I’m not a big lover of large events. Crowds: no, don’t like them. Football matches, too many people. Being at home on the laptop: yes, much better! Also, fanfare and big-time media hype sets my teeth on edge. Guess where this is going...

The cliché is that during the fog of war you can’t really find out what’s going on. Keeping out nearly all international media, as I’ve said before , is one very effective way of ensuring that things are enveloped in doubt, claim and...

Ive written in this blog before that Im a very cautious Obama-ite. (Booo!) With due acknowledgment of the historic and symbolic significance of a black American of (half) Kenyan parentage actually becoming US president (a big change)...

Terry Jones of Monty Python fame (he’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy) has CiF comment out today laying into the dubious behaviour of the international arms industry. He might not have been expecting the Spanish Inquisition...

As the daily carnage out of Gaza dominates news coverage, you could have missed this story in the Times today. It says: the USA and the UK are effectively negotiating an arrangement for Britain to take Guantánamo prisoners who need to...

SteveB pretty much said it all yesterday – the situation in Gaza is hugely depressing and a terrible start to the year. I’ve just come back from Italy where the national television channel Canale 5 always started every evening’s news (...

Just some of the things we’ve blogged on this year … … the Olympics; unfolding terror and devastation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur and Zimbabwe; Obama; the Secret Policeman’s Ball 2008; the 60th anniversary of the UDHR...

The Conservative Party is all over the headlines with their row with the Met’s assistant commissioner Bob Quick – but that’s not all! The Conservatives are also making news today with their call for more funding for 15 new rape crisis...

I may have mentioned this in a post before (after a while you DO begin to repeat yourself!), but if you haven’t done already – check out Lilya 4-Ever . It is, in my humble opinion, quite simply one the best films of this (or any)...

When I’m tootling about on the blogs of an evening I’m aware of the possibility of embarrassing myself – ie I could fire off a poorly thought out comment that immediately gets jumped on by other commentators. Or, when I rattle off an...

Having been laid low (low-ish) with illness this past fortnight I’ve been breaking a rule and forcing myself to take Paracetamol and Strepsils. (I’m a classic bad patient who won’t submit to sensible medication until I’m barking my...

Not wanting to be a “government-tethered 'goat'”, Lord Lester’s resignation as constitution reform advisor and his attack on the government’s human rights record has set the cat amongst the pigeons. In a UDHR anniversary speech...

I’m conscious that in the course of the scores of posts I’ve made on the Amnesty media blog so far this year, not a lot of them have exactly been cheerful (despite my crap jokes and strained sarcasm). You could say: so what? Amnesty’s...

What a strange story! First a Wikipedia entry about the album cover from a (mostly) forgotten 1970s German heavy rock band is, apparently out of nowhere, censored . It’s all over the national (and international) media for two days then...

The closure of Guantánamo Bay will probably come not with a bang, but with a whimper. But come it will (says president-elect Barack Obama), only we don’t know when or how. The Guardian’s G2 today splashed on the “toxic legacy”...

How many ways can torturers find to hurt people? You’d maybe think that there’s a sort of limited number. Half a dozen. A dozen. Whatever. Actually, the more Amnesty stuff I read over the years the more I realise – chillingly enough –...

To paraphrase John Lennon, you may call me a dreamer but I can imagine the Democratic Republic of Congo without war. Just. Shockingly, after a decade or more of continuous violence it’s actually now difficult to envisage a peaceful...

Empty gesture from “jam makers”, or an important move to help tackle sexual slavery? Today’s news that those former barrackers of Tony Blair the Women’s Institute are going to start monitoring the local press for classified ads...

What were you doing on Friday 8 August? As it happens, I can remember because that’s when I was working for Amnesty at the Edinburgh Festival. Why do I ask? Because this was when the astonishing news broke that Georgia and Russia were...

I understand there was also quite a bit on planning for the presidential pooch, but Barack Obama’s big US television interview commitment to close Guantánamo, end torture and “regain America's moral stature in the world" has definitely...