As Deacon noted earlier today, Amnesty International has jumped on the anti-U.S. bandwagon; there is some evidence that the organization’s outlandish “Gulag” charge was an attempt to garner headlines and stimulate contributions. More evidence comes in from a reader who points out:
Have you been to the news page on the Amnesty International website at http://news.amnesty.org?
There’s a huge banner there (like an ad banner) saying “USA Betraying Human Rights”.
Looking back (via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine http://www.archive.org ) I can find no other time when the news page has carried a banner like that. I guess this situation warranted extra attention in that it is the most egregious and unconscionable deprivation of human rights going on in the world today. No, wait…what about North Korea, Belarus, Zimbabwe, China, Burma, etc., etc., etc. Where are the banners for them?
What also strikes me is the crude “bumper sticker” nature of the enterprise. Basically it’s saying “Let’s just throw nuance and context right out the window and make a crude polemical statement”. On a so-called “news” page, no less. By an organization that prides itself on specifics and close analysis of facts on the ground.
Our reader was right; here’s the banner:
Plus, if you follow the link you get a video of Noam Chomsky, of all people, and interviews with the parents of three Guantanamo detainees.
There was a time when Amnesty could legitimately claim to be a nonpartisan organization whose reports were carefully researched and reliable. Those days, unfortunately, are gone, and the organization no longer has any credibility.
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