Rondi Adamson says `gulag' attack on U.S. reveals Amnesty bias

Can anyone say damage control?

Leave it to a pundit whose work is published in the CSM and USA Today (both bastions of a free and independent press, to be sure ;p), to come up with this lovely piece of western media propaganda.

Her indignation with the Amnesty International report seems to stem from their liberal use of the word "gulag" to describe conditions at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. But rather than deal with numerous reports of abuse and torture that have been documented by guards, visitors and prisoners alike, she immediately shifts blame away by insisting that the word "gulag" be reserved for countries like Cuba, North Korea, and pre-invasion Iraq.

(One can only wonder if Ms. Adamson is aware that Guantanamo Bay is actually in Cuba and the irony of her statements therein.)

She then goes on to divert even more attention away from ongoing United Statesian war crimes by rambling on about Darfur. This is another well-worn trick of punditry, whereby the paid mouthpiece for the Bush Reich takes one little item out of context and magnifies it so that the original point is buried in gloss and obfuscation.

It is literally quite painful to watch as she tries to justify the lies and crimes of her chosen country, but one assumes she must literally believe such nonsense or perhaps as long as it keeps putting food on the table.

Time will tell.

Anyway, here is her entire essay, with lies intact.

Read at your own risk!

Relic

May 29, 2005. 01:00 AM

The Canadian government should not investigate allegations made about the United States in the Amnesty International report because the report itself is impossible to treat with respect.

Much attention has been focused on the report's claim that the U.S. detention centre at Guantanamo Bay is the "gulag of our times," and rightly so. This comparison is preposterous. A gulag of our times exists in Cuba, or North Korea, and existed in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, until the United States intervened.

But there is more, and much is revealed — if we didn't know already — about Amnesty International's ideological persuasion.

Take the section in the report that purports to dissect the brutality in Sudan. Guess who is held, at root, responsible for the ongoing horrors in Darfur? (You have three guesses, and the first two don't count). Sectarian militias and/or Sudanese government backed groups keen to slaughter those of a different racial background?

No.

The United Nations, champions of peace, they would have us believe, but now seemingly stunned into powerlessness? No. The forces most to blame are in Washington. While the 308-page report generously concedes that "the world stands idly watching" as Darfur unfolds, it also suggests that the world does so because of the United States.

As the "unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power," the United States "sets the tone for governmental behaviour worldwide." It is the war on terror, the report asserts, that erodes human rights and "grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity."

One wonders, if we are all so influenced by the United States, and prone to following their example, why don't we all live in utterly free countries?

I hope Irene Khan, Amnesty International's secretary general, will answer that question in an upcoming report.

In insisting that governments around the world investigate or arrest Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales, Amnesty is suggesting that the war on terror be fought in criminal courts.

But the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere, are not defendants, or political dissidents. They are captured enemy combatants. It is not illegal to detain them until the conflict is over, according to the rules of war.

PoWs during World War II did not get a day in court, or a public defender. The prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere, is another matter and inexcusable. But it is being dealt with in a swift and transparent manner, as it should be, by American military justice. Some perpetrators have already been sentenced.

If the people at Amnesty wish to address human rights abuses, they will have to put aside their political agenda. Practical help for true political dissidents, all over the world, is lacking.

Spreading lies about the United States and going after the wrong people won't help any of them a lick.

Rondi Adamson is a Toronto writer whose work has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal Europe, USA Today and Tech Central Station.