Thursday, June 22, 2006

BELGIAN STATE GUILTY OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

It is attacking the "Brussels Journal" editor via his children

In a Report published today by the Libertarian Alliance, the Belgian Government is accused of systematic human rights abuses similar in nature and extent to those in a post-Soviet republic. Journalists and homeschoolers are not safe in Belgium. The Report - The Belgian State versus Home Schooling: The Persecution of Dr Alexandra Colen and Dr Paul Belien - by Professor John Kersey, is published by The Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties policy institute based in London. Professor Kersey finds:

* That Dr Paul Belien, Editor of The Brussels Journal, has faced official and semi-official intimidation over an article he published in favour of the right to self-defence;

* That Dr Belien and his wife, Dr Alexandra Colen (who is a Member of the Belgian Parliament), face a systematic attack on their right to educate their children at home.

Commenting on the Report, Dr Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance, says: "For a journalist, there can be few rights more fundamental than to freedom of speech. For parents, there can be no right more fundamental than of being able to bring up their children in what they consider the right values. We should all be shocked that these rights have been systematically violated in a country that is a member state of the European Union and of the Council of Europe - and that not long ago passed laws allowing citizens of other Western countries such as Israel to be put on trial for alleged offences committed outside Belgium.

"In other European Union member states, we should be particularly concerned. If homeschooling can be made illegal in Belgium, it can be made illegal in any other state. In Britain at the moment, parents have an absolute right to homseschool their children. The precedents set in the Belien and other cases may be applied here.

"As Director of the Libertarian Alliance, I have today written to the Belgian Prime Minister and to the Human Rights Commissioners of the European Union and of the Council of Europe. We require an assurance that the persecution of the Belien family will be at once ended. "We encourage all others people who may be concerned about this denial of fundamental human rights to use the names and addresses supplied in the Report and to write letters of their own.

[Two email addresses: Frank Vandenbroucke Minister of Education in the Flemish Government: here and the inspector-general at the ministry, Kristien Arnouts: here (I think the latter is female)]

Source

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ELSEWHERE

The Gaza beach explosion of over a week ago in which members of an Arab family died was widely attributed to Israeli shelling. There is an investigative report from a German newspaper here which suggests that the whole story is another "Pallywood" episode -- a Palestinian fake.

Nutty Episcopalians forget that the Bible was entirely written by Jews: "The 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church today passed a resolution essentially condemning the Bible as an "anti-Jewish" document. Not only does the resolution aim to address perceptions of anti-Jewish prejudice in the Bible and Episcopal liturgy, but it suggests that such prejudice is actually "expressed in...Christian Scriptures and liturgical texts." Originated in the Committee on Prayer Book, Liturgy and Music, Resolution C001 directs the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to "collect and develop materials to assist members of the Church to address anti-Jewish prejudice expressed in and stirred by portions of Christian scriptures and liturgical texts, with suggestions for preaching, congregational education, and lectionary use, and to report to the 76th General Convention." Both houses of the Episcopal Church Convention passed the resolution, including a 68 percent approval in the House of Deputies on Thursday.

Presbyterians have second thoughts about anti-Israel bias: "The 2004 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly mandate to "initiate a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel" is poised to be erased, following the action of a committee of General Assembly on June 17. The plan will not become official until the whole General Assembly considers it later this week, but the news from the committee is good. It seems unlikely that divestment would occur-unless the situation in the Middle East or in the denomination were to change radically".

The Lords come to the rescue again: "The House of Lords yesterday defied the Commons by insisting that, to combat election fraud, everybody should sign their name and give their date of birth before they are given a vote. For the second time in a fortnight, ministers failed to persuade peers to drop demands for tough new measures designed to defeat vote rigging. The Government has agreed to force everyone seeking a postal vote to provide their signature and date of birth. Peers want the reform extended to voting in person".

The genetics of aggression: "Some men are predisposed to more belligerent and macho behaviour than others because of the presence of an aggression gene, researchers in America suggest. A study of more than 500 European men has shown that a tendency to be intemperate and confrontational may be linked to the presence of one of two genes involved in the activity of the neurotransmitter serotonin. The research, by a team at the University of Pittsburgh, suggested that people who had a "low-activity" MAOA (monoamine oxidase A) gene were more prone to violence."



How awful for the arrogant French elite! "But even as protesters sought to cast McDonald's as the embodiment of all that is wrong with fast food and American culture, the French never stopped eating its hamburgers. Indeed, for all the attacks on the company, McDonald's operating profit in France last year was second only to that of McDonald's in the United States."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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