#Rights

Amnesty International (disclaimer: who I work for), has just released their 2007 Annual Report which outlines the state of the world’s human rights.

Available in five languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic).

Lotta stuff going on in the world that people don’t know enough about, or even worse, are doing nothing about when they do know about it.

I’d just like to applaud the Canadian Supreme Court for making what I consider a swift, wise and judicious ruling on constitutionality of same-sex marriage and defending the cause of human rights and equality in Canada.

I haven’t read the full ruling or opinions yet (this is all that is posted at time of writing dead link), but in summary :

1. Same-sex union is constitutional under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
2. The high court also recognizes the religious freedoms of those who may be opposed to the idea of same-sex marriages religiously, clergy and groups can not be compelled to perform those marriages
3. Perhaps most importantly, the definition of marriage is a Federal responsibility and provinces are only concerned with the civil ceremonies surrounding the solemnizing of the union, thus preventing province’s from invoking the notwithstanding clause (and knocking down Alberta’s against same-sex union legislation)
4. The Supreme Court did avoid ruling on the traditional definition of marriage as a union between a man and woman and punted that down to Parliament

The ruling now paves the way for Parliament to introduce same-sex marriage legislation (which the PM has announced will happen rapidly). If the legislation passes Parliament, this means that Canada would join the Netherlands and Belgium as the third progressive country where same-sex marriage is legally recognized by the state.

Since my plane buddies from the other night and I talked at length about what could be done to stop this slow, terrible erosion of democracy we all seemed to see and help resurrect public discourse about real issues :

Adbusters, the anti-consumerism culturejammers , have launched a legal challenge against the major Canadian media outlets which refuse to let Adbusters buy airtime on Canadian networks for airing their ads.

How important is this case? For a generation of people, and a growing social movement that sees the media as its main battleground, a victory here will change everything. Without media democracy - which means genuine public access to the most powerful forms of communication - we can’t raise healthy children, create good public policy or hold elections that are legitimate or that matter. We lose power to shape our consciousness, our culture and our future. We even lose the power to imagine what that future should look like.

Great op-ed piece worth reading by perhaps America’s foremost security expert, Bruce Schneier, on the DHS security warnings (Department of Homeland Security, for the non-US acronym followers) and their actual effect in terms of security (zero) versus the effect on the populace (fear). Short, pulls no punches and questions the political motivation of the entire system.

There are two basic ways to terrorize people. The first is to do something spectacularly horrible, like flying airplanes into skyscrapers and killing thousands of people. The second is to keep people living in fear.