Western nations have embarked on dangerous Draconian proscriptions of civil and human rights following the disasters of September 11th. Regretably, anti-terrorist legislation may pose a greater threat to freedom throughout the world than the terrorist threat i
tself.
We need to learn from a long history of over- reaction and protect our hard won freedoms and the democracy that is the bedrock of our culture.
DRACONIAN LEGISLATION PROSCRIBES FREEDOM
Britain, the European Union, Canada and the United States among many others have embarked on ill-considered, Draconian proscriptions of civil and even human rights
tself.We need to learn from a long history of over- reaction and protect our hard won freedoms and the democracy that is the bedrock of our culture.
DRACONIAN LEGISLATION PROSCRIBES FREEDOM
Britain, the European Union, Canada and the United States among many others have embarked on ill-considered, Draconian proscriptions of civil and even human rights
Security Chief Tom Ridge
following the disastrous attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Horrified and traumatized by the graphic immediacy of the tragedy, society and its leaders have been stampeded to overreaction. Anti-terrorist legislation in the west now imperils freedom throughout the world.
Governments have struggled with omnibus legislation that goes much too far. Recent erosions include such provsions as:
Governments have struggled with omnibus legislation that goes much too far. Recent erosions include such provsions as:
Suspending the right to Habeus Corpus allowing the arrest and detention of suspects without recourse to the due process of law.
Circumventing procedure and rules of evidence in the trial process to expedite the prosecution of accused terrorists.
Providing special powers to national security and police agencies.
Creating special security policing agencies like the U.S. National Homeland Security Agency.
Erroding privacy rights to enable unfettered surveillance of the public electronic and otherwise.
Requiring individuals to divulge information before a court.
Easing the classification of information (including court proceedings) kept secret in the information of national security.
Creating new offences targeting unlawful disclosure of such information.
Limiting freedom of speech by criminalizing comment deemed propagandistic in cases of purported hate communication. Limited to the fight against bonafide Islamic terrorists these far reaching Consititutional retreats seem acceptable compromises. As history has consistently shown however, mere compromises, they are not. It is our shameful history that constitutions are violated as national crises arise. Indeed, in the twentieth century democracy has known perpetual crisis. Each has spawned its own proscription of rights: The Red Scare and anti-unionism, WWI and civil rights, the Depression and anti-socialism, WWII and Japanese incarceration, The Cold War and McCarthyism. Now in the twenty first century, in the name of protecting the public, freedom is once again sacrificed on the altar of public order. All of this in response to threats and a limited force of men armed with box-cutters no less; hardly tantamount to the nuclear arsenal of the USSR during the Cold War, nor the threat posed by fully militarized states of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan during the last great war.
Despite alarms sounded by academia, legal bar associatons, civil rights groups and minorities we are assured by public authority that those who have done no wrong need not fear that these misappropriated powers will not be used against them. The record of the past assures us of precisely the opposite.
While clearly a strong response was required; the war on terrorists has targeted the rights of all people to an unwarranted degree. That this is true in the U.S. where an actual attack occurred is not surprising. That it is also true among so many countries untouched by attack, is a measure of how civil authority has reasserted itself for reasons which have little to do with the current terrorist threat. Hiding behind the smoke-screen of the Islamic terrorist issue is a wholesale retreat by frightened “governors” into the comfortable bunkers of the most insidious conservative ideology. Historically, it is of the kind that resulted in the incarceration of Ukranian’s in Canada during the WWI. While it was thoroughly established that Ukranians posed no threat to security, Sir Arthur Meighen (later Canadian Prime Minister) and Sir Hugh Macdonald (Minister of the Interior) discussed “getting rid of undesireable aliens” and the desire to "make an example" of them in a manner that would make it clear to all, that the authorities intended to maintain law and order.
In their haste, legislators have rushed forward sweeping aside hallowed democratic safeguards, running the danger of creating a police state to cope with an entirely manageable threat. The genie is now out of the bottle and will be difficult to contain. The temptation to use such powers to settle the Irish question in the U.K., anarchists in France, Palestinian insurrection in the Middle East, Kurdish nationalism in Turkey, native protest in North America or other legitimate but disfavoured political causes such as labour unionism, environmentalism or anti-globalizationism will not be resisted in the years ahead.
Indeed, Western anti-terrorist legislation sadly poses a greater threat to freedom throughout the world than the terrorist threat itself. Far from safeguarding freedoms, over-reaction sets the cause of justice back years. If their goal was to precipitate fear and escalate Western interference in the Islamic world, as it seems to have been, the terrorists have won the battle, literally, withou
t firing a shot.
What we need of course is to learn from our hard won history. We require a tempered approach, one where: patience replaces haste; calmness, confusion; and reason, expediency. Above all, we need to protect, more than ever, those cardinal values of freedom and democracy which define who we are.
Circumventing procedure and rules of evidence in the trial process to expedite the prosecution of accused terrorists.
Providing special powers to national security and police agencies.
Creating special security policing agencies like the U.S. National Homeland Security Agency.
Erroding privacy rights to enable unfettered surveillance of the public electronic and otherwise.
Requiring individuals to divulge information before a court.
Easing the classification of information (including court proceedings) kept secret in the information of national security.
Creating new offences targeting unlawful disclosure of such information.
Limiting freedom of speech by criminalizing comment deemed propagandistic in cases of purported hate communication. Limited to the fight against bonafide Islamic terrorists these far reaching Consititutional retreats seem acceptable compromises. As history has consistently shown however, mere compromises, they are not. It is our shameful history that constitutions are violated as national crises arise. Indeed, in the twentieth century democracy has known perpetual crisis. Each has spawned its own proscription of rights: The Red Scare and anti-unionism, WWI and civil rights, the Depression and anti-socialism, WWII and Japanese incarceration, The Cold War and McCarthyism. Now in the twenty first century, in the name of protecting the public, freedom is once again sacrificed on the altar of public order. All of this in response to threats and a limited force of men armed with box-cutters no less; hardly tantamount to the nuclear arsenal of the USSR during the Cold War, nor the threat posed by fully militarized states of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan during the last great war.
Despite alarms sounded by academia, legal bar associatons, civil rights groups and minorities we are assured by public authority that those who have done no wrong need not fear that these misappropriated powers will not be used against them. The record of the past assures us of precisely the opposite.
While clearly a strong response was required; the war on terrorists has targeted the rights of all people to an unwarranted degree. That this is true in the U.S. where an actual attack occurred is not surprising. That it is also true among so many countries untouched by attack, is a measure of how civil authority has reasserted itself for reasons which have little to do with the current terrorist threat. Hiding behind the smoke-screen of the Islamic terrorist issue is a wholesale retreat by frightened “governors” into the comfortable bunkers of the most insidious conservative ideology. Historically, it is of the kind that resulted in the incarceration of Ukranian’s in Canada during the WWI. While it was thoroughly established that Ukranians posed no threat to security, Sir Arthur Meighen (later Canadian Prime Minister) and Sir Hugh Macdonald (Minister of the Interior) discussed “getting rid of undesireable aliens” and the desire to "make an example" of them in a manner that would make it clear to all, that the authorities intended to maintain law and order.
In their haste, legislators have rushed forward sweeping aside hallowed democratic safeguards, running the danger of creating a police state to cope with an entirely manageable threat. The genie is now out of the bottle and will be difficult to contain. The temptation to use such powers to settle the Irish question in the U.K., anarchists in France, Palestinian insurrection in the Middle East, Kurdish nationalism in Turkey, native protest in North America or other legitimate but disfavoured political causes such as labour unionism, environmentalism or anti-globalizationism will not be resisted in the years ahead.
Indeed, Western anti-terrorist legislation sadly poses a greater threat to freedom throughout the world than the terrorist threat itself. Far from safeguarding freedoms, over-reaction sets the cause of justice back years. If their goal was to precipitate fear and escalate Western interference in the Islamic world, as it seems to have been, the terrorists have won the battle, literally, withou
t firing a shot.What we need of course is to learn from our hard won history. We require a tempered approach, one where: patience replaces haste; calmness, confusion; and reason, expediency. Above all, we need to protect, more than ever, those cardinal values of freedom and democracy which define who we are.
Those who forget the failures of history are doomed to repeat them. -Jose Ortega y Gasset
Quotable Quote:
"For history is to a nation as memory is to the individual. Individuals deprived of memory are disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been or where they are going.
. Persistence of Memory Salvador Dali
So too a nation, denied a conception of its past will be disabled in dealing with its future." . -Arthur Schlesinger
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Internment of Ukranian's In Canada
Under Guard Banff, Alberta
Unpleasant Reminder of Other Concentraton Camps
Ukranian Internment in Canada . The illegal mistreatment of Afghan soldiers at Guantanamo Bay reminds the world of Japanese internment durng World War II. Less well known is the Ukranian incarceration of the FirstWorld War era. In 1914 some 80,000, mostly Ukranian Canadians, stigmatized as "enemy aliens" fell under the scrutiny of the War Measures Act. Some 8,579 including women and children were shamefully imprisoned in 26 concentrati
on camps. Men were faced with hard labour in the unforgiving Canadian north. Those who attempted escape were shot for their efforts.Without constitutional protection a simple cabinet order (Order In Council) was all that was required to ruin the lives of Galacian immigrants, whose only crime was to have sought freedom and prosperity in Canada in place of the Austro-Hungarian tyranny they had fled in Europe.
Spirit Lake Concentration Camp, B.C.
2 comments:
Unfortunately, those who do remember the past are also prone to repeat it.
Unfortunately, those who do "remember" the past (perhaps too well) are also prone to repeat it.
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