This plus amnesty int’l (an imperial NGO) turning on Zelensky makes me think we are nearing a turning point in Ukraine.

  • @thervingi
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    292 years ago

    America will fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian.

      • @i_must_destroy@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        I wonder how this will shake out? Most Americans are incapable of critical thinking, but you think blowing through several billion in a few months for a failed proxy war would raise some alarms.

        • @aworldtowin
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          82 years ago

          Yeah, the issue is that in the US people have the memory of a burning log. People will be upset, state dept will go on about how it’s totally necessary for democracy, then after Ukraine loses they’ll use that to boost military spending further and people will forget after 1 election cycle. It’s honestly brilliant the way these same ruling class ghouls can wipe their hands clean of all responsibility every 4-8 years.

        • @carpe_modo@lemmygrad.ml
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          52 years ago

          You underestimate how bloodthirsty many of the people here are. And how little empathy we show to the poor (it’s more like downright contempt and hatred). Foreign wars are also like entertainment for many people here.

  • Amicese
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    1 year ago

    deleted by creator

  • @CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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    212 years ago

    Zelensky actually asked Europe to take some of the soldiers in their hospitals lmao. Thankfully we said no, I don’t want more fucking fascists here.

    (It’s also a direct hostile action against Russia that could, in some aspects, allow them to strike back with weapons).

            • @redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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              62 years ago

              I wouldn’t be surprised if this was signed off at various levels in Amnesty, so there’s no individual to really lay the blame with.

              I wonder if this shows how a security state(s) can unleash the propaganda machine and lose control of the narrative. So any sign of retraction is more of a ‘Oh shit, we completely misjudged the public mood.’ They might have been expecting a more reasonable reception?

              At the same time, I doubt the people in Amnesty are at all involved in that propaganda machine. So more like, as you say, they’re ‘infiltrated’ and will likely be given a stern word.

        • lemmygrabber
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          112 years ago

          The apology is not really an apology. They are basically saying “sorry we made you mad”. They still stand by their findings.

          What I have noticed about Amnesty is that they criticise literally everyone which I think by itself is fine. But their criticisms that align with the goals of the American hegemony are the ones that get signal boosted.

  • @MessMattress@lemmygrad.ml
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    102 years ago

    This is somewhat unrelated, but how is amnesty international an imperial NGO? I’ve seen some bad takes from them but their criticism have been helpful more often than not.

    • @redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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      142 years ago

      This answer does not address your question directly but it highlights the link between the British state and Amnesty International.

      Background: Amnesty International tried to have Pinochet prosecuted for his crimes in Chile, after his coup against Allende. (Who funded that coup, I wonder?)

      There was a famous case in the UK House of Lords (now called the Supreme Court) involving Pinochet.

      I’ll ignore the complication that, in the same era, other branches of the British state would likely have protected Pinochet. So the following facts are not to suggest that Amnesty and e.g. the British state are always aligned or always chasing the same goals.

      The House of Lords case had to be heard twice because Pinochet’s legal team later learned that one of the Law Lords in the first sitting, Lord Hoffman, was connected to Amnesty International.

      His wife, Lady Hoffman, worked at Amnesty International’s International Secretariat, providing admin support and performing receptionist duties. So not very high up, but…

      Amnesty International’s solicitors then revealed that Lord Hoffman was a ‘Director and Chairperson of Amnesty International Charity Limited’, and

      in 1997 Lord Hoffmann helped in the organisation of a fund raising appeal for a new building for Amnesty International UK. He helped organise this appeal together with other senior legal figures, including the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham. … You should also note that in 1982 Lord Hoffmann, when practising at the Bar [i.e. a lawyer appearing in courts], appeared in the Chancery Division [a court for civil, rather than criminal, issues] for Amnesty International UK.

      He was not employed or remunerated by Amnesty or the Amnesty charity, and there was some suggestion that as a director of the charity he was not involved in the political side of things, but this is just legal wrangling. He was closely connected to Amnesty International, as were other senior judicial figures, by the looks of it. The House of Lords gave an example (paras added to break up the text):

      of the close interaction between the functions of AICL [the charitable wing of Amnesty] and AI [Amnesty International]. The report of the Directors of AICL for the year ended 31 December 1993 records that AICL commissioned AIL to carry out charitable activities on its behalf and records as being included in the work of AICL certain research publications.

      One such publication related to Chile and referred to a report issued as an AI report in 1993. Such 1993 reports covers not only the occurrence and nature of breaches of human rights within Chile, but also the progress of cases being brought against those alleged to have infringed human rights by torture and otherwise in the courts of Chile.

      It records that “no one was convicted during the year for past human rights violations. The military courts continued to claim jurisdiction over human rights cases in civilian courts and to close cases covered by the 1978 Amnesty law.” It also records “Amnesty International continued to call for full investigation into human rights violations and for those responsible to be brought to justice. The organisation also continued to call for the abolition of the death penalty.”

      Again, the report stated that “Amnesty International included references to its concerns about past human rights violations against indigenous peoples in Chile and the lack of accountability of those responsible.” Therefore AICL was involved in the reports of AI urging the punishment of those guilty in Chile for past breaches of human rights and also referring to such work as being part of the work that it supported.

      Your next question may be: if AI is an imperialist NGO, why does it seek to undermine imperialist activity? My intuition says that amnesty provides imperialists with plausible deniability and legitimacy, but we could probably have another, fuller discussion about this, elsewhere. AI also does not seem to prevent imperialist atrocities, but only condemns them afterwards. It is reactive, and so does not actually prevent imperialism notwithstanding it’s high-minded and laudable anti-imperialist sentiment.

      You can read the case, here: In Re Pinochet (No 2)

      • @Munrock@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Your next question may be: if AI is an imperialist NGO, why does it seek to undermine imperialist activity? My intuition says that amnesty provides imperialists with plausible deniability and legitimacy

        It also gives AI legitimacy. They go for the low-hanging fruit when it comes to critiques of Western Imperialism. Israel-Palestine, Assange, etc: stuff they’d look stupid for being on the wrong side of. And then they can weigh in on things like Xinjiang, Hong Kong, DPRK and give the Western Narrative legitimacy in places where the West can discredit any contrary narratives.

        Which is why Ukraine might be at a turning point, if they’re not going to be able to hide/disrepute the truth for much longer.

      • @MessMattress@lemmygrad.ml
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        22 years ago

        Thank you for the case link, will definitely be reading that later. I think the question I’m actually trying to find the answer to is that. If AI is an imperialist NGO then why they criticize everything that the imperialists stands for? It’s fact that any big western political organization is compromised at some level. But how? how much is the imperialist influenced all of their stances and actions? And for what purpose does this org is allowed to live? In my country, where old communist movements have been eradicated, most people were radicalized by english-speaking progressive institutions and NGOs. It feels unhelpful to make a pipeline for leftists. But then it clicked to me, just now. These NGOs and organizations aren’t mean for people like me. It’s simply yet another way to disrupt western leftist movements, to sanitize them so theyre not too anti-establishment. Distract them with accusations of human rights violations in AES.

        • As @Munrock mentioned, Amnesty International definitely doesn’t criticize the vast majority of imperialist crimes. Examples include the “”“Uyghur genocide”“”, their earlier propaganda about Ukraine and Russia, their support for illegal Amerika-funded opposition in Thailand, and IIRC they were for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the destruction of Libya

        • @redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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          22 years ago

          Maybe Munrock answered that question a bit more directly?

          And you’ve probably answered your own question, there, too 🙂.

          I’d also add a few ideas:

          1. I’m not sure it’s a case of imperialist organisations being compromised. The bourgeoisie is not an homogenous bloc. It contains factions. And the organisations they control, set up, or fund are run by lots of different people with a range of political views, from everything to anarchists through libertarians and Marxists to Zionists. Plus a lot of confused people, with varying degrees of commitment to capitalism, imperialism, and the status quo. All these people have some degree of influence of what their orgs produce, say, and do.
          2. Criticism comes in many forms. Every graduate will have been taught to be critical, regardless of degree classification and subject. Many, it not most of the workers at e.g. AI will be graduates. But universities tend not to teach Marxism or dialectical materialism. They teach liberal, palatable forms of liberalism. Gabriel Rockhill is very good at explaining how even the most radical-sounding school, ‘critical theory’, is anti-Marxist, if Marx is mentioned at all. Graduates are taught to self censor and to continue to ‘police the left borders of criticism’, if they see Marxist ideas at all.
          3. Within the acceptable borders of criticism, a few things are going on. I’ll highlight on two problems. (a) Critics focus on criticising paper sources or siloed events. (b) Critics often focus on what is lawful, but the legal framework limits the critical possibility within acceptable limits.
          4. The imperialists know that Michael Parenti was right when he said ‘reality is radical’. They know that people will criticise the government and the imperialists. Organisations such as AI, as well as academia, serve (in some of the ways listed above, and in more ways) to control the type and focus is criticism away from imperialism and imperialists.
          5. This means that an org such as AI appears to be critical, but it’s framing of the issues and of the solution will never point the finger at imperialism (not significantly, anyway). Nothing, or very little, will change because of AI reports. There is person may be sacked or prosecuted, governments may even fall, but capitalism will keep going nonetheless. It’s like when a Trump is replaced with a Biden, or a Brown for a Blair.

          In sum, these orgs give us only the appearance of criticism, the appearance that someone (someone official, so you don’t need to get out your chair; you can trust that someone important is already on the job) is holding criminals and criminal regimes to account.

    • @cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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      62 years ago

      They are silent on most of the west and their allies’ crimes while often falling in line with imperialist atrocity propaganda narratives that are used to manufacture consent for wars. For instance they spread false accusations about both Libya and Iraq and only retracted and corrected them when it was already too late.

      Their behavior so far with respect to the Ukraine conflict has been as biased as it gets, repeating without evidence claims of Russian atrocities and ignoring all but the most obvious and undeniable Ukrainian ones when it is literally impossible to pretend anymore like they are not happening and still retain a veneer of credibility.

      They also get a ton of funding from the usual imperialist sources.

  • 小莱卡
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    92 years ago

    wouldn’t trust random documents posted on twitter honestly.