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US faces prison ship allegations The United Nations says it has learned of serious allegations that the US is secretly detaining terrorism suspects, notably on American military ships. The special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak said the accusations were rumours at this stage, but urged the US to co-operate in an investigation. He said the UN wants lists of the places of detention and those held. The comments come five days after the UN accused the US of stalling on their requests to visit Guantanamo Bay. Investigators have been asking to visit the jail in Cuba to carry out checks...

There is no doubt that the Internet has opened up a whole new way of communication for everyone who can access it. Email, websites, digital downloads; what used to take days if not weeks to communicate through letters and photographs can now be done in less that thirty seconds. So, it is curious how anyone can still be “played” by the disingenuous when it comes to ideological propaganda. Last week, Amnesty International went to great pains to orchestrate a few well-attended press conferences. At each of these media events they repeated the same baseless allegation: The United States of America...

It's good to see that Amnesty International has had to backtrack from its comparison of Guantanamo Bay to the Soviet "gulag." Less than two weeks after making that analogy, Amnesty's U.S. boss issued what amounted to a full retraction on "Fox News Sunday" this weekend. "Clearly, this is not an exact or a literal analogy," said William Schulz. "In size and in duration, there are not similarities between U.S. detention facilities and the gulag. . . . People are not being starved in those facilities. They're not being subjected to forced labor." Thanks for clearing that up. And what about...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government is operating an "archipelago" of prisons around the world, many of them secret camps into which people are being "literally disappeared," a top Amnesty International official said Sunday. Amnesty International executive director William Schulz criticized the administration of U.S. President George W Bush for holding alleged battlefield combatants in "indefinite incommunicado detention" without access to lawyers in an interview with Fox News Sunday. Schulz was pressed to substantiate Amnesty's claim in a May 25 report that the U.S. prison camp at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba naval base — where hundreds of foreign terror suspects are...

Amnesty International leader: left must join war on terror From: Louis Proyect Subject: Amnesty International leader: left must join war on terror Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 06:04:06 -0800 Why the antiwar left must confront terrorismThe director of Amnesty International USA warns that the left must confront terror with the same zeal that it battles Bush -- or risk irrelevance. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Mark Follman, salon.comNov. 15, 2003 | More than two years into the Bush administration's lurching war on terror, William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, is...

Nov. 15, 2003 | More than two years into the Bush administration's lurching war on terror, William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, is aiming some of his sharpest criticism not at the White House, but at the American political left. His message: Take on the terror threat, or risk irrelevance. War protesters of various stripes, alongside anti-globalization and human rights activists, have staged several large rallies nationwide this year, channeling their anger at the Bush administration through slogans like "No blood for oil," "End the imperialist occupation" and "Regime change begins at home." But in an interview with...

Amnesty International?s executive director says Washington?s war against Al Qaeda has dealt a severe blow to human rights worldwide By Brian Braiker NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE   May 29 -- The "war on terror" ensured that 2002 was a good year for political repression, arbitrary detentions, draconian immigration measures and torture, according to Amnesty International's annual report, released this week. THE LONDON-BASED international human-rights watchdog made its fiercest assault yet on the policies pursued by the United States and Britain since the attacks of September 11, 2001. According to the report, the U.S.-led antiterror campaign has done more to harm human...