wrote in message
Amnesty International....

Pffft.

NOYB wrote:
wrote in message
Amnesty International....

Pffft.

Ah, the sound of NOYB's ears touching as his mind narrows even more.

wrote in message
oups.com...


NOYB wrote:
wrote in message
Amnesty International....

Pffft.

Ah, the sound of NOYB's ears touching as his mind narrows even more.


2 posts this morning and 2 insults. Why?

*JimH* wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...


NOYB wrote:
wrote in message
Amnesty International....

Pffft.

Ah, the sound of NOYB's ears touching as his mind narrows even more.


2 posts this morning and 2 insults. Why?

Uh, it's not an insult. Would you not think that someone who simply
poo-poos a piece because a particular group, no matter how much fact is
involved, is narrow minded?

wrote in message
oups.com...


*JimH* wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...


NOYB wrote:
wrote in message
Amnesty International....

Pffft.

Ah, the sound of NOYB's ears touching as his mind narrows even more.


2 posts this morning and 2 insults. Why?

Uh, it's not an insult. Would you not think that someone who simply
poo-poos a piece because a particular group, no matter how much fact is
involved, is narrow minded?


Don't divert from the original question. Why do you find it necessary to
constantly insult folks here?

Prior to your reply you made 2 posts this morning and both were insults.
Why?

I have tried to defend you but found it useless as I see that you just
continue with your behavior. Folks then push back to you exactly what you
give them on a daily basis. Doesn't that bother you? Don't you understand
why? Aren't you tired of being made to look foolish?

You have shown that you can make positive contributions here. Although
rare, they do pop up from time to time. That is the person we want to see.

Change your way and maybe folks will learn to respect you. Until then you
get what you sow Kevin. Don't count on me defending you anymore until that
change happens.

*JimH* wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...


*JimH* wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...


NOYB wrote:
wrote in message
Amnesty International....

Pffft.

Ah, the sound of NOYB's ears touching as his mind narrows even more.


2 posts this morning and 2 insults. Why?

Uh, it's not an insult. Would you not think that someone who simply
poo-poos a piece because a particular group, no matter how much fact is
involved, is narrow minded?


Don't divert from the original question. Why do you find it necessary to
constantly insult folks here?

Prior to your reply you made 2 posts this morning and both were insults.
Why?

I have tried to defend you but found it useless as I see that you just
continue with your behavior. Folks then push back to you exactly what you
give them on a daily basis. Doesn't that bother you? Don't you understand
why? Aren't you tired of being made to look foolish?

You have shown that you can make positive contributions here. Although
rare, they do pop up from time to time. That is the person we want to see.

Change your way and maybe folks will learn to respect you. Until then you
get what you sow Kevin. Don't count on me defending you anymore until that
change happens.

Holy ****, Jim. How am I "diverting"? I said that it wasn't an insult.
It's a fact.

"NOYB" wrote in message
ink.net...

wrote in message
Amnesty International....

Pffft.



Amnesty International's irresponsible charges

Dennis Byrne, a Chicago-area writer and consultant
Published May 30, 2005


By labeling the U.S. anti-terrorism prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the
"gulag of our times," the people of Amnesty International must think we're
stupid or ignorant.

Stupid or ignorant enough to fall for the assertion that whatever is
happening at Guantanamo is the legal and moral equivalent of what happened
in the hundreds of slave labor and concentration camps scattered throughout
the former communist Soviet Union. Equivalent to a system that brutalized
tens of millions, of which untold millions died of starvation, exposure,
exhaustion, torture, illness or execution.

OK, maybe in light of this generation's dismal ignorance of history, we
deserve to be treated like dummies. But Amnesty International, which
purports to speak on behalf of human rights everywhere, ought to know
better. And if we let it get away with this historical obscenity, then we
are stupid.

Amnesty International might as well have compared the treatment of a few
hundred detainees at Guantanamo to the Holocaust. To review the gulag's
history: Millions of political dissenters, victims of police state terror,
assorted "undesirables," ethnic minorities (e.g. Chechens and Crimean
Tartars) and others guilty of doing nothing wrong were shipped to the gulag
to mine, build railroads, dig canals, toil in factories, clear forests and
perform other slave labor. Until they were too sick to continue or just
dropped dead, left to become a part of the permafrost. Millions more were
shot or died in Holocaust-style cattle cars before getting there.

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, in her Pulitzer-Prize winning
book, "Gulag: A History," figures that from 1928 through 1953, about 24
million people passed through the various camps, many in brutal Siberia or
other remote regions. That's more than twice Cuba's entire population. Among
them were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of prisoners of World War
II. She estimated that 600,000 were Japanese, who were kept in the slave
camps for years after the end of the war. Few ever made it home.

Either Amnesty International isn't aware of this history, or it knows of it
but is lying for the sake of a good sound bite. In either case, the group
has lost credibility to speak on behalf of the victims of human-rights
violations. Moreover, Amnesty International has dishonored millions of gulag
victims.

Of course, the media took the bait. Mindlessly and without hesitation, they
repeated the gulag charge, as if Amnesty International says it is so, it
must be so. If the media felt compelled to report that kind of remark, at
least in the interests of balance and accuracy, they should have added a
brief sentence noting that the gulag was a network of old Soviet
concentration camps to which millions were sent to suffer and die. An
Associated Press report, found on The New York Times Web site, took that
course, but only made matters worse by asserting that "thousands," not
millions, died in the gulag. Haven't Times editors read the newspaper's own
review of Applebaum's book? No wonder the media deserve such public
contempt.

Amnesty International's reckless use of such a loaded word and the media's
unquestioning acceptance of group's assertion as fact prove to be a useful
insight into the warped mindset of the political left, and its compulsion to
believe that the United States and President Bush are everywhere the enemies
of compassion, justice, freedom and the good. For the political left, the
causing of "offense" is the highest of all civic sins, yet the offense of
equating the treatment of Guantanamo detainees with the gulag millions
passed virtually unnoticed by them. No doubt about the reason: It serves the
left's agenda to discredit an administration and its policies--policies that
have brought to millions of people the prospects of democracy.

Am I making too much of the misuse of a single word? First, the group's use
of gulag wasn't a casual slip of the tongue; it was calculated. As the left
is pleased to often remind everyone, "words have consequences." And the
unacceptable consequence of the gulag comparison is the debasement of the
word "atrocity" and a general desensitizing of moral outrage.

On this Memorial Day, it might be worth a moment to remember that Guantanamo
Bay is run by Americans who do not deserve to be lumped together with a mass
slaughter of historic proportions. Certainly, we must be vigilant to prevent
any human-rights violations committed by all nations, including ours. But,
we need not tolerate this slander against the men and women of the American
military and the citizens who support them.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/o...commentary-hed