Norton portrays religious schools as breeders of hatred and
discrimination: Human rights complaint lodged
against Human Rights Commissioner
In a precedent setting complaint, a prominent Toronto lawyer has filed a formal complaint under the Human Rights Code to the Ontario Human Rights Commission against Human Rights Commissioner Keith Norton, Toronto Free Press has discovered.
In a July 17 letter to Ali Ahmad at the Commission, Joseph Y. Adler, of the law firm Kronis Rotsztain Margles Cappel vowed to "pursue this complaint with the utmost vigor" and was looking forward to having his complaint addressed "at your earliest possible opportunity."
In the media, Norton has portrayed private religious schools as breeders of hatred and discrimination.
Adler, who has worked for the Ontario Human Rights Commission, says he is one of "several thousand Ontarians…who have been similarly offended" by Commissioner Keith Norton’s remarks.
Norton is on the public record for stating that the Education Tax Credit (ETC) would create "an educational apartheid that breeds hatred and discrimination."
"The Commissioner has clearly overstepped his bounds and has offended several minority religious groups in one fell swoop," Adler wrote. "Instead of promoting an environment of religious tolerance and co-existence for which his office is responsible for doing, he has contributed to the very thing he wishes to avoid. That is, his damaging comments have the potential to create, if they have not already created, serious divisions in Ontario’s society. The Commissioner’s lack of sensitivity in this regard is truly troubling and inexcusable."
(July 22, 2002)
Amnesty International: A Love of Dictators ?
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL'S WAR ON HUMAN RIGHTS
By Kristin Wright
Special to ASSIST News Service
WILMINGTON, OH - June 9, 2004 (ANS)
-- Rain falls noisily on the roof of the Security Bureau and Prisoners'
quarters, as hundreds of dirty, rag-covered, hunched-over figures shuffle past
the buildings in the cold. A bleak sky overhead reflects the dismal scene below.
Suddenly, gunshots pierce the air. Some prisoners turn their heads, while others
barely wince at the sound. Numb and starving, they continue on their way to the
Assembly area.
Upon arrival, the prisoners are rounded up and forced to watch a public
execution. Men, women and children are lined up to witness the violent killing
of a woman who has refused to give up her faith in spite of fierce orders from
government officials. Some prisoners are forced to stand so close to the victim
that they are literally spattered with blood.
When this horrific drama is finished, the prisoners are herded together for
"roll call". A child cries in the dark, and rain falls noisily on the
roof as thousands of prisoners return to crowded, flea-infested quarters for a
brief night's sleep. Another version of the same day will begin when dawn rises
over the camp.
Auschwitz in 1944? Not exactly. This particular establishment is a concentration
camp. Only the year is 2004, and the brutal regime is North Korea, not Germany.
A literal modern-day holocaust is taking place in communist North Korea, where
orphans starve in the streets and thousands of innocent people are confined in a
vast modern-day concentration camp system. It's a place where evil rules, where
violence is rampant, where some of the worst human rights violations in the
world take place.
Yet tragically, the suffering North Korean people were among the millions
worldwide that were conveniently shoved to the background in Amnesty
International's recently released annual report on human rights worldwide.
One would think that Kim Jong Il's Hitler-esque behavior would incur strong
condemnation from the world's leading human rights organization. Maybe even a
special section of their annual report would have been dedicated to decrying the
evil abuses taking place there - gruesome medical experimentation, forced
abortions, rape, executions, and torture. An entire volume would scarcely be
enough to denounce the horrors of a dictatorship that has seen fit to abuse,
starve, and murder millions of its own citizens. Any human rights organization
would want to express in no uncertain terms their shock and abhorrence toward
such a government.
But not Amnesty International. Instead of focusing on prisoners in North Korea's
concentration camps, refugees in Sudan, imprisoned priests in Vietnam, or rape
victims in Pakistan, Amnesty decided to mete out the harshest words -- and
lengthiest column of criticism -- to the United States. That's right. Instead of
delivering a scathing rebuke to the world's foremost violators of human rights,
Amnesty International decided to throw the book at the U.S.
Swept up in a frenzied political agenda to denounce President Bush and the 'war
on terror', Amnesty's report swelled with bitter terminology, calling the U.S.
"bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle" in regards to the war in
Iraq. Remarkably, Amnesty didn't even need the Abu Ghraib prison scandals to
seal their verdict. The prison scandals emerged only about a month ago, and
barely influenced the 339-page report.
What Amnesty apparently ignored in their dizzying foray into attack politics, is
that where and when human rights abuses do occur by U.S. hands, the perpetrators
are brought to justice. Not so in North Korea, Sudan, Columbia, Burma, Vietnam,
Chechnya, or numerous other countries where brutal regimes persist unhindered.
Vehement criticism needs to take place where there is no justice, not when rule
of law is already in place.
Tragically, by focusing on limited incidences of human rights abuse committed at
U.S. hands, Amnesty is robbing victims of oppression worldwide of a voice. Apparently,
the numerous incidences of rape, torture, and infanticide in North Korea or
Sudan aren't nearly important to them as smearing the Bush administration.
Amnesty's approach to the tragic plight of
child-soldiers in Burma is lackadaisical compared to their fervor for vilifying
a nation known as a beacon of liberty. Apparently Amnesty International has
determined that undermining U.S. foreign policy is a far more vital task than
speaking out for the countless victims of human rights abuses scattered
throughout the world.
Using the defense of human rights as a mask for a devious political agenda is
inexcusable. As an organization, Amnesty International is running aground.
Charting a course of misguided political mudslinging, its influence is marred
and its claims unsubstantiated.
Caught up in a frantic mission to deplore and condemn U.S. actions in Iraq,
Amnesty has launched their own war. It's a war against human rights worldwide,
and the real victims are the children, women, and men confined in hellish North
Korea, despair-ridden Sudan, and dozens of other tyrannical nations. They are
the ones who have been shoved to the wayside so that Amnesty's political ideals
in the U.S can flourish.
Pope John Paul II has rightly said, "Consciences must be educated so that
the unbearable violence weighing upon our brothers ceases once and for all, and
so that all people mobilize to ensure that everyone's fundamental rights are
respected." Amnesty International has given us a poor
example of what it means to stand for justice, or to speak out for
fundamental rights. As their voice fades into the political maze, let's hope
their influence does as well.
Congress Seeks to Curb Sovereignty-Defying International Court
UNITED NATIONS -Nov 26/04- The Republican-controlled Congress has stepped up its campaign to curtail the power of the International Criminal Court, threatening to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid to governments that refuse to sign immunity accords shielding U.S. personnel from being surrendered to the tribunal.
The move marks an escalation in U.S. efforts to ensure that the first world criminal court can never judge American citizens for crimes committed overseas. More than two years ago, Congress passed the American Servicemembers' Protection Act, which cut millions of dollars in military assistance to many countries that would not sign the Article 98 agreements, as they are known, that vow not to transfer to the court U.S. nationals accused of committing war crimes abroad.
A provision inserted into a $338 billion government spending bill for 2005 would bar the transfer of assistance money from the $2.52 billon economic support fund to a government "that is a party" to the criminal court but "has not entered into an agreement with the United States" to bar legal proceedings against U.S. personnel. The House and Senate are to vote on the budget Dec. 8.
Congress's action may affect U.S. Agency for International Development programs designed to promote peace, combat drug trafficking, and promote democracy and economic reforms in poor countries. For instance, the cuts could jeopardize as much as $250 million to support economic growth and reforms in Jordan, $500,000 to promote democracy and fight drug traffickers in Venezuela, and about $9 million to support free trade and other initiatives with Mexico.
The legislation includes a national security waiver that would allow President Bush (news - web sites) to exempt members of NATO (news - web sites) and other key allies, including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, South Korea (news - web sites), New Zealand or Taiwan. The waiver was added to the provision, which Rep. George R. Nethercutt (news, bio, voting record) (R-Wash.) introduced into a House appropriations bill in July, after the State Department raised concern that the cuts could undermine key programs that advance U.S. foreign policy.
State Department lawyers are studying the language to determine what portion of the economic support fund could be withheld under the law. But congressional staff members say the legislation would disproportionately hurt small countries with limited strategic importance to the United States.
The criminal court was established by treaty at a 1998 conference in Rome to prosecute perpetrators of the most serious crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The treaty has been signed by 139 countries and ratified by 97. Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo of Argentina has begun investigating widespread human rights violations in Congo and Uganda.
The Clinton administration signed the treaty in December 2000, but the Bush administration renounced it in May 2001, citing concern that an international prosecutor might conduct frivolous investigations and trials against American officials, troops and foreign nationals deployed overseas on behalf of the United States. "This is a body based in The Hague (news - web sites) where unaccountable judges and prosecutors could pull our troops, our diplomats up for trial," Bush said in his first campaign debate with Sen. John F. Kerry (news, bio, voting record).
Since the tribunal began in July 2002, the Bush administration has been struggling to secure guarantees from governments to sign the pacts exempting U.S. citizens from investigation or prosecution by the court. The congressional cuts would not affect 96 countries that have signed the immunity pacts.
Canadian Intelligence: Americans Must Beware of Islamists
Sept 2000 - The Canadian Security Intelligence Service issued its ninth annual Public Report in June 2000, "a brief overview of the current global threat environment." 1 The report deals with every sort of challenge to Canadian public safety, including weapons of mass destruction, modern telecommunication threats, and transnational criminal activity. Of particular notice—and in contrast to the more euphemistic presentation of American officials—the report frankly discusses "Islamic religious extremism … as the preeminent international terrorist threat" and discusses its potential danger to the United States.
While state-sponsored terrorism continues to pose a significant threat, one of the prime motivators of terrorism today is Islamic religious extremism. In the past few years, Sunni Islamic extremism, exemplified by terrorist financier Osama bin Laden, has emerged as the preeminent international terrorist threat. At the forefront of this extremism is an international ad hoc coalition of terrorists, with no specific national allegiance, who share a willingness to use serious violence to effect political change. As countries tighten security against Islamic terrorist movements, radical groups are increasingly relying upon their international networks to help plan and execute attacks.
Electronic Privacy Information Center - Practical Privacy Tools
Microsoft XP Spying on You
Microsoft has programmed Windows XP to contact other computers and transfer information from the user's computer to the other computers:
a) If you have only three DVDs that your children watch sometimes on your home machine that is always connected to the Internet (through a broadband connection), you may not care that Microsoft knows when they watch them. If you seldom use the Windows XP help facility, you may not care that Microsoft is able to know the level of expertise of the people who use your computer.
However, if you are using Windows XP in a large corporation or a government, the fact that another organization believes that it can gather data from you may be completely unacceptable.
This article is support for your own investigation.
The Microsoft article tells how to disable the hidden downloading. However, the disabling is very time-consuming. Also, Microsoft has a history of using defect fixes and security fixes to change the operating system settings. This means that all the settings would need to be checked after every defect fix or security vulnerability fix.
Source: http://www.hevanet.com/peace/microsoft.htm
Article in Spanish http://www.hevanet.com/peace/microsoft-es.htm
Zone Alarm - Firewall Protection - Free version at:
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp
Webroot Spysweeper (look for Try It - Spy Sweeper)
Popup Blocker (Panicware) (look for the Free Version)
Spybot Search & Destroy (better for older systems)
Core Universal Rights
The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one's belief or religion
The right to join together and express one's belief