The crocodile tears of Samantha Power

Finding an ancestral link to Ireland seems to be mandatory for ambitious American politicians. John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama all successfully dug for genealogical gold.

Newt Gingrich -- who famously branded Palestinians an "invented people" -- has been less lucky in inventing a Hibernian past. There is a hilarious passage in Lawrence Donegan's book No News At Throat Lake about Gingrich visiting County Donegal in search of his antecedents, only to be told there was no record of them in local archives.

Samantha Power is unmistakably Irish: she was born in Dublin. If she is ever tempted to explore the full reach of her family tree, I hope to God that she doesn't claim me as a relative. Power is my mother's maiden name.

Profitable

Like most Irish-Americans who have climbed the political ladder, Samantha Power is an opportunist and a hypocrite. She has built a profitable career out of posing as a human rights activist, while being happy to court human rights abusers whenever it was expedient to do so.

Back in 2002, Power apparently upset those sensitive souls in the Zionist lobby when she dared to suggest that the US should impose a "solution" in Palestine. It was an offensive remark as it inferred that America wanted peace, when it had provided Israel with many of the arms being used to butcher Palestinians. But that wasn't why the lobby got offended: it felt that she had committed the mortal sin of criticizing Israel.

Writing in The Huffington Post, Shmuley Boteach -- apparently the "most famous rabbi in America" -- recently bragged of how he convinced the Zionist lobby to trust Power. Boteach arranged for Power to meet 40 top lobbyists. During the encounter, "tears streamed down her cheeks," he wrote, as Power insisted that her comments had been misconstrued.

Nauseating

As if that wasn't nauseating enough, I've also read an article in the Israeli daily Haaretz about Power's recent job in the White House. In 2009, she played a "central role", the paper says, in coordinating contacts between the US and Israel on managing the political fall-out of Israel's attack on Gaza at the beginning of that year. Power helped Israel to minimize the damage caused by the Goldstone report, the findings of a UN mission that Israel had perpetrated war crimes.

This, let us remember, was the same Samantha Power who advocates "atrocity prevention" and the "responsibility to protect." Palestinians attacked by Israeli and American weapons, however, are not deemed worthy of protection.

Arguably more disgusting again is the fact that Power has edited a hagiography of Richard Holbrooke.

According to Suzanne Nossel -- an understudy to Hillary Clinton who went on to head Amnesty International's office in the US -- Power and Holbrooke are kindred spirits. Nossel is probably right, albeit not for the reasons she cited in her contribution to the journal Foreign Affairs.

Just as Power has shielded Israel from criticism, Holbrooke (as an assistant secretary of state in the 1970s) helped cover up atrocities carried out by Indonesia in East Timor. Holbrooke has been fêted as a campaigner against genocide, when he actually facilitated one of the twentieth century's worst acts of genocide: about one-third of East Timor's population was wiped out.

Samantha Power is no friend of those who sincerely champion human rights: they have an obligation to call her out as a fraud. She is adept at crying tears over atrocities undertaken by America's enemies How many tears has she shed for the victims of US drone strikes or Israel's siege on Gaza? Precisely none.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 18 June 2013.

Nelson Mandela: a flawed hero

Ten years ago this summer I embarked on a road-trip dedicated to Nelson Mandela.

I went to the house in Soweto where he and Winnie lived in the 1950s; the Indian restaurant in Johannesburg where he dined as a young lawyer; the cell where he was incarcerated on Robben Island. When I heard there was a museum dedicated to him in Umtata, I hopped on a bus there, arriving at an empty station in the middle of the night. My travelling companion was a copy of his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.

Over three weeks in South Africa, I encountered great warmth and humour. Staying with a family in a township, I was given a basin of water to wash with each day. "Here is your jacuzzi," the young man who delivered it would announce, chuckling.

I witnessed some efforts being made by the authorities to improve the lot of the poor: by, for example, providing shack-dwellers in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, with proper homes. But I also got depressed when I visited an uncle of mine, who then had an apartment near Durban. His friends and neighbours were exclusively white. One of them was a policeman who told jokes about killing kaffirs, a pejorative term for black people. Another was so ill-informed he didn't know that Rhodesia was now called Zimbabwe (a country right beside South Africa).

It was shocking to see how mentalities forged by racial stratification persisted. No sooner had I entered one particular taxi than the coloured driver exclaimed "This used to be a wonderful country; then the blacks took over". Was this the "rainbow nation" Mandela had celebrated so eloquently?

Deep admiration

I retain a deep admiration for Mandela; anyone who was imprisoned for taking on an odious regime merits respect from people of conscience everywhere. Yet I no longer revere him the way I used to. That is because he abandoned principles that were at the very core of the liberation struggle to which he devoted most of his life.

Mandela took part in the 1955 Congress of the People in Kliptown (part of Soweto). The Freedom Charter agreed at that gathering stated that the banks, minerals and industry of South Africa would be nationalised once apartheid was vanquished.

Both the spirit and the letter of the charter were broken by Mandela following his release. One of his worst U-turns was to embrace the owners of the mines, who had quite literally treated the indigenous population as slaves. In 1994, Mandela went so far as to submit the African National Congress' economic programme to Harry Oppenheimer for his approval. Oppenheimer had been the chairman of De Beers and Anglo-American, two mining firms that had provided crucial economic support for apartheid.

I have no doubt that Mandela was put under enormous pressure by the world's leading politicians and businessmen to behave in the way they wanted. By his own admission, the ripping up of the commitment to nationalise South Africa's mines was the result of his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Almost certainly, South Africa was threatened with losing investors if Mandela went about putting the Freedom Charter into effect.

Mugged

Representatives of the European Union effectively mugged his people.

As president, Mandela oversaw the conclusion of a "free trade agreement" with the EU. It was grotesquely unjust. South Africa was required to remove taxes levied on 81% of food and other agricultural goods from the Union. As most of these goods benefit from generous subsidies, there was no way that South African farmers could be expected to compete with them.

Of course, Mandela could not be blamed for the endurance of racist attitudes. Nonetheless, he and other senior figures in the ANC helped usher in a slightly modified form of apartheid. The wealthy white were allowed hold on to their cricket clubs and other privileges, provided they allowed a few black entrepreneurs - epitomised by Mandela's one-time confidant Cyril Ramaphosa - to join their ranks. The vast majority of the population was, by contrast, condemned to poverty. Unemployment almost doubled between 1995 and 2000.

Mandela turned his back on other beliefs, too. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in 1992, he argued that "the trade in weapons of death will have to be reduced to an absolute minimum". Two years later he was asked by John Major, then Britain's prime minister, to consider buying a large consignment of weapons from the UK. Tony Blair followed up on his predecessor's overture when he visited South Africa in 1999. The pressure paid off: a multi-billion dollar deal was clinched that year; its chief beneficiaries were the arms firms BAE Systems and Saab.

Rekindle the spirit

I am ashamed of the way journalists have covered Mandela's declining health, affording no privacy to his loved-ones. The focus on Mandela is symptomatic of a more profound problem. He did not topple white rule single-handedly - nor did he ever claim to. Lavishing him with praise carries the risk of ignoring the countless others who have suffered.

Perhaps the most fitting tribute to Mandela is to rekindle the ideals of the Freedom Charter. Triumphing over inequality requires constant dedication; unforgivably, some of his comrades in the ANC forgot this message as soon as their fortunes grew.

The struggle did not end when Mandela was released from prison. It cannot end with his death. In one form or another, it must continue. And it will.

•First published by New Europe, 16-22 June 2013.

Ban on bee-killers doesn't end EU bias towards pesticides

For once, the European Union's scientific advisers seem to have got something right. Three pesticides have been banned for two years after the wise boffins voiced concerns after their harmful effect on honey bees. The measure is of immense importance: about one-third of the fruit and vegetables in our diets are grown with the aid of insect pollination, so threats to bees imperil food production in general.

This isn't the end of the story, however. While the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma, Italy, should be applauded for initiating the research which led to the bans, that body continues to behave as if it is joined at the hip with big business.

The bees dossier offers a case in point.

EFSA's assessments of whether pesticides are safe are conducted by a panel of "experts", several of whom also undertake research financed by the chemical and agri-food industries.

One of those "experts" - Ettore Capri from Italy - even runs a "think tank", the main purpose of which is to downplay the dangers associated with pesticides.

Shifting the focus

Known by the acronym OPERA, this outfit recently published a report titled "Bee health in Europe". The report seeks to shift the focus from pesticides by pinning the blame for dwindling bee numbers on a "wide range of factors".

Though the document may be liberally sprinkled with scientific terminology, it cannot be considered as objective or unbiased. A careful reading shows that it was prepared with the help of Bayer, Syngenta, Dow and BASF. All of those firms make pesticides; their bottom line depends on being able to persuade regulators to approve their products.

I contacted EFSA spokesman James Ramsay, asking him if he accepted that Capri was involved in a conflict of interests. "No," Ramsay replied. He told me that OPERA was viewed by the authority as a "food safety organization" as it pursues "public interest objectives".

When I got in touch directly with Capri, he insisted that he is not involved in "research projects financed by private companies on bee health" and that he had not taken part in an EFSA working group dealing with bees.

Those explanations are Jesuitical.

OPERA's entry to the register of lobbyists run by the European Commission states that it received 50,000 euros from the private sector during 2012. If that money wasn't used on its research and advocacy work, then what was it used on? Interior decorating? Bus fares?

Moreover, OPERA jointly organised a conference with Syngenta in Brussels during September 2012. The programme for the event says that one of the main topics addressed was biodiversity, a concept that is meaningless without bees and other insects. Are we really to believe that Syngenta did not pay at least some of the costs of organising this event?

Capri's effort to distance himself from EFSA's work on bees is contradicted by information on the authority's own website. A list of participants for a "symposium" hosted by EFSA last month indicates that Capri was in attendance. You'll never guess the topic of this confab. Bees.

Faced with accusations that they are setting the agenda followed by EU institutions, corporate lobbyists tend to point to decisions which didn't go the way they wanted as evidence that they are not really that influential. The ban on bee-killing pesticides looks like that kind of a decision - until you examine it a bit more closely.

Bigger than bees

Firstly, the ban is of a limited duration: we can be certain that the chemicals industry will be pressing for it not to be renewed once it expires. Secondly, it has loopholes: the three pesticides may still be sprayed on winter cereals. Such crops may not attract bees directly but the use of pesticides on them means that toxic chemicals will still be released into the environment, with potentially adverse consequences for insects.

And thirdly, there are some dangerous substances not covered by the ban. Greenpeace has identified four pesticides in addition to the three ones recently banned that have been shown to "acutely affect bees", according to the group. These pesticides are widely used throughout Europe.

EFSA, again to its credit, has issued a warning about one the four substances - fipronil - over the past few weeks. Almost definitely, it will come under pressure from the chemical industry to ease off on its work on bees. Having scientists who are favourably disposed to pesticide-makers sitting on EFSA panels undoubtedly works to that industry's advantage.

There are bigger issues than honey bees at stake here. As I argue in my new book Corporate Europe, EFSA is in denial about how many of the "experts" it turns to for counsel are lackeys of big business. The authority has been admonished by the EU's internal watchdogs, the Court of Auditors and the Ombudsman, on some of these matters; yet the underlying problems persist.

In 2008, EFSA suffered some embarrassment when it emerged that Suzy Renckens, who coordinated its activities on genetically modified (GM) foods, was hired by Syngenta, a maker of GM seeds (as well as pesticides). The "revolving door" case begged the question: how can regulators be expected to put manners on firms they regard as future employers?

Syngenta supports Capri's activities but EFSA doesn't see this as in any way problematic. Syngenta has also lobbied strenuously against the ban on bee-killers.

There's only way of pretending there's nothing wrong here: burying your head in the sand.

•First published by New Europe, 9-15 June 2013.

"Bone-breaker" Rabin lauded in new book by veteran lobbyist

For a few hours last night, I read the newly-published autobiography of Robert Lifton, former president of the American Jewish Congress. It is a book that I could only recommend to masochists.

Admittedly, I didn't struggle my way through the entire 430 pages of An Entrepreneur's Journey, as the tome is titled. But I did check out the sections dealing with Lifton's work as a pro-Israel lobbyist. They made me feel unwell.

Lifton appears to be under the illusion that he is more reasonable than many other Zionist leaders in the US. He harps on, for example, about how he is a long-time advocate of a two-state solution, claiming that he assumed a "heretical position" on this issue in the 1980s.

An important detail in his business activities -- that he mentions casually, like a mere aside -- exposes him as a hypocrite.

One of the major shareholders in Lifton's company Medis Technologies was Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). As a manufacturer of warplanes and surveillance technology, IAI has benefited directly from the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. So while Lifton the political activist purports to want an end to that occupation, Lifton the businessman had a vested interest in perpetuating it. (The closest Lifton comes to recognizing that point is an allusion to how IAI was "engaged in Israel's most advanced military programs").

Hobnobbing with war criminals

Lifton recalls how he had the "pleasure" to host Yair Shamir at a dinner in New York City, when Shamir became chairman of IAI.

Yair's father Yitzhak Shamir was one of many Israeli prime ministers with whom Lifton hobnobbed. Of all the distinguished war criminals he met, he identified most closely with Yitzhak Rabin. Lifton portrays Rabin as a down-to-earth guy, who turned up at black-tie dinners without a tie and who solicited his advice on what type of tennis racket to use.

Unless I missed something, Lifton neglects to mention that the avuncular Rabin ordered Israeli troops to "break the bones" of Palestinians when he was defense minister during the first intifada -- an order that was taken literally. Lifton publicly supported Israel's frequently murderous tactics against that uprising. When Benjamin Netanyahu, then an Israeli diplomat, told Lifton he was pleasantly surprised that the American Jewish Congress didn't express disapproval of those tactics, Lifton replied: "We don't piss on our friends when they are down."

Unwavering

If Lifton's book serves a useful purpose, it is to remind us how the US has become increasingly hawkish in defending Israel.

When Ronald Reagan was president, his administration claimed that "both sides" bore responsibility for the violence of the first intifada. Lifton privately rebuked senior US officials for this "unfortunate attempt to be even-handed."

The language of "both sides" used by the Reagan administration was fallacious: heavily-armed forces of occupation cannot seriously be compared with stone-throwing Palestinians. It is nonetheless instructive that Washington (with the occasional exception) no longer feels obliged to sound "balanced" -- as exemplified by its enthusiastic backing of Israel's attacks on Gaza and the refusal to criticize Israel's recent bombing of Syria.

Lifton has strong connections with Israel's arms industry, as well as the Zionist lobby. Yet he downplays the influence of this lobby. Scholars such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who have documented that the Zionist lobby pushed the US to invade Iraq, are "unsophisticated," in his view.

Over the past few years, Lifton has tried to counter the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. He has opposed moves by church groups to sever their ties with firms complicit in the occupation on the grounds that divestment would be "clearly detrimental to Israel's commercial activities in this country."

That says it all, really. For all his "flexibility," Lifton is unwavering in defending the economic interests that enable Israel to continue behaving as a rogue state.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 4 June 2013.

Locking Latvia into austerity

Over the next few days Europe will become a little more undemocratic than it already is.

Latvia's application to join the euro is about to be formally approved by the Brussels bureaucracy. Most people in that Baltic state are opposed to the move, according to opinion polls. Yet they are not being given any say in the matter. More than likely, Latvia will be ushered into the single currency in 2014 without a referendum being called.

Don't expect this virtual coup to elicit much reaction in the mainstream press. We, journalists, are supposed to be in awe of how Latvia has undergone a rapid recovery.

The New York Times has hailed Valdis Dombrovskis, the country's prime minister, as "something of a star pupil." Riga has won similar praise from the International Monetary Fund. Christine Lagarde, the IMF's chief, regards Latvia as a "success story." The fund's top economist Olivier Blanchard has argued that "Latvians could take the pain" of austerity and that they enjoyed "ownership" of an "adjustment" programme.

Blanchard was not the first IMF representative to adopt a patronising tone towards people who were suffering. Nor was he the first to spread a falsehood.

In December 2008, Latvia accepted a loan of 7.5 billion euros, most of it from the EU and IMF, because of a crisis in its banking sector (not profligacy in public spending, as Blanchard wants us to believe). Far from granting Latvia "ownership" of this money, the creditors released it with sadistic conditions attached.

Brutal transformation

Latvia's government was ordered to make savings that amounted to 17% of gross domestic product within a short period. More than half of the savings were to come from slashing expenditure on the public sector, especially health and education. Pension cutbacks were found to violate the right to social security by the country's constitutional court.

The latest statistics from the European Commission indicate that Latvia dramatically reduced its budget deficit between 2009 and 2012. This "progress" apparently makes Latvia eligible for euro membership.

But the deficit data does not capture the brutal transformation that has occurred. Mass unemployment pushed one-tenth of Latvia's workforce to emigrate over the same few years. Latvia's population today is at the same level it was in 1957. Latvia has the second lowest rate of life expectancy and the second highest rate of income inequality in the EU.

The lack of consultation with ordinary Latvians over their fate fits into a broader picture.

To date, only two referendums have been held in which EU voters have been directly asked if they wished to join the single currency. Those polls were conducted in Denmark and Sweden. In both cases, a majority rejected the euro. History has shown they were right to do so.

"Like a dictator"

In April, the transcript of an interview that Helmut Kohl gave in 2002 was finally published. Kohl admitted that he had behaved "like a dictator" when the single currency was being introduced. As German chancellor, he deliberately didn't call a referendum on the euro because he knew it would be lost. The same rationale was employed by his acolyte Angela Merkel in 2011 when she forced George Papandreou, then the Greek prime minister, to scrap a planned vote on the terms of a "bail-out."

Kohl tried to justify his drift towards authoritarianism by claiming that a common currency would prevent another war in Europe. If that was really his game-plan, then he has failed dismally. The entire euro project has exacerbated tensions between the countries and peoples on this continent. Far-right parties - most notably Golden Dawn in Greece - are exploiting the opportunities presented by the crisis to advance their hate-filled agenda.

Racist demagogues are a visible threat. But there is another threat to social harmony that comes from men who crave respectability. Look carefully and you will see these men shuttling between "think tank" receptions and the headquarters of government ministries.

The Brussels-based "research" outfit Bruegel typifies this "revolving door" phenomenon. Bruegel's current chairman, Jean-Claude Trichet, has also behaved like a dictator. As European Central Bank chief, Trichet insisted that a number of countries demolish their welfare states and privatize their state-own industries. His diktats can be found in a letter he sent to Silvio Berlusconi two years ago.

It is no accident that the post Trichet holds at Bruegel used to be occupied by Mario Monti, the man who replaced Berlusconi as Italy's prime minister (without an election). Monti arguably did more harm to labour laws during his 18 months in office than his lecherous predecessor did during his three terms.

Until recently, the director of Bruegel was Jean Pisani-Ferry. He has now been hired as an adviser to François Hollande.

Working for a supposedly centre-left president hasn't deterred Pisani-Ferry from continuing to advocate that the poor be punished for the crimes of the rich. In one of his latest opinion pieces, he warned of the "danger" in "discrediting hasty austerity." His case rested on the fear of how financial markets could react if economic policies change.

Grudgingly, I will give him credit for reminding us about some other dictators: the alchemists of modern finance. Governments must not do anything to incur the wrath of the mighty markets, he maintains. The whims of stock brokers and hedge fund managers must be indulged.

Such intellectual chicanery fills quite a few column inches in our newspapers. That doesn't mean we should swallow it.

•First published by New Europe, 2-9 June 2013.

Warmonger poses as voice of reason on Palestine

Experts are the enemies of democracy.

I'm not referring here to people who strive to be well-informed, something that is desirable and healthy. Rather, I'm talking about those who use their privileged status to try and keep debates within strict limits so that power remains in the hands of an elite.

The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) -- a "think tank" based in London and partly funded by the financier George Soros -- includes veteran civil servant Nick Witney on its panel of "experts." Witney is a handmaiden of the arms industry (a subject to which I will return momentarily), posing as a peacemaker.

His latest pamphlet -- Europe and the Vanishing Two-State Solution -- advocates "tough love" towards Israel. The European Union should be more "assertive" in dealing with Benjamin Netanyahu's government , he argues.

His understanding of the word "assertive" is narrow and the steps that he advocates are far from radical. He is favorably disposed, for example, towards an effort being made to introduce compulsory labelling for goods imported from Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This idea is already on the EU's agenda -- though a discussion on that the Union's foreign ministers were supposed to have earlier this week was postponed under pressure from the US.

Witney emphasizes his opposition to a total ban on settlement goods. He is similarly against wider sanctions and boycotts, dismissing claims that such tactics worked in the case of South Africa. Witney attributes the end of white minority rule in that country to the courageous leadership of FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. He ignores how de Klerk decided to release Mandela only after support for apartheid had proven costly for global capitalism by, among other things, campaigns for the closure of accounts with Barclays, a bank with major investments in South Africa.

Offensive

Perhaps the most offensive point that Witney makes is that judgments on the "credibility" of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority's president, should rest on his willingness to sacrifice the right of return for Palestinian refugees uprooted by Zionist forces in 1948. Witney even puts the words "right of return" in quotation marks and suggests that it should be "satisfied only at some token level."

The right of return is a central issue in the battle for justice. The question of how that right can be realized is one for all Palestinians -- including those forced out of historic Palestine. Mahmoud Abbas has no mandate to abandon that right -- nor do experts in think tank land.

Before taking up his current job, Witney was the first head of the European Defence Agency (EDA), a Brussels-based body set up in 2004 with a view to strengthening the arms industry on this continent.

I interviewed Witney for my new book Corporate Europe: How Big Business Sets Policies on Food, Climate and War. He confessed that he had "clear memories" of discussions with Israeli diplomats about strengthening cooperation between European and Israeli weapons makers.

The possibility of a formal cooperation agreement between the EDA and Israel was explored, he told me, though none was reached. "I didn't want to spend the first three years of the agency negotiating agreements," he said. "I wanted to spend the time on more practical things."

Scruples?

Witney stated he was "uneasy" about the idea that Israel could be one of the first countries with which the agency decided to liaise. "On one hand, I am signed up 100 percent to the security of Israel," he said. "On the other side, many of the things the Israelis do are flat contrary to European values -- especially the settlements."

It is odd that Witney was afflicted by scruples on this matter -- assuming that he told me the truth. During his career, he has been happy -- even proud -- to do business with human rights abusers.

Witney's own resumé notes that he helped Britain's ministry of defense secure a massive arms contract with Saudi Arabia. Known as the al-Yamamah program, this deal was so controversial that Tony Blair intervened personally when he was prime minister to block a probe into allegations that it involved large-scale corruption.

When I asked Witney how he could justify the contract, he implied that it did not aggravate tensions in the Middle East in any way. "It always seemed to me that the Saudis lived in the biggest glasshouse in the world and would be the last to throw stones," he said.

Grubby alliance

His metaphor is unfortunate, to say the least. In March 2011, Saudi Arabia sent 1,200 troops across the causeway linking it to Bahrain. The troops brutally repressed pro-democracy protests in Manama, the Bahraini capital.

Who manufactured many of the tanks driven by those troops? None other than BAE Systems, the company that has been the main beneficiary of British arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Like David Cameron and many others in the British government, Witney went to Oxford, a university dedicated to maintaining the country's iniquitous class system. He is certainly educated enough, then, to be able to understand the consequences of what he is advocating.

One of his pet projects is to campaign for a more militarized EU. The Union's grubby alliance with Israel is intimately linked to this process of militarization. Israel, for example, is taking part in a number of warplane projects with European firms.

Witney might come across as an erudite voice of reason. In reality, he is a warmonger.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 31 May 2013.

How Amnesty has let down Bradley Manning

Why has Amnesty International refused to declare Bradley Manning a prisoner of conscience?

A few weeks ago, I put that very question to the human rights organization. My question was eventually answered but only after I wrote a column for the weekly paper New Europe criticizing Amnesty for not launching a major campaign in support of Manning.

Nicolas Beger, head of Amnesty's Brussels office, responded by saying that "we are simply not yet in a position to conclude whether Mr Manning should be regarded as a prisoner of conscience, without knowing more about the specific allegations and evidence, his motives, and how his case is prosecuted."

Beger explained that Amnesty will be sending an observer to Manning's trial which is scheduled to begin in June. "It is common practice for Amnesty International to reach a decision in complex cases only once it has examined all the issues at the trial. If a government seeks to punish someone for releasing, in a responsible manner and for reasons of conscience, information that he or she reasonably believed to be evidence of human rights violations that the government was attempting to keep secret, this would typically be grounds for Amnesty International to consider the person a prisoner of conscience."

Complex?

The explanation is not convincing. Contrary to what Beger suggests, there is nothing complex among Manning's case. The soldier has been imprisoned for three years now because he caused an embarrassment for a superpower.

His motives for doing so were spelled out in a statement that he made at a pre-trial hearing earlier this year. Manning released a trove of documents to WikiLeaks because he was horrified by the "bloodlust" of the US army captured on the Collateral Murder video -- which shows an attack on unarmed civilians in Iraq -- and hoped that the American public would be similarly outraged.

Amnesty's website indicates that it has made a handful of appeals relating to Manning's case. Most of these were issued in 2011 and focused on his conditions of detention. Though Amnesty correctly denounced those conditions as cruel, it did not call for his release.

The argument that Amnesty should wait until Manning's trial before deciding its position has not been invoked in some high-profile cases outside America. After the group Pussy Riot staged a protest in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral last year, Amnesty urged the Russian authorities to free three women arrested in connection with the incident ahead of their trial. Amnesty stated clearly that the members of Pussy Riot were targeted because of their "political opinions."

Different rules

Why is Amnesty applying different rules to the US than to Russia?

My own interest in human rights was sparked by the protests over US foreign policy that occurred when Ronald Reagan visited Ireland in 1984 (I was 13-years-old at the time). I first heard about Amnesty a year or two later and have supported the organization ever since.

So it felt like a betrayal when I heard that Amnesty's American office was headed for most of last year by Suzanne Nossel; before taking up that job she had been a deputy assistant secretary of state under Hillary Clinton. Under Nossel's leadership, Amnesty whitewashed the invasion of Afghanistan by hosting a conference praising NATO's "progress" in that country. The guest of "honor" at that event was Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state who declared that killing as many as 500,000 children in Iraq by depriving them of essential medicines was a price worth paying.

Bad example

If Amnesty is becoming more obsequious to the powerful, then it may be following a bad example set by its kindred organization Human Rights Watch.

Scott Long, a former member of staff in Human Rights Watch, revealed recently how the group has an absurd policy of "objectivity" on the Middle East. Each time it publishes a report rebuking Israeli aggression, it feels compelled to follow up with a report hostile to Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

The policy misses a salient point: Israel is the largest recipient of aid from the US; it has been given a free pass by the "international community" to subjugate an entire people. A human rights organization should, therefore, be devoting more of its time and resources to exposing Israel's crimes than to striking some kind of spurious balance.

"I deserve it"

In 2010, I interviewed Kenneth Roth, the Human Rights Watch director. When preparing questions to ask him, I read that he was paid $345,000 per year -- almost as much as Barack Obama's salary. I put it to him that it seemed an exorbitant sum for the head of a non-profit organization. Roth agreed that it was "a lot of money" but added: "I think I could make a case that I deserve it."

Roth had just returned from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Perhaps the only reason why a human rights defender should go that confab for a global elite would be to cause trouble. But I didn't get the impression that the business and political leaders in the Alpine resort had been discomfited by Roth's presence.

Human Rights Watch has been even more reticent than Amnesty on Bradley Manning's treatment.

The only statement relating to Manning that I could find on the Human Rights Watch website was issued in March 2011. It did no more than call on the US to "publicly explain" why it was subjecting Manning to "possibly punitive and degrading treatment."

Bradley Manning has performed a tremendous service to humanity. It is not far-fetched to argue that the 2011 uprisings in Arab countries would not have happened without him.

The demonstrations which ended Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's rule in Tunisia took place after Manning had shattered some myths about that country's relationship with the US. A diplomatic cable that Manning gave to WikiLeaks stated bluntly that America did not consider Ben Ali an "ally," despite how it had shored up his regime.

Freedom of information was recognized as a basic human right at the inaugural session of the UN's general assembly. Bradley Manning has taken an enormous risk to uphold that right. It is a shame that Amnesty and Human Rights Watch are not standing up for him.

•First published by The Electronic Intifada, 28 May 2013.