The United Nations

[Shammu]

U.N. agency eyes curbs on Internet anonymity
Posted by Declan McCullagh
September 12, 2008

A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous.

The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the "IP Traceback" drafting group, named Q6/17, which is meeting next week in Geneva to work on the traceback proposal. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public.

The potential for eroding Internet users' right to remain anonymous, which is protected by law in the United States and recognized in international law by groups such as the Council of Europe, has alarmed some technologists and privacy advocates. Also affected may be services such as the Tor anonymizing network.

"What's distressing is that it doesn't appear that there's been any real consideration of how this type of capability could be misused," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. "That's really a human rights concern."

Nearly everyone agrees that there are, at least in some circumstances, legitimate security reasons to uncover the source of Internet communications. The most common justification for tracebacks is to counter distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks.

But implementation details are important, and governments participating in the process -- organized by the International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency -- may have their own agendas. A document submitted by China this spring and obtained by CNET News said the "IP traceback mechanism is required to be adapted to various network environments, such as different addressing (IPv4 and IPv6), different access methods (wire and wireless) and different access technologies (ADSL, cable, Ethernet) and etc." It adds: "To ensure traceability, essential information of the originator should be logged."

The Chinese author of the document, Huirong Tian, did not respond to repeated interview requests. Neither did Jiayong Chen of China's state-owned ZTE Corporation, the vice chairman of the Q6/17's parent group who suggested in an April 2007 meeting that it address IP traceback.

A second, apparently leaked ITU document offers surveillance and monitoring justifications that seem well-suited to repressive regimes:

A political opponent to a government publishes articles putting the government in an unfavorable light. The government, having a law against any opposition, tries to identify the source of the negative articles but the articles having been published via a proxy server, is unable to do so protecting the anonymity of the author.

That document was provided to Steve Bellovin, a well-known Columbia University computer scientist, Internet Engineering Steering Group member, and Internet Engineering Task Force participant who wrote a traceback proposal eight years ago. Bellovin says he received the ITU document as part of a ZIP file from someone he knows and trusts, and subsequently confirmed its authenticity through a second source. (An ITU representative disputed its authenticity but refused to make public the Q6/17 documents, including a ZIP file describing traceback requirements posted on the agency's password-protected Web site.)

Bellovin said in a blog post this week that "institutionalizing a means for governments to quash their opposition is in direct contravention" of the U.N.'s own Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He said that traceback is no longer that useful a concept, on the grounds that few attacks use spoofed addresses, there are too many sources in a DDoS attack to be useful, and the source computer inevitably would prove to be hacked into anyway.

Another technologist, Jacob Appelbaum, one of the developers of the Tor anonymity system, also was alarmed. "The technical nature of this 'feature' is such a beast that it cannot and will not see the light of day on the Internet," Appelbaum said. "If such a system was deployed, it would be heavily abused by precisely those people that it would supposedly trace. No blackhat would ever be caught by this."

Adding to speculation about where the U.N. agency is heading are indications that some members would like to curb Internet anonymity more broadly:

•  An ITU network security meeting a few years ago concluded that anonymity should not be permitted. The summary said: "Anonymity was considered as an important problem on the Internet (may lead to criminality). Privacy is required but we should make sure that it is provided by pseudonymity rather than anonymity."

•  A presentation in July from Korea's Heung-youl Youm said that groups such as the IETF should be "required to develop standards or guidelines" that could "facilitate tracing the source of an attacker including IP-level traceback, application-level traceback, user-level traceback." Another Korean proposal -- which has not been made public -- says all Internet providers "should have procedures to assist in the lawful traceback of security incidents."

•  An early ITU proposal from RAD Data Communications in Israel said: "Traceability means that all future networks should enable source trace-back, while accountability signifies the responsibility of account providers to demand some reasonable form of identification before granting access to network resources (similar to what banks do before opening a bank accounts)."

cont'd next post

[Shammu]

Multinational push to curb anonymous speech
By itself, of course, the U.N. has no power to impose Internet standards on anyone. But U.N. and ITU officials have been lobbying for more influence over the way the Internet is managed, most prominently through the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia and a followup series of meetings.

The official charter of the ITU's Q6/17 group says that it will work "in collaboration" with the IETF and the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center, which could provide a path toward widespread adoption -- especially if national governments end up embracing the idea.

Patrick Bomgardner, the NSA's chief of public and media affairs, told CNET News on Thursday that "we have no information to provide on this issue." He would not say why the NSA was participating in the process (and whether it was trying to fulfill its intelligence-gathering mission or its other role of advancing information security).

Toby Johnson, a communications officer with the ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau in Geneva, also refused to discuss Q6/17. "It may be difficult for experts to comment on what state deliberations are in for fear of prejudicing the outcome," he said in an e-mail message on Thursday.

When asked about the impact on Internet anonymity, Johnson replied: "I am not fully acquainted with this topic and therefore not qualified to provide an answer." He said that he expects that any final ITU standard would comport with the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It's unclear what happens next. For one thing, the traceback proposal isn't scheduled to be finished until 2009, and one industry source stressed that not all members of Q6/17 are in favor of it. The five "editors" are: NSA's Richard Brackney; Tian Huirong from China's telecommunications ministry; Korea's Youm Heung-Youl; Cisco's Gregg Schudel; and Craig Schultz, who works for a Japan-based network security provider. (In keeping with the NSA's penchant for secrecy, Brackney was the lone ITU participant in a 2006 working group who failed to provide biographical information.)

In response to a question about the eventual result, Schultz, one of the editors, replied: "The long answer is, as you can probably imagine, this subject can get a little 'tense.' The main issue is the protection of privacy as well as not having to rely on 'policy' as part of a process. A secondary issue is feasibility and cost versus benefit." He said a final recommendation is at least a year off.

Another participant is Tony Rutkowski, Verisign's vice president for regulatory affairs and longtime ITU attendee, who wrote a three-page summary for IP traceback and a related concept called "International Caller-ID Capability."

In a series of e-mail messages, Rutkowski defended the creation of the IP traceback "work item" at a meeting in April, and disputed the legitimacy of the document posted by Bellovin. "The political motivation text was not part of any known ITU-T proposal and certainly not the one which I helped facilitate," he wrote.

Rutkowski added in a separate message: "In public networks, the capability of knowing the source of traffic has been built into protocols and administration since 1850! It's widely viewed as essential for settlements, network management, and infrastructure protection purposes. The motivations are the same here. The OSI Internet protocols (IPv5) had the capabilities built-in. The ARPA Internet left them out because the infrastructure was a private DOD infrastructure."

Because the Internet Protocol was not designed to be traceable, it's possible to spoof addresses -- both for legitimate reasons, such as sharing a single address on a home network, and for malicious ones as well. In the early part of the decade, a flurry of academic research focused on ways to perform IP tracebacks, perhaps by embedding origin information in Internet communications, or Bellovin's suggestion of occasionally automatically forwarding those data in a separate message.

If network providers and the IETF adopted IP traceback on their own, perhaps on the grounds that security justifications outweighed the harm to privacy and anonymity, that would be one thing.

But in the United States, a formal legal requirement to adopt IP traceback would run up against the First Amendment. A series of court cases, including the 1995 decision in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, provides a powerful shield protecting the right to remain anonymous. In that case, the majority ruled: "Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."

More broadly, the ITU's own constitution talks about "ensuring the secrecy of international correspondence." And the Council of Europe's Declaration on Freedom of Communication on the Internet adopted in 2003 says nations "should respect the will of users of the Internet not to disclose their identity," while acknowledging law enforcement-related tracing is sometimes necessary.

"When NSA takes the lead on standard-setting, you have to ask yourself how much is about security and how much is about surveillance," said the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Rotenberg. "You would think (the ITU) would be a little more sensitive to spying on Internet users with the cooperation of the NSA and the Chinese government."

U.N. agency eyes curbs on Internet anonymity

[nChrist]

Multinational push to curb anonymous speech
By itself, of course, the U.N. has no power to impose Internet standards on anyone. But U.N. and ITU officials have been lobbying for more influence over the way the Internet is managed, most prominently through the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia and a followup series of meetings.

The official charter of the ITU's Q6/17 group says that it will work "in collaboration" with the IETF and the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center, which could provide a path toward widespread adoption -- especially if national governments end up embracing the idea.

Patrick Bomgardner, the NSA's chief of public and media affairs, told CNET News on Thursday that "we have no information to provide on this issue." He would not say why the NSA was participating in the process (and whether it was trying to fulfill its intelligence-gathering mission or its other role of advancing information security).

Toby Johnson, a communications officer with the ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau in Geneva, also refused to discuss Q6/17. "It may be difficult for experts to comment on what state deliberations are in for fear of prejudicing the outcome," he said in an e-mail message on Thursday.

When asked about the impact on Internet anonymity, Johnson replied: "I am not fully acquainted with this topic and therefore not qualified to provide an answer." He said that he expects that any final ITU standard would comport with the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It's unclear what happens next. For one thing, the traceback proposal isn't scheduled to be finished until 2009, and one industry source stressed that not all members of Q6/17 are in favor of it. The five "editors" are: NSA's Richard Brackney; Tian Huirong from China's telecommunications ministry; Korea's Youm Heung-Youl; Cisco's Gregg Schudel; and Craig Schultz, who works for a Japan-based network security provider. (In keeping with the NSA's penchant for secrecy, Brackney was the lone ITU participant in a 2006 working group who failed to provide biographical information.)

In response to a question about the eventual result, Schultz, one of the editors, replied: "The long answer is, as you can probably imagine, this subject can get a little 'tense.' The main issue is the protection of privacy as well as not having to rely on 'policy' as part of a process. A secondary issue is feasibility and cost versus benefit." He said a final recommendation is at least a year off.

Another participant is Tony Rutkowski, Verisign's vice president for regulatory affairs and longtime ITU attendee, who wrote a three-page summary for IP traceback and a related concept called "International Caller-ID Capability."

In a series of e-mail messages, Rutkowski defended the creation of the IP traceback "work item" at a meeting in April, and disputed the legitimacy of the document posted by Bellovin. "The political motivation text was not part of any known ITU-T proposal and certainly not the one which I helped facilitate," he wrote.

Rutkowski added in a separate message: "In public networks, the capability of knowing the source of traffic has been built into protocols and administration since 1850! It's widely viewed as essential for settlements, network management, and infrastructure protection purposes. The motivations are the same here. The OSI Internet protocols (IPv5) had the capabilities built-in. The ARPA Internet left them out because the infrastructure was a private DOD infrastructure."

Because the Internet Protocol was not designed to be traceable, it's possible to spoof addresses -- both for legitimate reasons, such as sharing a single address on a home network, and for malicious ones as well. In the early part of the decade, a flurry of academic research focused on ways to perform IP tracebacks, perhaps by embedding origin information in Internet communications, or Bellovin's suggestion of occasionally automatically forwarding those data in a separate message.

If network providers and the IETF adopted IP traceback on their own, perhaps on the grounds that security justifications outweighed the harm to privacy and anonymity, that would be one thing.

But in the United States, a formal legal requirement to adopt IP traceback would run up against the First Amendment. A series of court cases, including the 1995 decision in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, provides a powerful shield protecting the right to remain anonymous. In that case, the majority ruled: "Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."

More broadly, the ITU's own constitution talks about "ensuring the secrecy of international correspondence." And the Council of Europe's Declaration on Freedom of Communication on the Internet adopted in 2003 says nations "should respect the will of users of the Internet not to disclose their identity," while acknowledging law enforcement-related tracing is sometimes necessary.

"When NSA takes the lead on standard-setting, you have to ask yourself how much is about security and how much is about surveillance," said the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Rotenberg. "You would think (the ITU) would be a little more sensitive to spying on Internet users with the cooperation of the NSA and the Chinese government."

U.N. agency eyes curbs on Internet anonymity

This might partially explain why nearly all of the Top 100 Internet Attackers in the world are consistently from China. An Internet organization called DShield maintains a current list of top attackers every month. By the way, you don't have to visit a Chinese site or have any connection to a Chinese site to be attacked by them. They evidently scan Internet Service Providers who don't already have them blocked out. DShield lists are commonly used by Internet Service Providers to improve the quality of the services they provide by blocking out the Chinese attackers. I must add that they represent much more than just irritation and tying up resources. They are actually trying to disable computers with just about every trick in the book.

http://www.dshield.org/indexd.html

The list of top attackers can be obtained at the address above. It's continually updated and FREE. "Who Is" checks on the IP's indicate they are nearly always Chinese.

[Soldier4Christ]

U.N. chief calls for 'global leadership' 
Presses world leaders not to pursue narrow national interests

UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday stressed the need for "global leadership" as he pressed world leaders not to pursue narrow national interests in the face of hard economic times.

"I see a danger of nations looking more inward, rather than toward a shared future," he said at the opening of the UN General Assembly's annual debate.

He spoke of a "challenge of global leadership" to tackle the world's worsening financial, energy and food crises.

"We see new centers of power and leadership -- in Asia, Latin America and across the newly developed world," Ban told more than 120 heads of state or government, including Presidents George W. Bush of the United States and Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

"In this new world, our challenges are increasingly those of collaboration rather than confrontation," he added.

"Nations can no longer protect their interests, or advance the well-being of their people, without the partnership of the rest."

On the world's current financial crisis, the UN secretary general stressed the need to "restore order to the international financial markets".

"We need a new understanding on business ethics and governance, with more compassion and less uncritical faith in the 'magic' of markets," the UN boss said.

Ban, who has chosen implementation of key poverty reduction goals as a major theme of this year's debate, said he saw "a danger of retreating from the progress we have made, particularly in the realm of development and more equitably sharing the fruits of global growth."

"Global growth has raised billions of people out of poverty. However, if you are among the world's poor, you have never felt poverty so sharply."

On Thursday, he will host a summit meeting on implementation of the poverty reduction Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on the margins of the General Assembly session.

Ban said he would use Thursday's summit to press world leaders, the private sector, foundations, and civil society to make "ambitious and concrete" proposals to ensure that these goals are implemented by a 2015 deadline.

Monday, a summit meeting on Africa's development needs adopted a political declaration urging rich countries to honor their pledge to double their annual aid to the continent, which is struggling to meet the MDGs.

And returning to the theme of global leadership, Ban told the assembly: "It takes leadership to honor our pledges and our promises in the face of fiscal constraints and political opposition.

"It takes leadership to commit our soldiers to a cause of peace in faraway places. It takes leadership to speak out for justice. To act on climate change despite wonderful voices against you."

[Soldier4Christ]

The New Deceptive Spin at the U.N.: Re-tooling Racism

The United Nations has re-tooled the word “racism” and replaced it with the epigrammatical: “contemporary racism”.

Under the guise of “contemporary racism,” the U.N.’s Human Rights Council is taking care of its darling, Islam, and why not, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) runs things there in The Council.

Resolution 2002/9 mentions “fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion…,” but it does not mention any religion by name except Islam.

Within Islam, there is always distinction as to sex and other religions. Nowhere in this Resolution does it mention the rapes in Darfur, the beheadings in Iraq, Iran’s chant to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, or honor killings here in the U.S. within Muslim families.

Here are quotes from the Resolution:

    Alarmed at the impact of the events of 11 September 2001 on Muslim minorities and communities in some non-Muslim countries and the negative projection of Islam, Muslim values and traditions by the media, as well as at the introduction and enforcement of laws that specifically discriminate against and target Muslims,

    Also expresses deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and with terrorism;

    Notes with concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions, and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities, in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001;

    Expresses its concern at any role in which the print, audio-visual or electronic media or any other means are used to incite acts of violence, xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination towards Islam and any other religion;

The Washington Times quotes U.S. officials, “under the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic:”

…they hope to persuade moderate Muslim nations - among them Senegal, Mali, Nigeria and Indonesia - to reject the measure, which lacks the force of law but has provided diplomatic cover for regimes that repress critical speech.

Sources referred to as “religious rights groups” say that much of the language within other U.N. “measures, including statements…replicate the language of the resolution:”

Now we are seeing a clear attempt by OIC countries to mainstream the concept and insert it into just about every other topic they can,” Miss Gaer said. “They are turning freedom of expression into restriction of expression.

This Resolution is renewed each year. Each year the West votes against it. Each year, the West loses.

[Soldier4Christ]

U.N. Human Rights Council Considers Religious Defamation Ban

So, what in the world does a United Nations Human Rights Council’s ” religious defamation resolution” mean, exactly? Let’s look at how it is described here at One News Now:

    The United Nations’ Human Rights Council has launched a new session and will consider a controversial resolution to declare religious defamation illegal.

    The resolution is really designed to permit countries with a dominant religion, such as Islam, to squelch any free-speech rights of religious minorities, according to Bill Saunders of the Family Research Council (FRC). “So for instance, in some Muslim countries, it’s considered blasphemy to just say what a Christian believes — because that is inconsistent with what Islam teaches,” Saunders explains. “Or, to try to switch from Islam to Christianity, that’s considered apostasy, and in those situations you can be punished by death.”

Got that? What this means is that if the U.N. resolution passes and then is passed by the U.N. General Assembly, it will be ILLEGAL to practice any other religion in an islamic country other than Islam. So, if you are a Christian in Saudi Arabia, you would not be able to legally practice your religion, speak about your religion, or gather to hold worship - even in a room in your house.

This isn’t just a matter of freedom of religion…it is that of free speech. As far as I know, this resolution is unprecedented in the arena of international government. More from the article:

The Human rights Council is dominated by Muslim countries. The resolution is also expected to be submitted to the United Nations General Assembly. “The idea that free speech should be so restricted is a very dangerous one,” Saunders adds.

I have spoken here at Holger Awakens for a very long time how world domination is the goal of Islam and that in fact, Islam is simply NOT a religion. It is a violent political ideology and if you read the Qur’an, it is plain to see that world domination is as important in this ideology as is any entrance to a spiritual afterlife.

The vast majority of those representatives on this farce of an international body, called the U.N. Human Rights Council, are from islamic countries. They have pushed the envelope before and this will be just another example of that. All this does is seek to legitimize, in the eyes of the world, the punishments the islamists can dole out for those who don’t kneel and submit to allah. Bottom line is this…if you live in a islam-dominated country, you had better decide to worship the likes of the pedophile prophet Mohammed or you will end up in prison or hanging from the end of a rope dangling from a crane.

Now, I’m sure the Human Rights Council will make some sort of exception to this resolution so a Christian-dominated America could not make the worship of islam in America illegal. It will be interesting to see how they work around that possible angle.

But as is always the case, the United Nations has put up another example of how literally corrupt that organization is - with hundreds of countries in this world still violating the human rights of individuals, this Council has nothing else to do but make sure all of their islamic terrorist friends have a further weapon to persecute religious freedom in their homelands. This is the year 2008 folks, and we are seeing the highest international governing body in the entire world considering a resolution that would reflect the conditions in the Middle Ages. Unbelievable.

    Islam still seeking religious domination

    The United Nations’ Human Rights Council has launched a new session and will consider a controversial resolution to declare religious defamation illegal.

    The resolution is really designed to permit countries with a dominant religion, such as Islam, to squelch any free-speech rights of religious minorities, according to Bill Saunders of the Family Research Council (FRC). “So for instance, in some Muslim countries, it’s considered blasphemy to just say what a Christian believes — because that is inconsistent with what Islam teaches,” Saunders explains. “Or, to try to switch from Islam to Christianity, that’s considered apostasy, and in those situations you can be punished by death.” It is debatable whether a voice for religious freedom will be heard. “Rightly so, the world objects to that kind of thing and says to these countries [that] we need to have religious freedom,” Saunders contends. “And religious freedom includes the right to have any religion that you choose and to follow it.” The Human rights Council is dominated by Muslim countries. The resolution is also expected to be submitted to the United Nations General Assembly. “The idea that free speech should be so restricted is a very dangerous one,” Saunders adds.

[Soldier4Christ]

This will really get things moving a whole lot faster than what they have been. Time is getting short.

[nChrist]

This will really get things moving a whole lot faster than what they have been. Time is getting short.

I would think that the first reasonable action would be to ban travel to or from any country adopting such a ridiculous philosophy and banning all trade - INCLUDING OIL! YES - I agree that time is getting short, and it's really pretty easy to see where this evil and dying world is going. As long as we are here, we don't have to make things easy for the devil. IN FACT - we shouldn't make things easy for the devil.

[Soldier4Christ]

U.N. Anti-Blasphemy Resolution Curtails Free Speech, Critics Say



Religious groups and free-speech advocates are banding together to fight a United Nations resolution they say is being used to spread Sharia law to the Western world and to intimidate anyone who criticizes Islam.

The non-binding resolution on “Combating the Defamation of Religion” is intended to curtail speech that offends religion -- particularly Islam.

Pakistan and the Organization of the Islamic Conference introduced the measure to the U.N. Human Rights Council in 1999. It was amended to include religions other than Islam, and it has passed every year since.

In 2005, Yemen successfully brought a similar resolution before the General Assembly. Now the 192-nation Assembly is set to vote on it again.

The non-binding Resolution 62/145, which was adopted in 2007, says it “notes with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities in the aftermath of 11 September 2001.”

It “stresses the need to effectively combat defamation of all religions and incitement to religious hatred, against Islam and Muslims in particular.”

But some critics believe the resolution is a dangerous threat to freedom of speech everywhere.

The U.S. government mission in Geneva, in a statement, told the U.N. Human Rights Council in July that “defamation-related laws have been abused by governments and used to restrict human rights” around the world, and sometimes Westerners have been caught in the web.

Critics give some recent news events as examples of how the U.N. "blasphemy resolution" has emboldened Islamic authorities and threatened Westerners:

-- On Oct. 3 in Great Britain, three men were charged for plotting to kill the publisher of the novel "The Jewel of Medina," which gives a fictional account of the Prophet Muhammad and his child bride. FOXNews.com reported U.S. publisher Random House Inc., was going to release the book but stopped it from hitting shelves after it claimed that “credible and unrelated sources” said the book could incite violence by a “small, radical segment.”

-- An Afghan student is on death row for downloading an article about the role of women in Islam, FOXNews.com also reported.

-- In December 2007 “a court reportedly sentenced two foreigners to six months in prison for allegedly marketing a book deemed offensive to Aisha, one of the Prophet Muhammad's wives,” the U.S. government said.

-- A British teacher was sentenced to 15 days in jail in Sudan for offending Islam by allowing students to name the class teddy bear Muhammad in November 2007.

-- In February 2007 in Egypt an Internet blogger was sentenced to four years in prison for writing a post that critiqued Islam.

-- In 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered after the release of his documentary highlighting the abuse of Muslim women.

“It’s obviously intended to have an intimidating effect on people expressing criticism of radical Islam, and the idea that you can have a defamation of a religion like this, I think, is a concept fundamentally foreign to our system of free expression in the United States,” said former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.

Passing the resolution year after year gives it clout, Bolton said. “In places where U.N. decisions are viewed as more consequential than they are in the U.S., they’re trying to build up brick-by-brick that disagreement with this resolution is unacceptable.”

Kevin “Shamus” Hasson, founder and president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public interest law firm in Washington that opposes the resolution, said it is a slap in the face of human rights law.

“The whole idea of the defamation of religion is a Trojan horse for something else," Hasson said. "When you talk about defamation, you talk about people being defamed and people being libeled, but ideas can’t be defamed. Ideas don’t have rights, people have rights.”

He said the resolution is a shield for Islamic fundamentalists who retaliate against perceived offenses and want to make Islamic Sharia law the law of the land. He said the resolution passes under the guise of protecting religion, but it actually endangers religious minorities in Islamic countries.

“Who could possibly be in favor of defamation?” Hasson said. “God may well punish blasphemy in the hereafter, but it’s not the government’s job to police in the here and now.”

Paula Schriefer, advocacy director for Freedom House, a member of the Coalition to Defend Free Speech, agrees.

“You have to remember that many of the governments that are pushing forward this idea are not democratic governments,” she said. “Citizens of Pakistan or Egypt, who have been two of the ringleaders of this movement, are frequently put in prison or arrested. Even if they’re not arrested, the fear of being arrested creates an environment of self-censorship.”

Floyd Abrams, Visiting Professor of First Amendment Law at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, said that while Americans are protected by the Constitution at home, the U.N. resolution could affect those who travel to countries with anti-free-speech laws and isolate Westerners who oppose restricting religious dialogue.

Neither the Pakistani, the Indonesian nor the Egyptian missions to the U.N. responded to requests for comment. All three are members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

[Shammu]

UN Assembly to discuss Abdullah’s interfaith initiative
Arab News
Friday 10 October 2008

JEDDAH: The United Nations General Assembly will hold a session in the middle of next month to discuss Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah’s initiative to promote interfaith dialogue. This was announced by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon while attending a ceremony marking Saudi Arabia’s National Day at the UN headquarters in New York.

“I have tremendous respect for King Abdullah and appreciate his leadership role in many initiatives,” the UN chief said, referring to the International Interfaith Conference organized by the Saudi leader in Madrid last July.

“I have been working with King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal on the interfaith dialogue,” Al-Riyadh Arabic daily quoted Ban as saying. “I personally believe that the dialogue between followers of various faiths would contribute to solving many international conflicts,” he added.

Ban had described the Madrid conference as a symbol of unity among different faiths, adding that he hoped it would contribute to healing divisions and building a more secure and stable world. “This event is itself a potent symbol of unity among different traditions. Our challenge is to see this expression of solidarity turned into a genuine force for good,” Ban said in a message to the conference.

He added that the origin of many conflicts lies beyond the confines of faith. “This unique gathering of religious leaders can help debunk the dangerous myth that religion, even when properly understood, inspires violence,” he said, adding that political rivalries, territorial ambitions or competition for natural resources play a major role in triggering violence.

King Abdullah, who opened the three-day conference in the Spanish capital, exhorted followers of the world’s leading faiths to embrace a spirit of reconciliation, saying that history’s great conflicts were not caused by religion but by their misinterpretation.

More than 300 delegates attended the global gathering.

UN Assembly to discuss Abdullah’s interfaith initiative

[Shammu]

Bush to attend UN dialogue on religions
November 1, 2008



UNITED NATIONS: U.S. President George W. Bush will join the leaders of more than half a dozen countries at an upcoming General Assembly meeting to promote a global dialogue about religions, cultures and common values, a U.N. official said Friday.

General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann has sent invitations to all 192 U.N. member states to the high-level meeting on Nov. 12-13 and expects at least 20 or 30 world leaders to attend, his spokesman Enrique Yeves said.

The meeting is a follow-up to a three-day interfaith conference in Madrid organized by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and King Juan Carlos of Spain in July which brought together Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and representatives of other religions and sparked hopes of a new relationship among religions.

In a final declaration, participants urged the United Nations to play a role, saying they hope to follow up "recommendations in enhancing dialogue among the followers of religions, civilizations and cultures through conducting a special U.N. session on dialogue."

The Saudi monarch, who announced earlier this week that he will attend the New York meeting, sent a letter to d'Escoto requesting a high-level meeting in mid-November to inform the General Assembly of the process initiated in Madrid and provide international support for it.

Yeves said that in addition to Abdullah and Bush, the heads of state of Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Philippines and Finland have said they will attend.

D'Escoto "believes this is an excellent initiative and that it should be broadened to talking not only about religions but about cultures, about all the common values we have in our very rich philosophical and ethical traditions in the different parts of the world," Yeves said.

"He would like that we talk not only about dialogue, but about joining forces in order to work together with all these common values to address the major issues that we are facing right now in the world," Yeves said.

In an Oct. 9 letter inviting U.N. member states to participate, d'Escoto said the November meeting should serve as "a useful preparatory step" for a high-level interfaith and intercultural dialogue with members of civil society in 2010.

King Abdullah, whose country bans non-Muslims from openly practicing their religion, has called for religious tolerance and said such dialogue is the duty of every human being. The king also urged fellow Muslims to reach out to non-Muslims as a way to show that Islam is not a violent religion. (Lots of luck there King Abdullah, islam has a track record of being a violent religion. DW)

Bush to attend UN dialogue on religions

[Shammu]

UN Time for 'Testing'
Posted GMT 11-10-2008 22:12:56                   

After eight years of the Bush administration, which stubbornly subordinated the interests of the United Nations to its own, UN officials are overjoyed to see its departure and the arrival of someone -- anyone -- else. Bureaucrats in Turtle Bay are hopeful about last week's election results, believing they signal the arrival of a far more UN-friendly administration. That new administration will soon face a "testing" of sorts from their quarter.

"It would be hard to find anybody, I think, at the UN who would not believe that Obama would be a considerable improvement over any other alternative," said William H. Luers, executive director of the United Nations Association.

Even UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who took pains publicly to remain neutral during the presidential campaign, was reported to have told a small group of journalists at an off-the-record briefing that an Obama victory would be "good for us." And in commenting after Obama's victory, the Secretary General remarked that "With a glad heart, I welcome this new era of partnership for change."

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton had a simple explanation for the Obama boom at the United Nations: "What they want is the bending of the knee, and they'll get it from an Obama administration."

President-elect Obama has the chance to prove Bolton wrong -- and it is to be hoped that he will -- but the next president will need to adopt a nuanced view of multilateralism in which the United Nations is not the main player. While it is true that the most intractable problems in the world today are global in scale -- the terrorist threat and the interconnected global economic crisis, for example -- the choice is not between the imposition of U.S. unilateral hegemony and accession to UN multilateral authority. Rather, the choice is between different modes of effective global cooperation.

Beneficial multilateralism is really about cooperation among sovereign nations toward a common end that produces net positive results for the cooperating countries against a stated goal. Intelligent cooperation and multilateral diplomacy do not have to mean acquiescence in whatever other countries think, no matter what the cost. Nor do they require us to ignore our own democratic values when a majority of autocratic countries push through a General Assembly resolution that contradicts those values.

The United Nations today cannot be relied upon by the United States as its chief instrument for the exercise of multilateral diplomacy. With few exceptions, such as disaster relief and dealing with critical health issues, there is little interest at the UN in true cooperation toward solving common problems. That is because the agendas of UN bodies like the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly itself have been hijacked by Islamic fanatics and their anti-Western allies, who nevertheless want more U.S. dollars to fund their vision.

Today, we are by far the largest contributor to the UN's budget, paying 22 percent of the UN's regular operating budget and 25 percent of its peacekeeping budget. Yet we have only one vote out of 190 in the General Assembly and share the veto power in the Security Council with four other permanent members (including two authoritarian regimes), who pay a fraction of what we contribute.

As a senator, Barack Obama pushed for even more funding in support of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals. He co-sponsored the Global Poverty Act (S.2433). It was explicitly directed to "the achievement of the UN's Millennium Development Goal" that would cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015.

This first UN Millennium Development Goal of poverty reduction would be coordinated under the legislation with "the other internationally recognized Millennium Development Goals, including eradicating extreme hunger and reducing hunger and malnutrition, achieving universal education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating the spread of preventable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, increasing access to potable water and basic sanitation, ensuring environmental sustainability, and achieving significant improvement in the lives of at least 100,000,000 slum dwellers."

All of this costs lots of money. Barack Obama's legislation called for "making available additional overall United States assistance levels." The UN has already declared what the financial commitment for each developed member state should be: 0.7 percent of its gross national product. This would mean a UN-administered assessment on America's total national wealth that could end up taking nearly $140 billion a year more of American taxpayers' money to finance a global redistributionist development aid program.

"America needs to do more," Obama said when his legislation was introduced. "As we strive to rebuild America's standing in the world, this legislation will not only commit to reducing global poverty, but will also demonstrate our promise and support to those in the developing world. Our commitment to the global economy has to extend beyond trade agreements that are more about increasing corporate profits than about helping workers and small farmers everywhere."

The Bush administration has already provided billions of dollars to help fund the fight against AIDS and malaria in Africa. However, it has not been willing to hand over many hundreds of billions of dollars more of our money to unaccountable aid programs that may end up lining the pockets of corrupt government leaders and UN officials in the mold of the oil-for-food scandal. Note that corruption alone has cost Africa nearly $150 billion dollars a year, according to the African Union.

Particularly at this time of job losses, house foreclosures, exploding national debt, and other economic distress affecting many millions of Americans, a massive increase in development aid funneled through the United Nations is not the kind of change that we can afford.

Will President-elect Obama reverse his past support for expensive UN programs and keep the hands of the UN bureaucrats as far away from our pockets as possible? Will his fellow Democrats, who will be in firm control of both houses of Congress, let him reverse course even if he chooses to, since they have long been unconditional supporters of the UN?

We should know the answer quite soon.

UN Time for 'Testing'

[Shammu]

"Sistine Chapel" at United Nations sparks controversy

By Sinikka Tarvainen
Nov 13, 2008, 11:39 GMT

Madrid - As Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo prepares for the unveiling of his most gigantic work so far at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, he is at the height of his artistic glory.

Only a political squabble over the cost of the art work is casting a shadow over the ceremony, which will be attended by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Spain's King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Tuesday, November 18.

Barcelo, who is being compared with Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and Joan Miro (1893-1983), worked for 13 months on redecorating a negotiating room which will now be known as the Chamber for Human Rights and the Alliance of Civilizations.

The Alliance of Civilizations project was launched by Zapatero and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan to improve dialogue between the West and the Muslim world in 2006.

The ceiling created by Barcelo, which has been compared with Michelangelo's work at the Sistine Chapel, turns the room into a cave dripping with thousands of multicoloured stalactites and swept over by a stormy sea.

'The cave is a metaphor for the agora, the first meeting place of humans, the big African tree under which to sit to talk, and the only possible future: dialogue, human rights,' Barcelo explains.

'The sea is the past, the origin of the species, and the promise of a new future: emigration, travel,' he adds.

The 51-year-old artist describes his new work as 'reaching towards the infinite, bringing a multiplicity of points of view,' like El Libro de Arena (The Book of Sand, 1975) by the late Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, whose grave Barcelo kept visiting during his stay in Geneva.

Few question the artistic value of the ceiling created by Barcelo, but its cost has sparked controversy.

The budget to renovate the room amounted to nearly 20 million euros (25 million dollars), 60 per cent of which was covered by Spanish sponsors.

The rest was given by the government, including 500,000 euros that were lifted from a development aid fund.

'Art has no price,' Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said, eliciting criticism from the conservative opposition which said the same money could have been used for vaccinating children or opening water holes in developing countries.

The money did not come from funds which would have been used for such projects, the government explained.

Talk about the money having been 'stolen from the poor' did not correspond to reality, said Barcelo, whose used 35 tons of paint on the work measuring 1,400 square metres.

His team included 20 specialists ranging from a speleologist and a cook to architects and engineers. Special machinery was designed to create the artificial stalactites some of which weigh more than 50 kilogrammes.

Barcelo, who masters nearly all artistic techniques ranging from painting and sculpture to performance art, soared to fame early on, and is now regarded as one of the world's top contemporary artists.

Dividing his time between his native Majorca, Paris and Mali in West Africa, Barcelo has absorbed a wide range of influences ranging from European Baroque to African materials and themes.

'To think that art has made a lot of progress between (the cave paintings of) Altamira and (Paul) Cezanne is a vain and Western attempt,' says the artist, who has described painting as 'mud that I stir with a stick.'

Fascinated by processes of transformation on land and in the sea, Barcelo sees his art as an 'organized chaos' and as an 'act of resistance.'

Barcelo's biggest projects include modern terracotta murals for a Gothic chapel in the cathedral of Palma de Majorca, which were finished in 2007, but the award-winning artist has vowed not to become an 'official dinosaur.'

'I don't want to spend my life doing mega-projects or big pharaonic works,' he says.

"Sistine Chapel" at United Nations sparks controversy

[Shammu]

Bush promotes religious freedom at UN gathering
Thu Nov 13, 2008 1:30pm EST

By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday called religious freedom the foundation of a healthy society and defended the U.S. record in protecting Muslims caught up in foreign conflicts.

Addressing a United Nations "interfaith" meeting in almost certainly his last appearance at the world body, Bush, a devout Christian, said religious liberty was a central element of U.S. foreign policy that could best be promoted through democracy.

The meeting, attended by leaders and diplomats from some 70 countries, was initiated by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, who in an opening speech on Wednesday denounced terrorism as the enemy of all religions.

Bush implicitly criticized countries that restrict religious practice. Saudi Arabia forbids public non-Muslim worship.

"Freedom is God's gift to every man, woman, and child -- and that freedom includes the right of all people to worship as they see fit," Bush said, noting that the United States had been founded by people fleeing religious persecution.

Bush was speaking a short distance from the site of New York's former World Trade Center, destroyed in 2001 by planes piloted by Islamist al Qaeda militants. His subsequent "war on terror" has been branded by some Muslim critics as a crusade against Islam.

Bush said God had called men "to oppose all those who use His name to justify violence and murder."

"Our nation has helped defend the religious liberty of others, from liberating the (World War Two) concentration camps of Europe to protecting Muslims in places like Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq,' said Bush, a Methodist who said faith had sustained him through his presidency, which ends in January.

"We're not afraid to stand with religious dissidents and believers who practice their faith even where it is unwelcome."

German minister of state Hermann Groehe defended the right to convert to another faith -- a right not recognized in some Muslim countries.

"It is unacceptable that up until now laws in some countries threaten those who want to convert with the death penalty," said Groehe, without naming any countries.

President Asif Ali Zardari of Muslim Pakistan said there was "nothing more un-Islamic" than discrimination, violence against women and terrorism, but also denounced hate speech against Islam in countries he did not identify.

"The imaginary fear of Islam has been rising," Zardari said. "This is exactly what the terrorists had hoped to provoke. Those in the West who accept this are falling into the trap of the terrorists."

Zardari, whose wife, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated by a suicide bomber last year, proposed an international agenda to combat hate speech, religious discrimination and bigotry and promote religious dialogue.

Bush promotes religious freedom at UN gathering
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Muslims want any negative speech about islam combated. Everyone else is pushing freedom to worship however one chooses.

[Shammu]

Saudi king to U.N. assembly: Time for peace-loving religious dialog
11-13-2008

Yesterday, a two-day conference sponsored by Saudi Arabia opened at the United Nations in New York. Its aim: to promote dialog between the religions of the world and, in the process, to help "improve the image of Islam as a religion that favors dialog over violence." Addressing heads of state and other international delegates at the U.N. yesterday, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud delivered the keynote speech of the so-called Culture of Peace Conference to the U.N. General Assembly. The gathering is being "seen as part of the Saudi monarch's efforts to promote a more moderate brand of Islam in a kingdom that has been accused of breeding extremism" ever since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the U.S. "By sponsoring interfaith events, King Abdullah may also be hoping to advance the debate over radicalism within the kingdom." (Financial Times)

In his address, King Abdullah said the kind of dialog between religions he is advocating "comes at a time when the world is criticizing Islam....It is regrettable that some of our sons have been tempted by Satan or the brothers of Satan." The Financial Times notes that, last year, the Saudi king "met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican; earlier this year, he arranged a conference of Muslim sects at the holy city of Mecca and, in July, he presided over a gathering of Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists hosted by Spain. The Vatican, however, is skeptical about the merit of the New York summit and concerned that the issue of religious freedom for Christians in Muslim countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, which permits no [Christian] churches, will be pushed aside."

In his speech yesterday, King Abdullah also stated: "We say today with a single voice that religions through which Almighty God sought to bring happiness to mankind should not be turned into instruments to cause misery....Human beings are created equals and partners on this planet. Either they can live together in peace and harmony or they will inevitably be consumed by the flames of misunderstanding, malice and hatred." Noting that, in the past, religious differences have led to fanaticism and wars, he said: "There was no need for such wars....The time has come for us to learn lessons from the ruthless past and unite together on moral values and lofty examples that we all believe in....All the tragedies the world witnesses today [are] the result of its abandoning of a major principle, the principle of justice, promulgated by all religions and cultures...." Attributing the spread of drug abuse and crime to the detrioration of so-called family values, the king also went after terrorists, noting that those who engage in "terrorism and [other] crimes are enemies of God and enemies of every religion and culture....They would not have appeared in the presence of tolerance." In making his speech, King Abdullah became the first monarch from Saudi Arabia to address the United Nations in 51 years.

Similarly, in an opening speech at the conference, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a Nicaraguan diplomat and Roman Catholic priest who serves as the president of the General Assembly, "warned that the world desperately needs to learn the positive lessons of religion." D'Escoto "said all religions included 'social responsibility,' but that the world has 'become contaminated by the spirit of selfishness and individualism.'" "D'Escoto said...the world must choose between the values of consumerism and greed, or social responsibility and ethical behavior...." That goes for the realms of economics and politics, too, he noted. During his own turn at the podium after King Abdullah spoke, Israeli President Shimon Peres addressed the visiting monarch and said: "Your Majesty,...I was listening to your message....I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region, of all people....It's right, it's needed, it's promising."

Some critics questioned whether or not King Abdullah, as the "leader of a country [that is] steeped in the rigid Wahabi sect of Islam, was the right person to promote interfaith relations." Speaking before the U.N. conference began, the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, the international, human-rights advocacy organization, remarked: "There is no religious freedom in Saudi Arabia, yet the kingdom asks the world to listen to its message of religious tolerance...."

Saudi king to U.N. assembly: Time for peace-loving religious dialog