty staffer called him asking for his public support. When Litvinov suggested there was quite a difference between his own experiences and those of the terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo, the staffer responded “Sure, but after all, it attracts attention to the problem of Guantanamo detainees."

This kind of shocking disregard for the facts in the name of anti-American agitprop is hardly surprising to long time critics of Amnesty. When Amnesty International's executive director, Irene Khan, made her reckless gulag assertion, it was the latest in a string of grating hyperbole. If Amnesty can turn the detention facility in Guantanamo into a gulag, imagine how they would judge a truly brutal prison system. Imagine what Amnesty would say, what they would write, about a hypothetical country with actual death camps, reeducation centers, and government sponsored murder on a scale rarely seen in history.

Of course, such a country does exist: it's North Korea. You would hardly know about Pyongyang’s cruelty, however, if you were limited to reading Amnesty International annual reports. As originally pointed out by FrontPage Magazine contributor Lt. Colonel Gordon Cucullu, Amnesty cannot be bothered with the testimony of those escaping from Kim Jong-Il’s prison state. The group is more than willing to deem the testimony from violent jihadists “troubling†and “credible,†but North Korean citizens are considered “untrustworthy.†So what exactly does Amnesty say about North Korea in its latest report?

Not much. The first thing you will notice when reading Amnesty’s 2005 report on human rights in North Korea is the length of the article, or rather, lack of same. Amnesty writers have managed to fit the abject brutality of North Korea into an article shorter than the one you are reading now. Amnesty, amazingly, takes only 1,351 words to describe the most brutal and despotic regime on the face of the earth. In comparison, Israel, or in Amnesty parlance “Israel/Occupied Territory,†needs 2,592 words. The U.S, not surprisingly, rates three times the North Korean word count. North Korea’s 200,000 slave laborers, its dozens of political prison camps, its mass interrogation and torture facilities near the Chinese border, all in 1,351 words.

In actuality, the Amnesty International report on North Korea barely mentions any of these horrors. It is 1,351 words of avoidance and oversight, of misdirection and outright ignorance. Whether this is intentional or simply shoddy research (either is certainly possible when Amnesty is involved) is, in the end, irrelevant. While Amnesty takes great strides to attack the Bush administration, it barely scratches the surface of the North Korean nightmare. What does Amnesty miss? Let us start with its treatment of the prison camps, or, as Amnesty calls them, “detention centers.†Amnesty criticizes the detention centers for being overcrowded and being run by cruel guards who often beat prisoners. Of course, Amnesty’s description of North Korean prisons is fairly similar to their nightmarish portrayal of the American penal system.

Leftist critics of President Bush’s “aggressive†policy towards North Korea blanched when he had the temerity to declare that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il operated concentration camps. If anything, the president’s rhetoric was excessively restrained. The communist government of North Korea operates nothing less than a nightmarish prison camp system analogous to the murderous designs of Hitler and Stalin. An estimated 12 camps, or kwan-li-sos, are currently run by the government, which hold between 150,000-200,000 total prisoners. In the camps, those imprisoned are often forced to labor until they die, either by starvation or exhaustion. The camps themselves are massive, with some larger than American counties and one, Camp Huaong, larger than the city of Washington D.C. In other camps, it is estimated that 20 to 25 percent of the total prison population dies every year, leading to a staggering amount of death. These prisoners are often arrested by authorities with no explanation or formal procedure. In some instances, three generations are jailed together, with children being imprisoned for the imagined crimes of their grandparents. In other smaller prison camps, run by the North Korean security apparatus, prisoners are routinely tortured and politically “re-educated.†These camps are not hidden, one can easily view satellite photos of them, along with descriptions from the many North Koreans who have escaped. Amnesty, apparently, has not found such evidence compelling enough to include this in their report.

Another aspect of Amnesty’s human rights analysis is North Korea’s treatment of women. If you listen to Amnesty, female prisoners in North Korea have it rough, but nothing extraordinary. Apparently, women are “humiliated†before their trials by being strip searched. Prisons also lacked women’s restrooms and female inmates were routinely “degraded†by authorities. All of this is fairly loathsome, but as Amnesty so readily reminds us, North Korea is, after all, a signatory to the UN’s Women’s Convention.

North Korea’s ratification of the Women’s Convention certainly does not help women who become pregnant in the country’s camp system. Amnesty fails to even mention the horrific practice of forced abortion and infanticide that regularly takes place inside the kwan-li-so. Escaped detainees report numerous instances of prison guards carrying out forced abortions on multiple women at a time. In other scenarios, the babies are delivered, only to be immediately slaughtered by security police. Amnesty apparently forgets to tell the story of one female inmate, a school teacher caught trying to escape to Mongolia, who had been captured and was almost beaten to death at the Onsong In-min-bo-an-seong punishment camp in November 1999. Another female inmate imprisoned in a security facility recalled seeing an elderly woman made to do repetitive exercises until she passed out and died on the floor. These testimonies represent just the tip of the iceberg concerning the horrific fate awaiting imprisoned women in North Korea, who are also subject to mass rape by prison guards. Again, Amnesty fails to mention these atrocities, featuring absolutely zero testimonies or inmate interviews in their latest report.

One of Amnesty’s main complaints and criticisms concerning the United States is its preservation of the death penalty. Amnesty’s report breathlessly recounts the 59 executions carried out in the United States during the 2004, which supposedly represents the United States’ continued abuse of “international law.†Amnesty also makes reckless accusations that various American crime labs produce faulty results in death row convictions. The American government is deemed “retentionist†in its refusal to sign various anti-death penalty conventions sponsored by the United Nations.

Regarding the North Korean “death penalty,†if arbitrary and public executions can be described by such a judicial designation, Amnesty is considerably more subdued. Instead of the lengthy examination given to the American death penalty, Amnesty delivers a cursory criticism of the North Korean penchant for “secret executions,†although no cases are cited. The truth is far more disturbing than Amnesty’s four sentence description imparts. Executions are a part of every day life in North Korea, where “class enemies†are regularly hanged in public squares, with hundreds of school children forced to watch. Execution-worthy crimes include petty theft, Christian worship, or attempting to escape North Korea (many escapees have been forcibly returned by China, demonstrating their complicity in this cycle). Those who have fled North Korea have described the construction of several mass execution facilities that can be mobilized quickly were the United States to attack. A recent video smuggled out of North Korea showed three prisoners, charged with fleeing the country, tied up to poles and shot by firing squads. Yet Amnesty fails to mention this case which is actually captured on video, unlike the claims of imprisoned Islamic extremists on Guantanamo. Indeed, citing no supporting evidence, Amnesty declares that executions in North Korea have actually decreased.

Defenders of Amnesty may claim, as Amnesty itself does throughout its report, that North Korea is so isolated that it would be nearly impossible to compile a comprehensive and lengthy report on their human rights abuses. This faulty excuse is called into question by the invaluable work of the U.S Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a private organization with minute resources as compared to the well funded and connected Amnesty International. Their 2003 report on North Korea’s gulags features a wealth of information -- including satellite photos, dozens of eyewitness testimonies from North Korea, and detailed maps -- showing the extent of the North Korea prison state.

Basically, the committee does everything Amnesty is unwilling to do, namely detail the harsh truths of the North Korean human rights record. Their honesty stands in stark contrast to the omission and posturing that characterizes Amnesty’s treatment of the issue.

The scale of the North Korean slaughter is staggering. While Amnesty screams bloody murder over the 550 detainees in Guantanamo Bay, it barely mentions the 200,000 people currently held in various concentration camps throughout Kim Jong-Il’s kingdom. How can one explain this reprehensible oversight? Perhaps it is the elevated press coverage gained by Amnesty whenever they make their inflated charges against the Bush administration. These faulty aspersions bring in additional financial contributions from like-minded leftists, while denunciations of North Korea only serve to aid the “unilateralist†foreign policy of the Bush administration. The horror being perpetrated by the North Korean government represents the great crime of our modern era, yet Amnesty International is content with spewing politically motivated invective against the United States. Hopefully, history will note Amnesty’s shameful silence in the face of our modern slaughter.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Patrick Devenny is the Henry M. Jackson National Security Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington D.C.

Sadly,

Avon

[ralphwiggum 6]

this is US Politics thread, not Amnesty International Thread.

also, nemesis6, if you want to talk about left wing bias and etc, while derailing thread, you would be asked to take some time away. And this goes same for the other side too. stay on topic.

[Acecombat 0]

Quote[/b] ] Not only has Amnesty International condemned the United States in the harshest possible terms -- in the middle of a war when international image is vital -- but its most recent report spends more time criticizing the rogue pranks at Gitmo more harshly than the death camps run by the North Koreans.

I'd rather be harsh with someone whos preaching something to others quite loudly and yet cant bother practising it himself , then to someone who doesnt profess to being the most civilized nation on earth.