“Mientras el pueblo se muere de hambre el régimen federal, provinciales, y ayuntamientos del país, gastan millones de dólares en propaganda terrorista, destinada a confundir la opinión del público Canadiense”

“La amenaza del  estado Islámico es real” ¿O las amenazas  y crímenes atroces perpetrados por las instituciones de gobierno y sociedades privadas, contra su propio pueblo son reales?  Proyecto de ley de Terror necesita trabajo… Mrs

Kathleen Wynne - Premier of Ontar

Para ocultar  las raíces del terrorismo interno, el gobierno de Canadá, está tratando de manipular a la opinión pública con la nueva "ley Antiterrorista," destinada a ocasionar persecución, abuso, confinamiento, y tortura psicológica, que es patrimonio de los regímenes de turno. El proyecto de ley es innecesario, si el régimen Canadiense respeta la soberanía de otros países, si cambia su política guerrerista de enviar tropas para subyugar, torturar, y asesinar civiles inocentes en países extranjeros. Porque no se aclara de una vez por todas las mentiras y manipulaciones que ejerce el gobierno y los medios de comunicación de esta nación. Mientras el pueblo se muere de hambre el régimen federal, provinciales, y ayuntamientos del país, gastan millones de dólares en propaganda terrorista, destinada a confundir la opinión del público Canadiense. ¿Preguntémonos son  los terroristas quienes invaden, destruyen, asesinan, y causan catástrofe humanitaria alrededor del globo terrestre? O el régimen conservador de esta nación y su buro político que apoyan, aprueban, y colaboran, para destruir las infraestructuras de los pueblos, creando tragedias humanitarias en las vidas de niños, mujeres, ancianos…!!! Además la “Ley Antiterrorista,” tiene el propósito de proteger la impunidad de los crímenes que comete el estado a diario, y está orientada a conceder más poder a las fuerzas represivas de esta nación, para que sigan cometiendo todo  de clase de crímenes atroces en defensores de derechos humanos y en la humanidad de personas que pertenecen a las  comunidades marginadas de este país.                                                                                                                                        

Ham-fisted terrorism bill cries out for repair: DiManno

Stephen Harper's new Bill C-51 needs to be narrowed if it's going to leave our liberties undamaged, writes Rosie DiManno

Ham-fisted terrorism bill cries out for repair: DiManno

Bernard Weil / Toronto Star

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced new anti-terrorism measures at Bayview Hill Community Centre in Richmond Hill on Thursday.

OurWindsor.Ca

By Rosie DiManno

In three dictionaries I consulted yesterday, the term “glorification” was defined — leaving out the religious stuff — thusly:

• The action of describing or representing something as admirable, especially unjustifiably.

• Exaltation to honour and dignity.

• An enhanced or favourably exaggerated version or account.

Glorification of terrorism, as explained by government officials who provided background briefings on the new anti-terrorism bill tabled in Parliament Friday, will specifically not be criminalized. Praising an act of terrorism shall be OK; encouraging others to commit such acts won’t.

So go ahead and glorify, as many Palestinians — for instance — did after the World Trade Center towers fell on 9/11.

That’s an expression of free speech that must be tolerated as a basic civil liberty. As — another for instance — is newspaper commentary that has spent the last 13-plus years arguing a moral equivalency between “one man’s terrorism” and crimes of imperial might, or the tactical exploits unleashed by terrorists fighting an asymmetrical war against a conventional military.

Polemical bollocks, of course, but, rightly, protected free speech. You should, and must, be able to babble mendaciously. Democracies secure the right to be profoundly wrong and provocative. There’s no point in defending free speech only when one agrees with the content — a debate that gained added vigour in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack last months, though many a fine line was tippytoed by media executives who said one thing but did another.

The nuances of “glorification” will be weighed by Canadian courts when Bill C-51 is passed and after the legislation is possibly refined following committee hearings. The Conservatives however, with their majority, are not amenable to amendments, and want this bill passed by June, when Parliament rises again, and in advance of an election where national security will be a thump-thump theme on the hustings.

I will be interested to see when glorification slips over into the domain of what’s expressly not permitted: Promoting or advocating others to commit such acts as those being extolled, generally. Under the existing legislation, dramatically overhauled by Bill C-51, with its enhanced policing powers, it is a crime only to advocate or promote a specific terrorist act.

Good luck with parsing that legal language and how it would be applied in practice. Canada has clumsy hate-crime legislation on the books, defined as offences motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religions, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation and other similar factors, though Lord knows what they’ve left out. Yet there’s still no nationally accepted interpretation of “hate” in Canadian courtrooms, as provinces set their own guidelines through judgments and appeals.

Who is a terrorist anyway? That would seem straightforward enough, when the target is ISIS or Al Qaeda but not necessarily Hamas, blacklisted in some countries (Canada included, belatedly) but not others. Would an individual be promoting a terrorist act, generally, by, say, bringing a Tamil Tigers flag to a protest? The ruthless Tigers were designated a terrorist group during the long civil war in Sri Lanka. But now Canada is among the countries demanding an inquiry into war crimes committed against the Tigers by the Sri Lankan army.

Would the dragnet bill scoop up so-called “eco-terrorists,” as this government — through Public Safety Canada — has already listed radical environmentalists among “issue-based domestic extremists” that could post a threat to Canada, which some read as an attempt to silence environmental groups opposed to major energy projects such as the Northern Gateway pipeline.

And what if you’re just a teenage moron, with no aspiration of gallivanting off to join ISIS, merely sitting in your basement blogging about the moral imperative of Islamic violence? Prime Minister Stephen Harper was asked that question after introducing the legislation during an appearance in Richmond Hill Friday, although it was asked in the broader context of new powers to remove terrorism-promotion on the Internet, which can only be applied to Canadian servers, of course. “It doesn’t matter what the age of a person is, or whether they’re in a basement or whether they’re in a mosque or somewhere else. When you are engaged in activities that explicitly promote or advocate terrorism, that is a serious criminal offence no matter who you are. We cannot tolerate this, any more than we tolerate people making jokes about bomb threats at airports . . . Anyone who engages in that kind of activity is going to face the full force of the law in the future.”                     That is not reassuring to defenders of civil liberties. It is ham-fisted and might not be acceptable as law if tested at a senior judicial level.

The omnibus bill contains many reasonable components on the surface, and some prudent components when you drill down further. Other aspects of the legislation are an unacceptable over-reach. Harper is correct and evidently on the right side of public opinion when he bangs the security drum, with expanded powers of preventive arrests and detention, with widening no-fly lists for those suspected of travelling to commit terrorism abroad. He’s probably on point with a public view that some civil liberties should be curtailed so that they aren’t exploited by the terrorist-minded.                                  When the question was posed about oversight — controlling the authority invested in this bill — Harper gave an answer that will resonate with many ordinary folks: “This is really what we get from our opposition, that every time we talk about security, they suggest that somehow our freedoms are threatened. I think what Canadians understand is their freedom and their security more often than not go hand in hand . . . We do not buy the argument that every time you protect Canadians you somehow take away their liberties. It is the jihadist terrorists who endanger our security who would take away our freedom.” That mini-manifesto will play well in an election campaign. And I don’t disagree with the premise. But Harper has not yet made a compelling case for chipping away at some of the civil liberties which will be trimmed by this bill, nor provided sufficient assurance for oversight of abuses of power.

Read the 62-page bill and there’s simply not enough there to quell concern.

Rhetoric doesn’t cut it. Needs work