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Any news about hate groups or anti hate groups will be posted here.These storys are taken from very good sites and I recommend visiting them.
Gay discrimination
By Letitia Stein
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legislation was introduced in Congress on Tuesday to ban workplace discrimination against homosexuals, reviving a campaign to include sexual orientation in federal civil rights protection.
``Civil rights is the unfinished business of America,'' Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, the bill's chief sponsor in the Senate, told a news conference. ``It is long past time to prohibit such discrimination based on sexual orientation.''
Supporters said that they expected the Senate to vote on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act this year but that it faced an uncertain future in the House of Representatives. In 1996, similar legislation fell one vote short of Senate approval, but no such bill has ever come close to passage in the House.
``The Republican leadership (of the House) so far has a perfect record of not allowing anything to come to the floor that would be supportive of the rights of gays and lesbian people,'' said Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and one of the few openly gay members of Congress.
The bill would prohibit public and private employers from using sexual orientation as the basis of decisions to hire, fire or promote workers. It would allow workers to pursue limited remedies under the Americans With Disabilities Act but would not permit affirmative action remedies for violations.
Religious organizations, the military and businesses with fewer than 15 employees would not be included in the act.
Twelve states and a handful of communities have made it illegal to discriminate against homosexuals in the workplace, but the bill's supporters say discrimination exists nationally.
``A WIDESPREAD PROBLEM''
``It is a widespread problem that exists for gay and lesbian people all across this country,'' said Winnie Stachelberg, political director of the Human Rights Campaign, a group that lobbies for gay and lesbian rights.
The group documented more than 130 cases of discrimination nationwide in a report released with the bill's introduction. The people in the report, many identified only by initials, described workplace harassment that ranged from physical and verbal abuse to dismissal for being gay.
``We have seen cases in court around the country where judges say from the bench, 'We would like to remedy this situation, but we have no statutory authority to do so,''' Stachelberg said.
``The report is just the tip of the iceberg,'' she said.
Opponents contend that employees are guaranteed fair treatment under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
``To make sexual preference a special category is not something we support,'' said Connie MacKey, vice president for government affairs of the Family Research Council, a conservative organization that promotes family values.
More than two decades after similar legislation was first introduced in Congress, there has never been so much support, backers said. Forty senators have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill, and its companion measure in the House had 180 co-sponsors.
The Gallup Poll found in June that 85 percent of Americans surveyed favored equal opportunity in employment rights for gay men and women, supporters said.
The legislation is also supported by more than two dozen major corporations, including Hewlett-Packard Co., AT&T and Eastman Kodak, and many civil rights organizations.
``There is a strong level of support for ENDA,'' said Sen. Jim Jeffords, a Vermont independent who has long favored such a measure. ``Like all Americans, gays and lesbians deserve to be judged on their ability to work, not on some irrational, iron, non-work-related prejudice.''
African Americans Work Harder for less than whites
African Americans are spending more time at work, but are still finding it difficult to catch up to their white counterparts in earnings, a new study shows.
From 1989 to 1998, African-American middle-class families logged an average of 4,278 hours of work per year – almost 500 more hours per year than white families, according to "The State of Working America 2000-2001", released by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), based in Washington, D.C.
The good news is that the average income of African-American families grew 1.1 percent per year in the 1990s, which was double the rate for whites.
In addition, research from the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth shows that in terms of overall growth, minority buying power, which is predicted to grow 64.7 percent between 1990 and 2001, is expected to significantly outpace the white market.
African-American consumers will comprise the largest buying power group by 2001 at .1 billion, representing two out of every three dollars spent by minorities, according to the Selig Center.
In 1999, however, median family income for African Americans was still only ,778, compared to ,244 for whites. In addition, from 1995 to 1998, growth in African-American families’ earnings (1.9 percent) trailed that of whites (2.4 percent), according to the EPI study.
"It tends to have to do with job quality," said Jared Bernstein, an author of the study. "Minorities tend to end up in poorer jobs due to historical discrimination."
Unemployment for whites (3.7 percent) was less than half the rate for African Americans (8 percent), the EPI study found. However, unemployment went down 3.4 percentage points for African Americans, but only decreased 0.8 percent for whites.
Although poverty among African Americans (26.1 percent) exceeded rates among whites (10.5 percent), like unemployment, it dropped at higher rates than for whites. While poverty rates fell 3.2 percentage points for African Americans, it fell less than 1 percent for whites, the study found.
Letter leads to protest
Hackers
Hackers have gained access to the Web site of Austria's right-wing Freedom Party (FPOE), and were able to post a photo of the party's former leader bearing a Hitler-like moustache drawn on his face.
The hackers also posted a picture of the ex-party-leader, Joerg Haider, meeting with Pope John Paul II. In that photo, too, the culprits drew a little black moustache on Haider's upper lip.
The hacking did not occur on the party's main home page at http://www.fpoe.at/ , but on the home page of the Salzburg branch of the party at http://www.fpoe-salzburg.at/ .
Robert Bammer, a spokesman for the FPOE in Salzburg, told Newsbytes that the site was hacked on Saturday, and that hackers had done an expert job, making it impossible up to now for the party to remove the page.
We are spending a lot of time trying to repair it, he said, adding that he did not know when they might succeed in removing the page.
Haider and his Freedom Party in the fall of 1999 scored a victory with 27 percent of the national vote, which forced the previous ruling and more mainstream Conservative Party to accept Haider as a coalition partner. Leaders of the other 14 European Nations condemned Haider and his party, even threatening sanctions against Austria.
Eventually Haider, who has been accused of racism and anti-Semitism, stepped down as party leader to defuse the situation. But most believe he retains de facto control of the party, which has a section on its Web site devoted to him (http://www.fpoe.at/english/haider.htm ).
Earlier this year, a parody of the FPOE Web site was launched at: http://www.fpo.at/ .
On the real FPOE Web site, hackers gave the Salzburg page the title:Haiders Masterbationscamp in Salzburg.
The rest of the text appears to have been written in a hurry, and is written in a slang German. At the top of the page it says:This is the Salzburg slum of Joerg Haider and his Dummy Party, the FPOE.
Above his photo, the salute of the Nazi party is used:Heil Haider, you cuddly bunny.
And above the photo of Haider and the Pope, it says: Before we finish I show you the beginning of a church-orgy, whose publication was forbidden.
The hackers signed off with:Greetings from Nolife@Glitch@Austria. May your ruined life be so long that you idiots eventually realize how little your life was worth. Good luck and few children.
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No Refugees
(New York, August 6, 2001) Human Rights Watch today condemned a decision by states participating in a preparatory meeting of the UN World Conference Against Racism to delete all reference to the 1951 Refugee Convention from the conference program of action.
"Refugees and asylum seekers are often double victims of racism," said Rachael Reilly, Refugee Policy Director at Human Rights Watch. "They flee their countries to escape racism and ethnic intolerance, then many of them are again subject to racist and xenophobic treatment in their countries of refuge."
The decision by the anti-racism summit to drop any reference to the Refugee Convention came less than a week after countries around the world marked the 50th anniversary of the international refugee instrument on July 28.
"It is deeply ironic that less than one week after the UN marked the 50th anniversary of the international refugee convention, states should choose to ignore its importance for the World Conference Against Racism," said Reilly.
Human Rights Watch urged governments participating in the anti-racism meeting to recognize the alarming growth in racism and xenophobia towards refugees and asylum seekers world wide and to take immediate steps to reinsert a commitment to the 1951 Refugee Convention into the conference platform.
In December 2001, state parties to the Convention are due, for the first time ever, to formally reaffirm their commitment to the Refugee Convention and Protocol on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in Switzerland.
"It makes a mockery of this meeting if the same states are willing to drop all commitment to the Refugee Convention in the World Conference Against Racism," said Reilly.
Editorial-School Shootings and White Denial
Tim Wise, AlterNet
I can think of no other way to say this, so here goes: white people need to pull our heads out of our collective ass.
Two more white children are dead and thirteen are injured, and another "nice" community is scratching its blonde head, utterly perplexed at how a school shooting the likes of the one yesterday in Santee, California could happen. After all, as the Mayor of the town said in an interview with CNN: "We're a solid town, a good town, with good kids, a good church-going town…an All-American town." Yeah, well maybe that's the problem.
I said this after Columbine and no one listened so I'll say it again: white people live in an utter state of self-delusion. We think danger is black, brown and poor, and if we can just move far enough away from "those people" in the cities we'll be safe. If we can just find an "all-American" town, life will be better, because "things like this just don't happen here."
Well bullshit on that. In case you hadn't noticed, "here" is about the only place these kinds of things do happen. Oh sure, there is plenty of violence in urban communities and schools. But mass murder; wholesale slaughter; take-a-gun-and-see-how-many-you can-kill kinda craziness seems made for those safe places: the white suburbs or rural communities.
And yet once again, we hear the FBI insist there is no "profile" of a school shooter. Come again? White boy after white boy after white boy, with very few exceptions to that rule (and none in the mass shooting category), decides to use their classmates for target practice, and yet there is no profile? Imagine if all these killers had been black: would we still hesitate to put a racial face on the perpetrators? Doubtful.
Indeed, if any black child in America -- especially in the mostly white suburbs of Littleton, or Santee -- were to openly discuss their plans to murder fellow students, as happened both at Columbine and now Santana High, you can bet your ass that somebody would have turned them in, and the cops would have beat a path to their doorstep. But when whites discuss their murderous intentions, our stereotypes of what danger looks like cause us to ignore it -- they're just "talking" and won't really do anything. How many kids have to die before we rethink that nonsense? How many dazed and confused parents, Mayors and Sheriffs do we have to listen to, describing how "normal" and safe their community is, and how they just can't understand what went wrong?
I'll tell you what went wrong and it's not TV, rap music, video games or a lack of prayer in school. What went wrong is that white Americans decided to ignore dysfunction and violence when it only affected other communities, and thereby blinded themselves to the inevitable creeping of chaos which never remains isolated too long. What affects the urban "ghetto" today will be coming to a Wal-Mart near you tomorrow, and unless you address the emptiness, pain, isolation and lack of hope felt by children of color and the poor, then don't be shocked when the support systems aren't there for your kids either.
What went wrong is that we allowed ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security by media representations of crime and violence that portray both as the province of those who are anything but white like us. We ignore the warning signs, because in our minds the warning signs don't live in our neighborhood, but across town, in that place where we lock our car doors on the rare occasion we have to drive there. That false sense of security -- the result of racist and classist stereotypes -- then gets people killed. And still we act amazed.
But listen up my fellow white Americans: your children are no better, no nicer, no more moral, no more decent than anyone else. Dysfunction is all around you, whether you choose to recognize it or not.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, and Department of Health and Human Services, it is your children, and not those of the urban ghetto, who are most likely to use drugs. That's right: white high school students are seven times more likely than blacks to have used cocaine; eight times more likely to have smoked crack; ten times more likely to have used LSD and seven times more likely to have used heroin. In fact, there are more white high school students who have used crystal methamphetamine (the most addictive drug on the streets) than there are black students who smoke cigarettes.
What's more, white youth ages 12-17 are more likely to sell drugs: 34% more likely, in fact than their black counterparts. And it is white youth who are twice as likely to binge drink, and nearly twice as likely as blacks to drive drunk. And white males are twice as likely to bring a weapon to school as are black males.
And yet I would bet a valued body part that there aren't 100 white people in Santee, California, or most any other "nice" community who have ever heard a single one of the statistics above. Even though they were collected by government agencies using these folks' tax money for the purpose. Because the media doesn't report on white dysfunction
A few years ago, U.S. News ran a story entitled: "A Shocking look at blacks and crime." Yet never have they or any other news outlet discussed the "shocking" whiteness of these shoot-em-ups. Indeed, every time media commentators discuss the similarities in these crimes they mention that the shooters were boys, they were loners, they got picked on, but never do they seem to notice a certain highly visible melanin deficiency. Color-blind, I guess.
White-blind is more like it, as I figure these folks would spot color mighty damn quick were some of it to stroll into their community. Santee's whiteness is so taken for granted by its residents that the Mayor, in that CNN interview, thought nothing of saying on the one hand that the town was 82 percent white, but on the other hand that "this is America." Well that isn't America, and it especially isn't California, where whites are only half of the population. This is a town that is removed from America, and yet its Mayor thinks they are the normal ones -- so much so that when asked about racial diversity, he replied that there weren't many of different "ethni-tis-tities." Not a word. Not even close.
I'd like to think that after this one, people would wake up. Take note. Rethink their stereotypes of who the dangerous ones are. But deep down, I know better. The folks hitting the snooze button on this none-too-subtle alarm are my own people, after all, and I know their blindness like the back of my hand.
This artical was taken from racismonline.com
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