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May 26, 2005
Gulag? Oh? Hmmm.
The Gulag of out times is North Korea. The Laogai are the Gulag of our times. The camp at Guantanamo Bay is bad, but it's barely even as big as a good-sized county work farm. Ever seen Cool Hand Luke? I'm not sure that camp wasn't bigger.
Of course, I'm a medievalist, so I really shouldn't be carelessly drawing analogies to modern history, but I've read Solzhenitsyn (all of the fiction - honest) and Courtois's The Black Book of Communism. I've visited Auschwitz. I've been to the Fosse Ardeatine.
According to this site it's population is in the 520s. Amnesty International has no sense of proportion. But then I don't expect anyone to have one of those any more.
via Michael Totten
Mr. Wretchard at the Belmont Club had this to say about it:
I'd have to say that Amnesty International's Report claiming the US is the world's worst human rights violator condemns itself far more than it does the United States. Anyone who has lived in the Third World or any of the places which Amnesty International purports to care about knows -- and I mean knows for a fact -- what police abuse, torture, arbitrary detention, etc. really are and that it cannot be compared in any wise to the "Gulag" in Guantanamo Bay. Moreover, anyone who has lived in such places knows that the last place where victims can find practical help is from Amnesty International.Let's not blame Amnesty International for being impractical -- after all, they mean well. Let's instead ask them why they wish to ally themselves with such silly falsehood?
Please don't begin any comments with attacks on me. I don't think the camp at Guantanamo Bay is a good thing. But I believe that the Gulag was a considerably worse thing by so many orders of magnitude that they are not comparable, especially for the political and fund-raising purposes of an annual report.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at May 26, 2005 7:56 PM