Peter Benenson RIP

basicly revol we are agreeing. now all i've got to get you to do is start hugging trees

i agree with this although i could say that i'd like to know how amnesty chose to defend that approach ( i suspect its to do with not pissing off mps who can choose to support amnesty cause like you said its for folk in other countries and so its safe in terms of question time in parliament, funding etc.. but thats the cynical me. maybe someone whose part of amnesty would like to tell us why.)

so whats the criteria of a "good" charity then that an unhypocritical anarchist caught in contradiction would want to donate to? who is doing decent grassroots work? the criteria of emergency aid doesn't really work , cause one of those big players is the one cited in the example i gave above of the "new colonialism".

so if you accept the contradictions, its ok to support amnesty international then?

people can of course get involved in working on campaigns that amnesty works on independent of them as a charity, but essentially without the resources. by resources i mean not just physical resources like photocopiers etc but the wider resources. amnesty have a database, contacts, networks nationally and internationally which i would kill for and thats a major problem. if we are going to replace charity then we need to think seriously about how. even letter writing campaigns rely on a huge amount of information in the background. and the massive network that amnesty is undoubtably produces results that we cannot do.

amnesty may not be taking food and medical supplies out but they would argue that they influence governments to stop torturing someone, that they and their supporters get that person out of their personal, politically induced hell. and sometimes they do. why is that fundementally less valuable than save the children flying in with a plane full of food?

the argument of immediate effects (medical supplies/food) is wrong. you can't argue on the one hand that charities perpetuate and excuse capitalism and then say its ok if its an emergency. its not. the players in the game are the same. and if they weren't right yesterday they aren't right today for all the reasons you used earlier.

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it came back. someone came to the door in the middle of me thinking, taking it down and putting it up again... damn doorbells. in a anarchist society we'd have no doors.

The natural disaster I think is a slightly different kettle of fish from the man-made one. In the case of the man-made one there will be invested intetrests, it willhave heppened for a reason and if it is a governmental or corporate one, there will be pressures on groups like Amnesty in all the ways we described earlier.

Although this is still a factor in natural disasters (the Indonesian rebels for example), it is much reduced. What's more under those circumstances charity can act as a counterbalance against corporate loan sharking (i.e if the money is already there to make improvements without needing world bank loans, fewer loans can be made).

of course there is a difference between someone collecting signatures for a petition and someone involved in emergency relief work. but your not answering my point. which is you are arguing in that some circumstances ie. natural disaster, charity is ok which just negates everything yoiu said earlier about charity. the fundamental arguments are the same so i dont get why if a tsuinami hits then charities ok, and if people are locked up, tortured, harrassed, beaten its not.

are you talking now about differences in activist actions like collecting signatures on a petition is less valuable than relief work on the ground? if i'm going to go down the path of defending amnesty then that doesn't work in that amnesty does way more then just get people to sign petitions. and yes, i agree signing petitions is a waste of time except that it does hook people to come and talk with you about whats going on. but in terms of charity the game remains the same. no matter where on the stage you're playing.

Revol you've made some excellent points. It's a real pity you're such a cunt.

To add to points already made, maybe the most damaging effect of Amnesty is that it paints the oppressed as exceptions rather the general rule. According to them, what's wrong with the world is not a globalised class divide perpetuated by capital but a few powercrazed (black or Asian) leaders who threw a couple of affluent journalists in jail. Once said journalist is released and free to criticise the leader's haircut, everything's AOK and we can all go back inside.

Lucy you misunderstood me. I was merely backing up someone else who said that Amnesty make any abuses of "human rights" (sic) seem to be far away from home in the Third World. And everyone's heard a Third World sob story before.

don't agree with you saying according to amnesty its a few powercrazed black or asian leaders who threw affluent journalists into jail because i've never seen any evidence to suggest amnesty are racist in practice or that they only give a shit about rich journalists. they did some really good shit around refugees and asylum and don't tell me its not relevent to the working classes.

this is the post alan is replying too. sorry. computer fuckup this time. not my fault.

The fuck??

what?? the computer froze and when i went back the post had gone and it was the blue screen of death and ahhh shit...

i need money to buy a new computer. i want to be an NGO. i want government funding. i want the national lottery......

oh shit just realised i replied

d

to what you said and you took it down and arrrrggghhh i will never leave the house again... i am mrs haversham now and its your fault.

so amnestys ok if they are doing research in chilie but not if they are trying to get people involved on the ground outside your house because that would be useless. hmmmm. theres something truely fucked about that, revol, that i can't be arsed to point out.

moving on swiftly, your talking crap. all charities stick their heads into the political arena. thats how charities get funded. endless bids and compromises with government and the rest. they all make fucking ducks of themselves and the arguments you trotted out yourself against charity as a concept still holds, whether in the face of a tsunami or giving crutches to little kiddies cause the nhs can't afford it. just out of interest, talking in a roundabout way of charity, politics, the nhs etc. there is a kids hospice in manchester that gets three days funding a year from the government, for the rest of the time they rely on businesses (bless them) and ordinary people getting their wallet out. three days fucking funding a year. is the work they do worth less or more than the work that the major charities do when they fly into desperate situations and dig people out of rubble? is there some qualitative factor that makes one persons grief more deserving of charity than another? of course there isn't. the result of charitable work does not change the basis of why you criticise charity.

cause the charities whose area of operation includes natural disasters are somehow less full of middle class careerists and people using it as something to stick on their cv or big people in human rights and those who sit on government quangos than er.. amnesty.

you sure about that?

thats the issue that came up before, StreetSeen. Do you know what amnesty says about why it doesn't get involved in the countries its being active in?

It occurred to me last night (when I didn't have web access) that there is an "anarchist Amnesty" -- it's called the Anarchist Black Cross, and it supports class struggle prisoners (unlike Amnesty). Perhaps posters in London might like to get a group going (even if it's just an e-mail list with the odd meeting) -- I know it's been talked about off & on for a while, but it seems to keep coming to nothing. I'd certainly be up for it.

The policy behind not working in own country is based on the idea that in certain countries human rights workers are persecuted (and, resultantly, often the subject of Amnesty campaigns). While not such a problem in the UK it is more of one in some of the more dictatorial states Amnesty is involved with.

Whilst their letter writing campaigns are nothing like what I'd refer to as actions, they have a tremendous effect in certain instances. A thousand AI letters descending on a dank prison in a tucked away corner of China, for instance, can do more to save a life there than anything the Anarchist movement could. By contrast, it would have little or no effect on achieving the end of capitalism. To each there own and all that.

Basically it comes down to the age-old debate - whether to mend the system or change it completely. Sad though it may be, but elderly pensioners and middle England seems to enjoy (for the most part) the system in which we currently operate. It's not therefore surprising that they choose to operate within it. It may be bollocks but at least they're getting involved in their own way.

Unlike the SWP, Amnesty does not preach "revolution". Unlike the SWP it's not setting itself up as a vanguard, or any such nonsense. By contrast, it does one thing very well and so continues to do it.

Yes it's heirachical, yes it's middle class. Yes they avoid politics to appeal to a mass audience. It would be great if it was run as a horizontal-political-direct action group. But then it would be just another branded anarchist organisation. And do we really want another of those?

so are there people in other countries writing letters to the british government about 'human rights' abuses in the uk?

Organising family based activities, having social events, especially as someone could research it and do those based around working hours, tho it might be useful to look at what already exists before jumping in like some activist, i mean i'm not really into providing an ''anarchist version'' of things that are already in place, realistically you'd have to look at who falls through the gaps of the existing structures, and that requires research.

Um, just a minor, icredibly picky, and no doubt annoying point revol, you said;

"Fuck i think most people knw rape is wrong but they still fucking do it."

Do you really think most people rape? Or is this (hopefully) just a case of sloppy grammar?

nah just sloppy interpretation I think. "They" obviously just means the few people who do rape.

no clearly what we need is a stronger UN and international court of human rights

I think putting together the community organising group could lay the groundwork for something like that, as well as a bunch of other initiatives.

That's the theory at least.

Nah, that'd be bollocks in the long term. But in the short term, while we're working towards something better, that might have achieved some of the same aims we work towards.

It would still be bollocks though.

Well yeah...I mean, the intention of a community organising group would be to foster a sense of community and responsibility that would ideally result in people starting up their own initiatives and taking joint control of their communities right??