The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum states that “January 27 marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated this day as International Holocaust Remembrance Day (IHRD), an annual day of commemoration to honor the victims of the Nazi era. Every member nation of the U.N. has an obligation to honor the memory of Holocaust victims and develop educational programs as part of an international resolve to help prevent future acts of genocide. The U.N. resolution that created IHRD rejects denial of the Holocaust, and condemns discrimination and violence based on religion or ethnicity.”
“To commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum hosts a candle-lighting ceremony attended by the Washington, D.C. diplomatic community, Holocaust survivors, and the general public.”
“The United States officially commemorates the Holocaust during Days of Remembrance, which is held each April, marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The Museum is mandated by the U.S. Congress to lead the nation in commemorating this day.”
Auschwitz liberation marked on Holocaust Memorial Day
— BBC reports: “More than a million people died in Auschwitz”
— “Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp survivors have been among those marking the 65th anniversary of its liberation at UK Holocaust Memorial Day events.
— “Many attended a national commemoration at London’s Guildhall, with other survivors of genocide and politicians.”
Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) has been advised by the Westin Washington Dulles Hotel tonight that the conference scheduled by “white nationalist” group New Century Foundation / American Renaissance has been canceled at their hotel. We believe in and support freedom of assembly. Our goal in educating the public on the ideology of the American Renaissance (AR) has always been so that the American people can honestly and objectively assess for themselves what the AR conference is seeking to accomplish.
R.E.A.L. applauds the Westin Washington Dulles Hotel and Starwood Hotels on their commitment to diversity, and their principled stand on respecting the human dignity and human rights of all of their customers. We urge you to contact the Westin Washington Dulles Hotel and let them know how much you appreciate their stand. While our request was to have an area to provide a counter-message of racial diversity and harmony at the Westin, we understand their decision on the American Renaissance conference and their public relations with their customers.
Westin Washington Dulles Hotel Stands Tall Against Hate
We expect “white nationalist” group New Century Foundation / American Renaissance to attempt to reschedule their Northern Virginia event at other Dulles airport area hotels. We urge such other hotels to follow the example of the Dulles Marriott and the Dulles Westin in considering the ethical costs that would be associated with white supremacist conferences. Hate hurts us all.
Moreover, American Renaissance’s leader Jared Taylor has openly stated that the upcoming conference will mock diversity “It is the idea of 300 of us all in the same room, laughing openly at the idea that diversity is a strength, that is more than the hypocrites who run the country can stand.” We urge other area hotel leaders who might be reading this – don’t let your hotel be used to host hate and to mock our very principles of human equality. Tell “white nationalist” group New Century Foundation / American Renaissance that there is no room for hate in the Washington DC metropolitan area and suburbs.
We support our unqualified, universal human rights for all. We urge white supremacist and “white nationalist” supporters to drop the burden of the hate of supremacism from their hearts, and to rejoin the family of humanity in support of our universal human rights.
Web Image from "White Nationalist" Hate Group American Renaissance
Both the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have background on the racist and white supremacist views of American Renaissance leader Jared Taylor. The SPLC describes both the American Renaissance and the New Century Foundation groups as “white nationalist” “hate groups.” Jared Taylor promotes racial segregation, and as ADL states, “promotes pseudoscientific studies that attempt to demonstrate the intellectual and cultural superiority of whites and publishes articles on the supposed decline of American society because of integrationist social policies.”
Jared Taylor’s New Century Foundation describes itself as “a 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1994 to study immigration and race relations so as to better understand the consequences of America’s increasing diversity. It sponsors publications and books, and holds occasional conferences.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center reports on the “New Century Foundation” and “American Renaissance” as follows:
— “Jared Taylor, the man who heads the New Century Foundation and edits its allied magazine American Renaissance, is a white supremacist who celebrates the “clear conception of the United States as a nation ruled by and for whites.” The foundation and magazine, based in Oakton, Va., tirelessly advance pseudo-scientific theories linking IQ to race and advocate eugenics — selective breeding to ‘improve’ human genetic stock.”
— “The foundation also puts on bi-annual conferences; the 2002 event was advertised like this: ‘In all parts of the world, whites are afraid to speak out in their own interests. The costs of ‘diversity,’ racial differences in IQ, the threat of non-white immigration — politicians and the media are afraid to discuss what these things mean for whites and their civilization.’ ”
— “Taylor also has noted approvingly that until 1967, ‘strong opposition to mixed marriage was enshrined in law’ in 16 states. In ‘The Myth of Diversity,’ Taylor writes that ‘diversity’ has led to civil rights claims by all kinds of groups he doesn’t like. “Anyone who opposes the glorification of the alien, the subnormal, and the inferior can be denounced,’ he complains. ‘The metastasis of diversity is a fascinating story, but the disease began with race.’ ”
— “After 300 pages of attacking blacks and dismissing white racism, Taylor’s 1992 book Paved With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America notes that most Americans would not agree to use sterilization or forced abortion on those whom the society considers less fit. His solution? Make ‘welfare mothers’ accept a ‘five-year implantable contraceptive.’ ”
— “Taylor is allied with Wayne Lutton, whom he thanks in his book and who is the editor of The Social Contract, a journal published by John Tanton’s The Social Contract Press*. Taylor, Lutton and Richard Lynn are on the editorial board of The Occidental Quarterly, a journal where Sam Francis, top editor for the racist Council of Conservative Citizens*, serves as book review editor. The Occidental Quarterly’s first issue featured a story by the late Keith Stimely, who was also an editor of the Journal of Historical Review, a notorious Holocaust denial publication.”
In addition to “white nationalist” Jared Taylor, other speakers scheduled to appear at the February 19-21 American Renaissance/New Century Foundation conference in Virginia include:
Shen Yun has announced a press conference for Wednesday, January 27, to address the refusal of Hong Kong authorities to allow members of their pro-human rights Chinese cultural show to perform in Hong Kong.
Leeshai Lemish
Shen Yun Performing Arts
(347) 920-0735
leeshai.lemish@shenyunperformingarts.org
Terri Wu
New Tang Dynasty Network
(202) 680-3912
Terri.wu@ntdtv.com
Hong Kong Authorities Deny Visas to US-based Shen Yun Performing Arts, Force Cancellation of Sold-Out Shows
WHAT: Press Conference hosted by Shen Yun Performing Arts and New Tang Dynasty Network,
Local presenter of Shen Yun performances with the latest completed on January 24 at the Kennedy Center Opera House
WHEN: 10am., Wednesday, January 27, 2010
WHERE: Bloomberg Room, National Press Club
529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor, Washington, DC 20045
WHO:
Vina Lee, Company Manager and Choreographer
Brian Nieh, Lead Dancer and DC resident
Leon Chao, Lead Dancer and DC resident
Hoiwa Lee, Dancer and Hong Kong Resident
Gregory Xu, Stage Manager, whose visa was denied
Leeshai Lemish, Master of Ceremony
Terri Wu, NTDN Director of Sales and Marketing
On January 27, the date of the first originally scheduled performance in Hong Kong, Shen Yun Performing Arts hosts a joint press conference with its local presenter in Washington, New Tang Dynasty Network, to ask the U.S. government and Washingtonians to protect Shen Yun’s rights as an American company, support artistic freedom, and defend freedom of expression in Hong Kong.
Over 7,700 ticketed audience members have been directly affected.
Three days before over 90 dancers, musicians, and technical crew were to board a plane for Hong Kong ahead of seven sold-out shows, Hong Kong authorities refused to issue visas to key production members, forcing the shows’ cancellation. The seven crew members are an integral part of Shen Yun Performing Arts and are highly trained in Shen Yun’s specific artistic requirements. They cannot be replaced and the show cannot go on without them.
Shen Yun artists and representatives of the local presenter New Tang Dynasty Network are available for interview. B-rolls are also available.
About Shen Yun Performing Arts:
Based in New York, Shen Yun Performing Arts is a nonprofit organization that seeks to revive Chinese traditions that thrived before decades of suppression. At the production’s heart is classical Chinese dance, along with vocalists, a unique orchestra of Chinese and Western instruments, and colorful hand-made costumes. Shen Yun’s dances portray traditional legends, as well as events in present-day China, like the story of Falun Gong. By artistically depicting these stories on stage, Shen Yun aims to breathe new life into the values of China’s divinely inspired culture. Last week, Shen Yun performed seven shows at the Kennedy Center Opera House.
About New Tang Dynasty Network:
New Tang Dynasty Network (NTDN), a Chinese language TV, is proud of presenting Shen Yun performances to Washingtonians. It has presented three Shen Yun appearances at the Kennedy Center Opera House in February 2009, August 2009 and January 2010; the last run was completed on Sunday, January 24, with sold-out performances over the weekend. Some 33,000 Washingtonians have enjoyed Shen Yun performances.
Banner of Shen Yun Performing Arts 2010 World Tour
According to NWTN, Cowart’s co-conspirator Paul Schlesselman was “transferred from the Obion County Law Enforcement Complex to federal custody in Jackson.” On January 14, 2010, Paul Schlesselman pled guilty to their mass-murder terror plot to kill 88 Americans and Barack Obama. NWTN quoted Obion County Sheriff Jerry Vastbinder that Paul Schlesselman faced 10 years in federal prison, with sentencing set sometime in April.
Daniel Cowart remains the only one of the accused terror plotters still in the local prison.
Regarding Daniel Cowart’s trial, NWTN reported that “Cowart faces a federal trial on the charges. His court date is unknown.”
Daniel Cowart - CBS News reports he was a member of Stormfront
In October 2008, CBS reported that “CBS News traced Cowart’s email and discovered that he is a forum member of the website StormFront.org, reportedly the nation’s largest website for white supremacists known as ‘white-power.'”
Stormfront Member Daniel Cowart with Swastika Tattoo and Rifle (Photo: Inquister)
A week ago, religious hatred and riots in Nigeria resulted in devastating loss of life, destruction of houses of worship and homes. With the catastrophic aftermath of the Haitian earthquakes, the Nigerian riots were largely lost in the world news coverage, but the Nigerian riots remain a challenge to our human rights, and a challenge to our willingness to recognize and confront hate.
While details continue to trickle in about the the Nigeria riots in Jos, one thing is clear – there has not been sufficient condemnation of the Nigerian riots and violence by leaders of Christian and Islamic faiths. Too often there is only a series of finger-pointing exercises where one side blames the other for having “started” the riots. COMPASS has provided fair reporting to document both allegations: one report states that the riots began with a Muslim man harassing a woman going to church, another report claims that the riots started over Christian youths “stopping a Muslim from rebuilding his house.”
But the obvious point to any people of faith who respect each other and respect our universal human rights is that it really does not matter who “started” the latest conflict. The reports of burned houses of worship, rioters murdering with machetes, gunfire in the street, dead bodies thrown in wells, axes used on little children, warrant shame and international condemnation from both sides and a unequivocal renunciation of religious hate. The Jos riots are a horror story of human beings’ inhumanity to one another, driven by nothing less than blind, unreasoning hatred.
So a week later, it is disturbing to see the significant silence of many international religious leaders, outside of local Nigerian religious leaders, in condemning such violence. While we have positive statements from Archbishop Kaigama calling for residents to “sheath their swords and be their brothers’ keepers” and Sheik Balarabe Dawud appealing for calm, there is a larger international silence that ignores that this latest Jos violence, even worse than the 2008 Jos riots, even happened.
There is silence from the Vatican (we even contacted the Catholic News Service to see if we had missed something). There is silence from the likes of Rick Warren, a long time defender of former Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) leader Archbishop Peter Akinola, who told reporters in 2006 that while “No Christian would pray for violence, but it would be utterly naive to sweep this issue of Islam under the carpet… [and that] I’ve said before: let no Muslim think they have the monopoly on violence.”
Media reports have described the Jos riots as having predominantly Muslim victims. On January 19, NEXT reported that Balarabe Dawud, the head of the central mosque in Jos, had received 192 bodies. On January 23, Human Rights Watch told AFP that Muslims were then quoting 364 Muslims dead in the riots. Also on January 23, The Daily Nation was reporting on bodies being dumped in wells, with reports of people being burned alive, and children being attacked, with one witness stating “He said he had seen the bodies of 20-30 children, some burned, some sliced with machetes, and that his wife was in hospital with an 11-month-old girl who had been cut with an axe.”
The Daily Nation also reported that “US-based Human Rights Watch said groups of armed men attacked the mostly Muslim population of Kuru Karama on January 19, burning some alive and killing others as they tried to flee. It urged [Nigerian Vice President] Jonathan to order an investigation of ‘credible reports of a massacre of at least 150 Muslim residents’. They were armed with cutlasses, guns, sticks and bags of stone. It was not the Christians from our community but those from outside who came,’ one 32-year-old resident of Kuru Karama, who was not named, told Human Rights Watch. ‘The children were running helter-skelter. The men were trying to protect the women. People who ran into the bush were killed. Some were burned in the mosque and some went to the houses and were burned,’ he said.”
As of January 25, Punch was reporting that the total death count was estimated at 492 dead, after another 28 bodies were found, with “dozens of cars, houses, churches and mosques were also burnt during four days of unrest.” On January 18, Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported that 40 Christians had been killed in the riots. On January 21, Reuters reported that “correspondent saw three burnt bodies lying on the streets in Jos and several buildings, churches and cars destroyed by fire.”
Certainly some of the reporting may be inaccurate as Nigerian Archbishop Kaigama suggests. Moreover, Christianity Today’s Craig Keener stated that readers should be wary that “international media outlets have often depended largely on the Muslim-dominated Hausa media of northern Nigeria.” Craig Keener also cautioned about “one recent case, when according to some reports many Muslim young men were gunned down charging peace-keeping soldiers, their bodies were displayed to the media in the mosque as if ‘Christians’ had slaughtered them there.”
But the accuracy of how many Christians or Muslims were killed by either Christians or Muslims, and where they were killed, really is not the point. The failure of too many to recognize this is indeed the real problem. People promoting a religious view of fellowship should always be willing to recognize and unequivocally condemn anyone who uses a religious rationale for hate and violence.
You cannot promote religious love, if you won’t recognize and reject religious hate – especially when it comes from members of your religion. Our shared rights to exchange ideas and expect dignity for our religious beliefs comes with the shared responsibility to never allow our religious beliefs to be used to rationalize hate. Surely the thousands that have died in Nigeria over religious hate deserve more than a determined denial over why they died.
But the idea that this latest violence in Jos was based on religious hate seems to be scrupulously ignored. While Nigerian Christian Archbishop Kaigama has stated that Nigeria is “messing up,” he states that the continuing violence in Jos is more political than religious, with Catholic News Service (CNS) reporting that “[m]edia reports describing the violence as a religious clash between Muslims and Christians were inaccurate.” CNS reported that “Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos said the origin of the current conflicts, like those of 2008, was a struggle for political control of the city between the Hausa people, who are predominantly Muslim, and the indigenous residents, who are mostly Christians.” The Financial Times has the same story line, arguing that the source of the violence is merely “politics and poverty.”
Where have we heard this before? Just about every place that is in denial on religious violence: Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan, you name it – the same argument of “politics and poverty” is trotted out to ignore that it is not merely politics that makes people pick up machetes against their neighbors, it is not merely poverty that makes people burn down houses of worship, and it is not merely misunderstandings that lead people to pick up axes against little children. There are plenty of political disagreements that don’t lead to such carnage. There are plenty of impoverished people in the world that don’t find the answer to their poverty in murder and atrocities.
No the source of such violence is not just “politics and poverty,” it is hate. Moreover, the world will perceive this as religious hate. While much of the western media has either ignored or marginally reported this story, how do we expect it is being covered on the pro-jihadist web sites of the world?
The widespread silence by responsible, international Christian leaders and Muslim leaders (outside of the anti-freedom OIC and Muslim Brotherhood groups) to recognize and condemn such religious hatred by both those Christian and Muslim rioters in Jos will certainly ensure that the Jos riots will be used by those who perceive a global Christian “war on Islam,” which remains a motivator for violent jihadists around the world.
For those of both faiths that seek to reject religious extremism and hate, the Jos riots represents an opportunity to be responsible for each other, responsible for defending love and peace, and responsible for our shared universal human rights and dignity.
Responsible for Equality And Liberty urges such religious leaders not to pass up the opportunity to make their position clear on the religious hatred seen in the Jos riots, and urge others to Choose Love, Not Hate.
Communist China Ups the Ante in Internet Row With U.S.
— WSJ: “China stepped up its verbal feud with the U.S. over the Internet, with a commentator in the Communist Party’s main newspaper saying America is seeking to control the Internet and alleging that the U.S. used the Web to incite election protests in Iran last year”
Communist China Rebukes U.S. Calls to Investigate Hacking
— NYT: “China delivered a bristling response on Monday to the United States’ demand that it investigate recent attacks on American computers from Chinese soil, saying that any suggestion that it conducted or condoned the hackers’ intrusions was ‘groundless and aims to denigrate China.'”
Colorado: “Neo-Nazis taking act on the road”
— Reporter-Herald reports on Brighton, Colorado Nazi group: “State relationship with Aryans for highway cleanup drawing criticism”
— “These defenders of Aryan purity are assigned to work in a city that is more than a third Latino. A state-issued sign that stands in the right of way declares their partnership with the state.”
— “The Denver Unit operates under the nationwide National Socialist Movement, based in Michigan. It calls itself ‘America’s Nazi Party.'”
— “The Denver Unit’s Web site extols Adolf Hitler and his manifesto, ‘Mein Kampf’; the group’s symbol is the swastika; and it calls for exclusion from civil society of anyone not of ‘pure White blood.'”
— “Acceptance of homosexuals, the site says, has led to an ‘increased number of pedophiles.’ Under NSM rule, ‘these individuals would receive an instant death penalty.'”
