In another move back in time, Stevie Spiteful plans to reintroduce two anti-terror clauses that were originally introduced in 2001, but expired in 2007. Here they are!
- One allowed police to arrest suspects without a warrant and detain them for three days without charges if police believed a terrorist act may have been committed.
- The other allowed a judge to compel a witness to testify in secret about past associations or perhaps pending acts under penalty of going to jail if the witness didn’t comply.
Indeed, this is not only another move backwards, but during the five years those laws were in effect, police and crown prosecutors never found any use for them. In fact, Nycole Turmel had pointed out that former CSIS director, Reid Morden had his own reservations for the use of these laws.
When the Tories tried to enact the lapsed anti-terror provisions last year, Morden argued that police “don’t need more powers.”
Notice that Mr. Morden is the ‘ex’ director of CSIS. This certainly doesn’t sound like something Stevie Spiteful and Super Toews would like to hear as this interferes with their agenda of fear mongering.
Paul Dewar, NDP foreign affairs critic said that Stevie’s reintroduction of these draconian laws are not supported by facts. Well, no shit, if prosecutors and cops never used them when they were in effect. However, this is not surprising of Stevie Spiteful–forget pesky things like facts and data–ideology comes first. Perhaps, Stevie thinks we’re just not Islamophobic enough.
Bob Rae reminds us, or namely, those Harpercon Islamophobes that basically, terrorists do come in all colours and stripes.
“We don’t have to single out just one,” Rae told reporters Wednesday.
”I think if you look at the outbursts of extremism around the world, I don’t think that you can limit it to just one religion, or ideology or form of nationalism.”
Oh silly Bob! Didn’t you know? Folks like Anders Behring Breivik and the Unibomber are not called terrorists, they’s called madmen. Only dusky skinned folks can be called ‘terrorists’. Sound flip? Perhaps. But this is how bigotry grows. All jokes aside, many right wingnut bigots have done all to find excuses to absolve those like Anders Behring Breivik or Andrew Joseph Stack III (you remember him, the one who flew his small aircraft into an IRS building in Austin, Texas).
The opposition parties do believe Stevie Spiteful has some ‘splainin’ to do. Why do we need such draconian laws put into place now? The answer is we don’t, and we apparently, as mentioned above, we never did.
Once again, this is Stevie and the Harpercons playing those wedgie games, provoking that good ol’ neo-con bigotry. This also plays into Stevie’s whole dumb on crime meme. As Dr. Dawg mentioned, it will be like Toronto’s G20 everyday. Go read Dr. Dawg’s post, he shows a glaring example of these tough on crime, anti-terror draconian overkill laws can go horribly wrong in the case of New Zealand.
Obviously, 9/11 has become a convenient excuse to push political agendas. I’m going to be blunt here. I am starting to remember 9/11 as the gift that keeps on giving to the right, to bigots, military industrial complex, and anti-immigrant policies. I await the trolls now.
If they really cared about 9/11 victims, they’d be reaching out to help them in some small way; give to a charity that helps survivors now too sick to work. Fight for them to have access to much needed health care which Bush Jr. cut during his administration.
If anything, incidents like 9/11 should be bringing people together, not further dividing them.