Letters to the Editor
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@bostonMA
* Hearings authorized under HR 1955 will be used to silence dissent through use of sweeping investigational power and hearings. Hearings will be a method to intimidate activists identified for appearance in front of investigative committees, with testimony likely magnified and legitimized by the media, and will quiet supporters of these activists.
Why couldn't this allegation be made of any mandate of Congress to create a commission to investigate any topic? Are you saying that only a commission that investigates terrorism by mandate could do this? I don't understand. This argument is basically an incrimination of any commission holding any hearings, why these?
* HR 1955 is a large step to creation of a new COINTELPRO (1956 - 1971) in 2008. In 1956, COINTELPRO was launched to address the threat of communism. It quickly expanded to include the Socialist Workers Party, the Nation of Islam, and eventually the anti-war community. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cointelpro
How? How does it establish a COINTELPRO? Through the university training? What is the mechanism? Is it in the law, or do you just not trust the creation of any program that interacts with law enforcement? I am supposed to respond to major disasters in my area too. Am I a brainwashed COINTELPRO person because I have been trained on response to CBRNE attacks?
* HR 1955 is designed to attack speech on the Internet, the last source of broad political discourse available to the public. How many folks sitting at home watching the evening news have heard criticism of this legislation? How many are even aware of this legislation? None. It's vital that political discussion on the Internet be entirely unrestrained, or we will surely wind up with an Internet as free as China's.
Nothing in this legislation designs anything to attack anything. Again, you are making a case against the believed deviousness of the people writing the bill, not against what the bill says. You may be right, but in order to censor or monitor internet speech, they would currently need to bump up against other law, including FISA. Absolutely nothing in the wording of this law indicates granting the power to censor anything, what do you know about it that the law doesn't say?
* HR 1955 blurs the line between thought and action, and uses broad terms and definitions in the tradition of other repressive government actions. HR 1955 is a significant shift towards criminalization of ideology. To believe that the government will not eventually equate ever more policy criticisms to an application of terrorist force is naive. See the bill for how the term "force" is used distinctly from "violence", in the context of "ideological" violence. This is how your government is defining the agenda, actionable or not in HR 1955.
No, the phrase "by use of force or violence" is practically boilerplate, it is used in the definition of lots of criminal offenses. That two words are used is not an indication that something very strange is afoot, or that they intend to prosecute thought crimes, or criminalize ideology. Can you give the hidden agenda of the following clauses:
(7) Individuals prone to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence span all races, ethnicities, and religious beliefs, and individuals should not be targeted based solely on race, ethnicity, or religion.
(8) Any measure taken to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism in the United States should not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, or civil liberties of United States citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Is (7) basically saying "round up the entire country" and clause (8) saying "all other rights are fair game"? Or is it, like it looks, a statement that they intend that the commission not discriminate ideologicaly or in any other way, and that it should not violate civil rights? Please help reinterpret this in the most nefarious way possible, since we the unenlightened are not aware of how these are codewords for an HUAC (the commission is not a congressional committee, by the way).
If I wanted to think really conspiratorially, I would say Dr. Paul was looking for an issue that would put him on the par with Chris Dodd, cause he wants the Dodd FISA votes and internet support. But I don't really believe that.
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The Noxious Fruitd of Hate Speech Laws
Like it or no and I support them as do the vast majority of Canadians, hate protection legislation is a necessary part of this multicultural nation which contrary to many American assumptions is a very different society founded on public and hopefully personal respect and equal treatment of all race, religion AND gender orientation. Because our population has 30% of its population born outside of Canada we try to respect every person's origin, language and culture and spend money to maintain language and culture of these groups as well as identify even during the census various ethnicities to be certain that our country reflects its United Nations nature Our view of our many internal cultures is markedly different from the melting pot of your United States. Incidentally women AND men are also protected from the promulgation of hate also...
Levant is a kook and his laughable and I think now defunct newspaper was never a serious competition to a real paper but that is besides the point. Intention IS a meaningful aspect of publication...just think back to pre war Germany and der Sturmer. Surely the vitriol published in that benighted Nazi nation had intention? I understand that Levant in fact published the cartoons mostly because other papers did not as editors make decisions based upon a certain cowardly principle of selling lots of papers and not annoying people more than a little. No one was afraid to do so but rather, the cartoons were available to most on line and were not only poor but also insulting to an identifiable group. They could easily have published them contextually as did the CBC TV ( our government television)..like I said..it is about intention for otherwise there would be no way to learn from such excesses. Do not for one minute mix European legislation and issues with that of Canada. They are not at all the same as there certainly there is not a sense of justice but rather of political fear. We have so many nations and cultures represented here that it is impossible in most areas for one cultural group to force political change or restriction. We have to work all together, rather on common grounds.
I would not wish to open a newspaper and see an insulting or defaming cartoon or article about gays or Jews or Roma or italian Canadians for that matter. There are those whose modus operandi is to exhort and to rabble rouse... One sees it on US networks regularly and this is not acceptable on this side of the border. We have great relations between our many minorities and are welcoming to all who come here to live and prosper. It is not legal to espouse hatred against any identifiable group be it s gay person or an Islamic group or Sikh or whatever. If you want to consider it less freedom than in America, go for it. We on the other hand call it being tolerant, open handed and fair to the group. This great nation of Canada is based not on the preeminence of the individual, like it or not, but on the preeminence of our social contract which protects us all from the cancer of intolerance and guarantees us our medical system, freedom of belief and protection of sexual orientation ( including gay marriage, by the way) as well as protection from the loss of privacy which is clearly a different direction from your nation. Canada was rated as in the top several nations in terms of privacy and personal rights, standard of education and opportunities.The US was near the bottom in contrat along with Great Britain so we do not belong lumped into some camp out of ignorance. We do not have a Guantanamo, do not condemn our non white population to low paid jobs and missed opportunities and do not allow the KKK to spread its filth on the air or in print. I care little that you do not approve as all political parties supported the legislation against the promulgation of hate. Alberta is in fact the most conservative and right wing of all the provinces in Canada and even here, this law was supported. Mark Steyn is a well known journalist who regularly publishes in our major news magazine, McLeans which is the equivalent to Time for us. I think that any complaint regarding the article about the future of islam will be judiciously and fairly considered. I fully expect the complaint to be thrown out as merely thin skinned a response to questions raised as any good journalism should do.
In essence Libertarianism is not a force in Canada, responsibility to the society and the compact between people and the government for what we call Good and Responsible government, laws and behavour is the general approach taken. Tough break that Mr. Steyn's book got your knickers in a knot. I did not read it but it was selling quite well on this side of the border.