Human Rights Activists

"So what's one little kiss, one tiny little touch? Aah, he's wanting it so much. I swear that this is royal blood, running through my skin. Oh, can you see the state I'm in? Kiss it better, kiss it better."

"From the pain come the dream. From the dream come the vision. From the vision come the people. From the people come the power. From this power come the change."

"Don't talk back; Just drive the car. Shut your mouth; I know what you are. Don't say nothing; Keep your hands on the wheel. Don't turn around; This is for real. Digging in the dirt. Stay with me, I need support. I'm digging in the dirt To find the places I got hurt. Open up the places I got hurt."

"Give me steam. And how you feel to make it real; Real as anything you've seen. Get a life with this dreamer's dream."

"In the blood of Eden, Lie the woman and the man. With the man in the woman, And the woman in the man."

"I caught sight of my reflection; I caught it in the window. I saw the darkness in my heart; I saw the signs of my undoing. They had been there from the start, And the darkness still has work to do. The knotted chord's untying. They're heated and they're holy. Oh they're sitting there on high. So secure with everything they're buying."

"This old familiar craving. I've been here before, this way of behaving. Don't know who the hell I'm saving anymore. Let it pass, let it go, let it leave. From the deepest place I grieve. This time I believe And I let go..."

"And in this moment, I need to be needed. With this darkness all around me, I like to be liked. In this emptiness and fear, I want to be wanted. 'Cause I love to be loved. I love to be loved. I love to be loved. Yes, I love to be loved."

"The wretched desert takes its form, the jackal proud and tight. In search of you, I feel my way, through the slowest heaving night. Whatever fear invents, I swear it makes no sense. I reach through the border fence. Come down, come talk to me."

"Changing your ways, changing those surrounding you. Changing your ways, more than any man can do. Open your heart, show him the anger and pain, so you heal. Maybe he's looking for his womanly side, let him feel."

"There's nothing to gain when there's nothing to be lost. There's nothing to gain if you stay behind and count the cost. Make the decision that you can be who you can be, You can be. Tasting the fruit come to the Liberty Tree."

"Turning the tide, you are on the incoming wave. Turning the tide, you know you are nobody's slave."

"Waiting your time, dreaming of a better life. Waiting your time, you're more than just a wife. You don't want to do what your mother has done, She has done. This is your life, this new life has begun. It's your day - a woman's day. It's your day - a woman's day."

"Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin' the tree. Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin' the tree."

"We do what we're told, Told to do."

"The place where I come from is a small town. They think so small; They use small words -But not me. I'm smarter than that. I worked it out. I've been stretching my mouth To let those big words come right out."

"All of the buildings, all of those cars Were once just a dream In somebody's head."

"Looking down on empty streets, all she can see Are the dreams all made solid Are the dreams all made real."

"I get so tired of working so hard for our survival I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive."

"In your eyes, The light, the heat. In your eyes, I am complete. In your eyes, I see the doorway to a thousand churches. In your eyes, The resolution of all the fruitless searches.In your eyes, I see the light and the heat. In your eyes, Oh, I want to be that complete. I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes."

"All my instincts, they return. And the grand façade, so soon will burn. Without a noise, without my pride I reach out from the inside."

"Love I get so lost, sometimes. Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart. When I want to run away, I drive off in my car. But whichever way I go, I come back to the place you are."

"What I carry in my heart Brings us so close or so far apart. Only love can make love."

"I’m hearing right and wrong so clearly. There must be more than this. It’s only in uncertainty That we’re naked and alive."

"Don't give up. You know it's never been easy. Don't give up. 'Cause I believe there's a place, There's a place where we belong."

""On 28 May 1961 I wrote an article in The Observer newspaper which gave birth to Amnesty International. It began with these words: 'Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government … The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust could be united into common action, something effective could be done.'"

"The world needs morally credible human-rights organizations. Amnesty too often isn't one of them."

"[Amnesty International] disproportionately singles out Israel for condemnation, focusing solely on the conflict with the Palestinians, misrepresenting the complexity of the conflict, and ignoring more severe human rights violations in the region."

"The nearly total silence manifests itself in the curiously euphemistic manner in which human rights groups report on the plight of Christians, when they notice that plight at all. For example, Amnesty International’s 2007 report on the human rights situation in Egypt dismisses the suffering of Coptic Christians in a single sentence so filled with euphemism and moral equivalence and so lacking in context that it almost erases the crime it describes... The passive voice seems to be the rule of the day where jihad violence against Christians is concerned... Amnesty International seems more concerned about protecting Islam and Islamic groups from being implicated in human rights abuses than about protecting Christians from those abuses."

"No Indian government will allow Amnesty International ...to set foot inside this country... Amnesty International ...will ask neither the Indian government for the truth, facts and figures...[but] will ask the likes of Teesta Setalvad, Harsh Mander and Kathy Sreedhar..."

"It is always easy to blame the state and the men in uniform. But Islamic terror essentially does not emanate from uniforms and state power, but from a belief system which even the ordinary people have been fed. That is why a lot of Islamic terror never gets recorded by human-rights organizations like Amnesty International. A Christian Pakistani friend complained to me that Amnesty had not spoken out against the religious persecutions in his homeland, even when these are a grim and undeniable reality. The fact is that much of this persecution and discrimination is not ordered by the state (the type of culprit with which Amnesty is familiar), but is a spontaneous attitude among sections of the Muslim population, egged on by nothing except the omnipresent Islamic doctrine."

"Benenson’s suspicious about Amnesty’s collusion with the [UK] Foreign Office continued to fester in his mind...the Labour Party [Government’s] obvious embarrassment over the Aden issue deepened his suspicions that someone was working to keep the matter quiet. And top of his list of suspects was Robert Swann...[who] had worked for the British Foreign Office in Bangkok...Beneson began to suspect that Swann and...his colleagues were part of a British Intelligence conspiracy to subvert Amnesty... He contacted Sean MacBride [founding member of Amnesty and former Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army]... another bombshell exploded. An American source disclosed that CIA money was going to a US organization of jurists which in turn contributed funds to the International Commission of Jurists, of which Sean MacBride was secretary...Beneson became convinced that MacBride was tied up in a CIA network."

"Amnesty ... has done its reputation incalculable damage by allying itself with Moazzam Begg and his group Cageprisoners, and holding them up as human rights advocates."

"Amnesty International has just suspended one of its senior officers, a woman named Gita Sahgal who until recently headed the organization's "gender unit." It's fairly easy to summarize her concern in her own words. "To be appearing on platforms with Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender," she wrote, "is a gross error of judgment." One might think that to be an uncontroversial statement, but it led to her immediate suspension.... Amnesty International was not set up to defend everybody, no matter what they did. No organization in the world could hope to do that... The entire raison d’être of the noble foundation was to defend and protect those who were made to suffer for their views. In theory, I suppose, this could include the view that women should be chattel, homosexuals and Jews and Hindus marked for slaughter, and all the rest of the lovely jihadist canon. But—see above—Cageprisoners defends those who have gone slightly further than merely advocating such things. It’s well-nigh incredible that Amnesty should give a platform to people who are shady on this question and absolutely disgraceful that it should suspend a renowned employee who gave voice to her deep and sincere misgivings."

"We also witnessed firsthand the basic hostility of Amnesty International to the plight of Kashmiri Pandits. Sunil Bakshi had repeatedly sent invitations to them three weeks before the exhibition. I personally called the head of Kashmir at Amnesty International several times as well as Ingrid Massage, the director, Asia & Pacific Program of Amnesty. First she told us they only reported on first hand facts, I replied these were photographs and statistics which nobody could dispute. Finally, after ten phone calls, she said she had too many files on her desk and that she had no time to come, although the exhibition was a few blocks from her office. So much for Amnesty's sense of justice."

"Amnesty ... thinks that liberals are free to form alliances with defenders of clerical fascists who want to do everything in their power to suppress liberals, most notably liberal-minded Muslims."

"Amnesty International is primarily motivated not by human rights but by publicity. Second comes money. Third comes getting more members. Fourth, internal turf battles. And then finally, human rights, genuine human rights concerns. To be sure, if you are dealing with a human rights situation in a country that is at odds with the United States or Britain, it gets an awful lot of attention, resources, man and womanpower, publicity, you name it, they can throw whatever they want at that. But if it's dealing with violations of human rights by the United States, Britain, Israel, then it's like pulling teeth to get them to really do something on the situation."

"What resources have the Bangladeshi Hindus? .... Flushed with passion after meeting with scores of refugees in 2008, I returned to AI's web site and scoured it in search of some outrage - any outrage -over what is so apparent in South Asia; but my search was in vain. ... To date Amnesty International has yet to show any stomach for opposing what could be the worst case of ethnic cleansing in our time. One could advance any number of reasons for their silence. Is it because the victims are Hindu; or the victimizers Muslim? Are they simply moral cowards; or do they just not care? Perhaps it is a case of AI placing ideology above principle... The last time AI, or HRW for that matter, gave the Bangladeshi Hindus even passing mention was in 2006. (Oxfam never has.) In its 2010 report on Bangladesh, AI shockingly did not even mention the oppression of Hindus; a horrid disgrace, that encourages the human rights atrocities those very organizations claim to be fighting! (32-33)"

"“Whether it is Trump, Orban, Erdoğan or Duterte, more and more politicians calling themselves anti-establishment are wielding a toxic agenda that hounds, scapegoats and dehumanizes entire groups of people.” "Today’s politics of demonization shamelessly peddles a dangerous idea that some people are less human than others.""

"Patti Smith, the rock n roll legend...as Patti Smith sings famously, "People have the power.""

"The vital importance of Patti Smith in the history of rock and roll music cannot be overstated. An icon of the New York art scene, Smith was instrumental in the development of punk and alternative rock. From the floors of Max’s Kansas City and the CBGB club, Smith orchestrated a musical revolution that still maintains its relevance to this day, five decades later. Despite her undisputed position as the queen of punk rock, Smith’s cultural diet is incredibly broad, incorporating everything from Motown to noise rock."

"Life is filled with holes Johnny's laying there in his sperm coffin The angel looks down at him and says "Oh, pretty boy Can't you show me nothing but surrender?"

"People have the power To redeem the work of fools Upon the meek the graces shower It's decreed the people rule."

"He spared the child and spoiled the rod I have not sold myself to God!"

"Look around you, all around you Riding on a copper wave Do you like the world around you? Are you ready to behave?"

"Jesus died For somebody's sins But not mine."

"Americans just don't know what being a movie star's all about."

"She is a soldier. She will not be defeated."

"Her writing is so brilliant and beautiful."

"The weakness of the Eastern European regimes was demonstrated anew in Poland, both by the activities of underground Solidarity and by the serious strikes that began in April 1988. The government had grudgingly sought to widen its support by negotiating with other elements, but it wished to exclude Solidarity. The Catholic Church, however, refused to create a co-operative Christian labour movement as the government wanted, preferring to leave the more intransigent Solidarity as the key body for negotiations. The Communists were opposed to trade union pluralism, but, as a sign of movement on the government’s part, the amnesty of 1986 had freed political prisoners. The 1988 strikes discouraged the Party leadership and demonstrated its failure to find a solution to Poland’s problems. Combined with Gorbachev’s renunciation of intervention on behalf of Communism, this failure encouraged the leadership to move toward yielding its monopoly of power. On 30 November 1988, there was a televised debate between Lech Walesa and Alfred Miodowicz, the head of the official trade union federation and a member of the Politburo. This was a highly significant step as the television served as a means of controlling the dissemination of opinion. On 6 February 1989, Round Table talks between government and the technically illegal opposition began, with the Church, an institution of great prestige in Poland, playing an important mediatory role. Under an agreement, signed on 5 April 1989, reached against a background of widespread strikes, elections were held in Poland on 4 June. Only 35 per cent of the seats in the lower house, the Sejm, were awarded on the basis of the free vote, the remainder going to the Communists and their allies, but all of these seats were won by Solidarity. This expression of the public will was a dramatic blow to the old order. Communist cohesion collapsed, not least with the Communist Party being abandoned by its hitherto pliant allies. Strikes and other protests meanwhile continued. The new government was headed by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a member of Solidarity and a Catholic intellectual. He became the first non-Communist Prime Minister behind the Iron Curtain. There was, however, to be a major division between those who endorsed the ‘Round Table’ political settlement of 1989 as a way to avoid bloodshed, and those who criticised it as, allegedly, a compromise providing subsequent cover for ex-Communists to pillage the state."