Patrick Corrigan

"Do you know they got rid off the Magna Carta, about six months ago?" – Gore Vidal. I previously blogged on the inestimable Gore Vidal and quoted some of his famous words from down the years. C4 News' Jon Snow interviewed the writer...

I really hate it when people who have not seen a film or play take it upon themelves to comment publicly on it – usually to criticise it in a Mary Whitehouse-style way, slamming the producers and urging others not to see it either. So...

That brilliant American man of letters, Gore Vidal , was featured on the South Bank Show last night. Melvyn Bragg had secured an interview with the great man in his new LA home, after decades of self-imposed exile in Italy. I have...

What are you doing next Wednesday? Earl Wesley Berry will die. Almost certainly. He is scheduled to be executed in Mississippi on May 21 for the murder of Mary Bounds. So Brian, over at the ever-improving Amnesty USA blogs , tells us...

As mentioned yesterday , Israelis are celebrating 60 years since the foundation of their State. Meanwhile, Palestinians have been marking 60 years of 'al Nakba', the catastrophe. The Guardian has a short article here and a good photo...

US President Bush has arrived in Tel Aviv to help Israel mark the anniversary of its declaration of independence. As Israelis celebrate sixty years of Statehood, so Palestinians mark sixty years of 'al Nakba' – 'the catastrophe'. In...

Who do they think they are kidding? The terrorists who bombed an off-duty PSNI officer in Tyrone last night have nothing to offer modern-day Ireland, north or south, but a return to the worst of the 1970s – bad hair, bad clothes, bad...

The story of Rebiya Kadeer, exiled Chinese human rights activist and president of the World Uighur Congress, is told in striking graphic art form on the new Belfast online magazine Brazen City . She is a courageous woman – even her...

Nineteen years after his murder by loyalist paramilitaries, the family of lawyer Pat Finucane is still waiting for the truth behind his killing to emerge. Successive UK governments have bobbed and weaved to avoid the full story...

I had a busy evening, so I could only stay for the first part of tonight's historical perspective seminar, held as one of the first events in the year-long programme of the Civil Rights Commemoration Committee to mark the fortieth...

Death row lawyer Gary Proctor, originally from Northern Ireland, addressed an Amnesty International meeting in Belfast this evening about his experiences. Graduating in law from Queen's University Belfast in 1995, Gary has been working...

Well done to the Belfast Telegraph online for prominently featuring Amnesty's new cinema advert and viral video, The Stuff of Life , in it's 'Don't miss' section. The advert illustrates the torture technique that is 'waterboarding', as...

Today's front-page lead in The Guardian, Chinese ship carries arms cargo to Mugabe regime , reminds me of the possible role of two Northern Ireland companies in helping to arm China and, through China, Zimbabawe. We revealed the...

Very, very rarely do I come across a piece of writing so powerful, so profound, so beautiful that it stops me in my tracks in awe and in need to read and re-read the words before me. It is a simultaneously humbling and uplifting...

Just a quick note to say look out this evening for the first programme in a new four-part series from journalist Peter Taylor. The programmes, looking at politically-inspired acts of violence over recent decades, start tonight on BBC2...

Just back from chairing a panel discussion after the Belfast premiere screening of 'In Prison My Whole Life' as part of the Belfast Film Festival . The film is the story of young English-American journalist William Francome's journey...

Teachers' leader Steve Sinnott died last weekend. As leader and previously deputy general secretary of the NUT , he had close relations with its sister unions in Northern Ireland, the Ulster Teachers' Union and the Irish National...

I'm cheekily nicking both the headline and the link for this story from an email from my colleague John in Amnesty's Scotland office . Despite China's pleas to keep politics out of the Olympics, it looks like they have form. China...

7:00am Up with the larks. Just enough time for a quick four-mile run around this parkland campus, before a healthy breakfast of bananas and organic stuff. Or something like that. 9:25am Milobal Cristobal of AI Hong Kong, Ville Forsman...

9:30pm There are some thirsty souls gathered around the bar – six deep at some points. Parching work, this human rights. Aikta has promised / threatened us with an evening of elegant ballroom dancing. Sadly, looking around me at a...