🚀 go-pugleaf

BC TEL won't tolerate what the politically correct call White Power Ranger
sites but BC TEL has a unique tolerance for Communist propaganda! I wonder
why B'nai B'rith is silent!? If any group is "hateful" then is it not
Communists? How much "free speech" is allowed in the present Communist
countries such as China or Cuba? There aren't any Nazi gov'ts in power yet
the P.C. crowd devotes inordiante amounts of energy toward them yet we have
Communists openly operating under our noses and nobody seems to give a damn!
Imagine the outrage by the left if people were to make celbrations honoring
Nazism and Adolf Hitler. Why are you all so quiet Nizkor, Anti-Defamation
League, B'nai B'rith etc. Is not communism the number one killer this
century among ideologies?

The following is unedited and was FWDed from a leftist News Group.

 ----------  Original Message Follows  ----------

From: bghauk@berlin.infomatch.com (Brian Hauk)
Subject: Celebrate 40 Years of the Cuban Revolution!
Newsgroups: alt.politics.radical-left
X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0]
Lines: 41
Message-ID: <gIrk2.20$bP5.181363@news.bctel.net>
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1999 17:10:36 GMT
NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.34.170.70
X-Complaints-To: news@bctel.net
X-Trace: news.bctel.net 915556236 207.34.170.70 (Tue, 05 Jan 1999 09:10:36
PDT)
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1999 09:10:36 PDT


The Militant Labor Forum in Vancouver presents

	Celebrate 40 Years of the Cuban Revolution!
	   Socialist Cuba  - from 1959 to Today

"What does the revolution teach? That revolution is possible."
	- 1962 Second Declaration of Havana


The Cuban people in their millions, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara,
changed the course of history when in 1959 they overthrew the U.S.
backed Batista dictatorship and opened the first socialist revolution
in the Americas. With the revolutionary triumph 40 years ago property
was transferred from the hands of the capitalists to the hands of workers
and farmers. In the process the Cuban people began to build a society based
on human solidarity and internationalism rather than dog-eat-dog
competition.
This unleashed the hatred and antagonism of U.S. imperialism which launched
an economic war against Cuba in hopes of overthrowing the revolution.

In spite of this pressure the Cuban people have maintained a revolutionary
course for 40 years. Capitalism brings unemployment, poverty and war. Cuba's

socialist alternative points the way forward for all working people to build

a world based on justice, equality, freedom and democracy.


Come and discuss Cuba, the gains made by the revolution and its place in
world politics today.


Speaker:  Paul Kouri, member of the United Steelworkers of America union

		 Friday January 8 at 7:30 p.m.

at the Pathfinder Bookstore, 3967 Main St. (at 24th Ave)  Vancouver


Donation $4/2 			Call (604) 872-8343 for more information.


		gopher://gopher.igc.apc.org:/11/pubs/militant

			-------END------

I'll bet a stale bagel that B'nai B'rith has never tried to shut Communist
Brian Hauk down and he uses BC TEL as well!

http://x1.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=341413060
Subject:      B'nai Brith complaint letter to BC Tel
From:         cj224@torfree.net (Jason Arron Black)
Date:         1998/04/06
Message-ID:   <Er01nA.BF8.0.bloor@torfree.net>

23 March 1998
Michael Belec
Senior Counsel
BC Tel
Burnaby, British Columbia

Dear Sir:

B'nai Brith Canada requests that BC Tel inform the internet service
provider Fairview Technology Centre Ltd. of Oliver B.C. that it is the
policy of BC Tel not to allow the internet to be used to promote
hatred. Further, we request that BC Tel notify Fairview that BC
Tel will terminate the access of Fairview and all its customers to the
Internet unless Fairview  terminates the access to the internet of
Fairview's customers who propagate hatred over the internet.

We note that your standard internet service agreement with customers
provides that the agreement may be terminated upon notice (Clause 11).
Further access may be terminated at any time there has been or is any
breach of any term or condition of the service agreement [Clause 11
(iii)]. One of the terms of the service agreement is that every
customer agrees to comply with BC Tel's polices respecting use of the
internet as are provided from time to time, including those to which
the customer is directed when using the service (Clause 2). I assume
that your contract with Fairview would contain similar terms.

Fairview is hosting a number of customers who use the internet to
promote hatred. By allowing its customers to promote hatred over the
internet without hindrance, Fairview is abusing its own access
to the internet.

Customers of Fairview that have used the access it provides to the
internet to promote hatred include the US Nazi Party, the National
Socialist Movement, the European Nationalist Party, the
Heritage Front, Skin-Net, the Euro-Christian Defence League and
Charlemagne Hammer Skinheads. The National Socialist Movement has been
subject to police action in Britain.

The Charlemagne Hammer Skinheads have been subject to police action in

both France and Britain. There have charges against members of the
group in France. America Online, which was internet service provider
to the Charlemagne Hammer Skinheads in France, terminated the access
of Charlemagne Hammer Skinheads to the internet in September 1997.
After this termination, Charlemagne Hammer Skinheads re-established
access in November to the internet through Fairview and maintained
that access for four months, using it to spread hate, including
suggesting the murder of British playwright Julia Pascal and Swiss
journalist Ludwin Fischer. Only the week of March 9th did Fairview end
the access to the internet it previously gave to Charlemagne Hammer
Skinheads.

Bernard Klatt, the President of Fairview, has asserted that he has no
obligation to terminate access to the internet for those of his
customers using that access to promote hatred unless there is a
criminal conviction against them. Legally, he is under no such
restriction. Nor are you.

America Online shut off the internet access that it had provided to
Charlemagne Hammer Skinheads in advance of charges laid against that
group. In the United States, the site WhitePower.com was booted off
its Las Vegas internet service provider, even though in the United
States there are no hate speech criminal laws.

Nathan Hashman of Telus, the Alberta counterpart of BC Tel, told a
symposium on hate on the internet hosted by B'nai Brith in Edmonton on
March 8, 1998 of an internet service provider customer of Telus who
hosted a customer spammer. Spamming, as you know, is the practice of
distributing unrequested commercial email to a large number of
addresses.

Telus gave the internet service provider 48 hours notice, telling them

they had to pull the plug on the spammer or Telus would shut down the
internet service provider and all their customers would be out of
business. With one hour to go, the internet service provider
pulled the connection on the spammer.

MCI, a global access provider at the pinnacle of the internet system,
has a no tolerance policy for spamming. They state: "We will not
tolerate the use of our network for spamming or other similar
abusive behaviour." MCI also prohibits other forms of email abuse,
such as harassment and the posting of illegal materials. MCI considers
all these practice abusive of recipients. Engaging in any one of them
may result in the termination of the offender's account.

I have no doubt that your attitude to spamming is much the same as
that of Telus or MCI. Yet, Telus did not require a criminal conviction
in order to act. Indeed, it is not even clear that spamming is a
criminal offence.

Promoting hate speech is a far more harmful activity than spamming.
Spamming, at its worst, leads to failure of the internet. Hate speech
has led to the murder of millions.

Klatt, when asked to terminate the access of those customers of
Fairview who promote hatred, has raised the banner of freedom of
speech. However, there is no fundamental  human right to an internet
service account. An internet service provider is a commercial venture
free to do business with whom it wants and free to decline to do
business to whom it wants, provided it does not discriminate.
Moreover, there is a fundamental human right, in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights to be protected from incitement to
discrimination (article 7). Advocacy of hatred is the worst form of
incitement to discrimination. BC Tel, by allowing Fairview to continue
in business once Fairview refuses to cut off internet access to hate
promoters, is violating that fundamental human right.

The responsibility to protect against incitement to hatred falls not
just on the police and the courts. It also falls on BC Tel. BC Tel
must form its own judgment whether or not the customers of Fairview
are using their access to the internet to promote hatred. That
judgment I suggest should be particularly easy to make in light of the
content posted by these customers, the actions of the police and
courts in other countries against them and the behaviour of other
internet service providers towards them.

I appreciate that you are in no position to monitor content, because
of the large volume of content that flows through your system. There
is, however, a world of difference between knowing and
unknowing action.

BC Tel is a member of the Canadian Association of Internet Service
Providers. According to the Code of Conduct of that association,
members will not knowingly host illegal content (Clause 5).
The commentary to that standard states that sharing information about
material that has been evaluated as illegal will facilitate some
preventive action. I read that commentary to say that members
will make an evaluation whether content is legal or illegal and
undertake preventive action.

The Code of Conduct further states that members will make a reasonable

effort to investigate legitimate complaints about alleged illegal
content or network abuse and will take appropriate action
(Clause 6). Upon receipt of a complaint, before action, members will
notify the content provider or abuser of the complaint with a request
for a response within seven days [Clause 7(c)].

I wish you to consider this letter to be formal complaint against the
content that has been posted on the internet through Fairview by the
US Nazi Party, the National Socialist Movement, the European
Nationalist Party, the Heritage Front, Skin-Net, the Euro-Christian
Defence League and Charlemagne Hammer Skinheads. The website addresses
available through Fairview of the Euro-Christian Defense League and
the Heritage Front are attached to this letter.

If you are to comply with the Canadian Association of Internet Service

Providers Code of Conduct, you will make your own evaluation whether
or not the content posted by these customers of Fairview is illegal or
an abuse of the network. If it is either, you will take preventive
action, by giving notice to Fairview that it must cut off access to
those customers using the internet to promote hatred, or you will cut
Fairview off.

It is my own view, the view of B'nai Brith Canada, as well as the view
of the police and prosecutors in Britain and France that the content
that has been passing through Fairview from these customers
to the internet is both illegal and an abuse of the network. If, for
whatever reason, you are hesitant to make a judgment on legality,
surely there cannot be any disagreement that the use of the internet
to promote hatred is an abuse.

The BC Tel terms of service for tariffed services provides that BC Tel

may suspend or terminate a customer's service where the customer uses
or permits others to use any of BC Tel's services for a purpose or in
a manner that is contrary to law or for the purpose of making annoying
or offensive calls [section 22.1 (f)]. In other words, BC Tel may
suspend or terminate a service, even where the use is not contrary to
law, as long as the use is annoying or offensive. Again here, whatever
your opinion of the legality of the material Fairview is allowing to
pass  through to the internet, to say the least, it is both annoying
and offensive.

Prohibition of hate speech does not violate the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms. It is a reasonable limitation on freedom of
speech demonstrably justified in a  democratic society and the
courts in Canada have so found.

BC Tel and Fairview are both private enterprises. As such, they are
not legally bound by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. BC
Tel can refuse Fairview access to the internet, and Fairview can
refuse its customers access to the internet without either
BC Tel or Fairview violating the Charter guarantee of freedom of
expression, since that Charter guarantee applies neither to BC
Tel nor to Fairview.

Individuals and private enterprises are however bound by the Canadian
Human Rights Act. That Act states that it is a discriminatory practice
to cause hate messages to be communicated repeatedly by
means of a telecommunications undertaking within the legislative
authority of Parliament [section 13(1)]. BC Tel is a
telecommunications undertaking within the legislative
authority of Parliament. There is, I am aware, an express exception to
that provision which states  that no owner or operator
of a telecommunication undertaking causes hate messages to be
communicated by reason only that the facilities of a telecommunication
undertaking owned or operated by that person are used by
other persons for the transmission of hate messages [section (3)].

However, I am of the view that once you have received a complaint
about Fairview of this nature and you do nothing about it, it is going
too far to say that the hate messages are being communicated
through facilities operated by BC Tel by reason only that the BC Tel
facilities are being used by Fairview. There is more going on than
that. There will have been an express decision on your part to
allow your facilities to be used for that purpose, with the full
awareness that they are being so used, and even though it is in your
power to prevent their being so used. Conscious permission is far
different from mere use and is much more accurately described as a
cause  of the communication of
the hate messages being sent via Fairview.

Conscientious citizens, whether individuals or corporations, must play

their part to promote human rights standards. The International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Canada has signed
and ratified, obligates the governments of Canada to prohibit advocacy
of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to
discrimination, hostility or violence, [Article 20(2)]. That
Covenant further sets out in its preamble that the state parties
realize that individual, having duties to other individuals and to the
community to which he belongs, is under a responsibility to strive for
the promotion and the observance of the rights recognized in the
Covenant. BC Tel as a corporate citizen is under a responsibility to
strive for the promotion and the observance of the right of
individuals and groups to be protected from advocacy of national,
racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to
discrimination, hostility or violence.

I note that BC Tel has its own web site combatting racism, and I
commend you for that. However, your effort to combat racism will
inevitably seem hollow as long as you allow your services to be
used to incite racist hatred. Your commitment to combatting racism can

best be shown by action to staunch the flow of racist hatred that,
because of the access Fairview provides its customers and you
provide Fairview, is flowing through your system.

Sincerely yours,

David Matas
602-225 Vaughan Street
Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3C 1T7
Tel: 204-944-1831
Fax: 204-942-1494
Email: dmatas@mb.sympatico.ca

Canadian Anti-racism Education and Research Society
Tel: 604.687.7350