- Jeff,
this may be of interest to your readers: A military junta in the making!
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- Ingrid
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- ___
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- January 5, 2002 Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
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- Today's ZGram fits right into what I sent to you yesterday
regarding "Secret Evidence". It comes out of Canada, ostensibly
still a "democracy". It is a recorded oral presentation; therefore,
some of the syntax is a bit off. The rest of it is self-explanatory and
rings a hundred alarm bells:
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- (START)
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- Canada's Anti-Terrorism Laws- Bills C36, C22, C35, C42
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- Presentation By Rocco Galati At a forum sponsored by
the Scientists For Peace - Toronto, December 2001
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- My name is Rocco Galati. I am a constitutional lawyer.
I was a lawyer for the Crown for a few years before I went into private
practice cases against the government. I was the counsel who brought the
MAI case up through the courts to the Supreme Court of Canada, and argued
the Quebec city injunction perimeter fence case up to the Supreme Court
of Canada. I have been doing CSIS terrorist certificate cases under the
Immigration Act, the so-called secret trials that are now going to be part
of C36 secret trial mechanism.
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- In a nutshell, what is in Bill C 36, and is undoubtedly
not open for debate, what Bill C36 does is as follows. It has very little
to do with terrorism. Terrorism is very easy to define. I have defined
it for clients of mine appearing before parliamentary and senate committees.
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- Terrorism is a very simply definition. It is the application
of terrorism that is all the problem. I define terrorism as the threat
of or use of violence and arms by an armed group or individual against
an unarmed group or individual for political, racial, religious, social,
or economic reasons including state terrorism. You can take any other
armed conflict whether it is two people dueling at dawn over a woman 200
years ago, or two groups in an insurrection or civil war, or war, or somebody
doing it for profit, or drug running. We have laws to cover that, but
that is not terrorism.
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- The only problem with a definition of that sort is that
you have to apply it equally, and that's where we get into problems, because
certain states want to be able to support terrorism when it suits their
needs. My only point is that this bill has very little to do with terrorism
in the sense that the first speaker was speaking about.
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- 1. What this bill does is really codify militarization
and a police state, and further globalization interests. You see it right
in the bill. The Bill is overly broad. Even though they took out the
"lawful", the Bill still catches dissent. It still catches protest.
Protests that interrupt public facilities are acts of terrorism under this
bill. No question about it, whether they are "lawful" or not,
if they endanger life. Any protest that is going to cut off a part of
the city from essential services like ambulances by definition endangers
life. That is the price we pay in democracy. That is a terrorist act under
this Bill.
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- 2.The other thing the Bill does is that it can convict
you of facilitating terrorism without any knowledge or intent. The government
pretended that they changed the definition, but they didn't. They changed
it in one section and they took ir away in another. Even if you don't
know you are facilitating, you are going to get caught. So the guy who
sells the envelopes and the stamps at the corner store in my view is facilitating
terrorism when the purchaser puts anthrax in them and mails them off,
whether he knows it or not.
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- 3. Then there is the 72 hour arrest on suspicion. The
only test here is you can be held here for 72 hours without being charged
on suspicion. That is not a test. That is not even a smell test. What
is the suspicion going to be based on? It will be based on another portion
of the Bill which allows the Court and police "in determining whether
an accused participates in or contributes to any activity of a terrorist
group the court may consider among other factors whether the accused uses
a name, word, symbol, or other representation that identifies or is associated
with the terrorist group".
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- Now if I look around this room, I can probably pick out
five or six women here who I find suspicious because the legislation allows
it. So if you use the same religious or codeful symbols that some terrorist
group has misappropriated for their own purpose, even though they are valid
religious or cultural symbols of Islam or being Arab or being Tamil or
being Sikh, then the legislation grants the police and the Courts the right
to use that as the basis of suspicion. In my language that is just racist
profiling. Racism, that is all it is.
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- So the 72 hour detentions are also problematic because
there is no stop to the revolving door. One police officer on suspicion
will arrest you for the 72 hours. You are released. That is not to say
they can't come back in 12 hours or 12 minutes and re-arrest you on another
suspicion. So you can go around the revolving door this way. And they
can put conditions on you similar to bail conditions even though you are
not charged or arrested with anything, for a year at least without charging.
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- 4. Investigative hearings are nothing short of Roman
Catholic Inquisitions. That is all they are, maybe without the torture,
maybe not. But who knows what people get tortured. Every group in this
country has suffered torture at police hands. That's documented.
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- So you are hauled in, and you have to answer questions.
If you don't answer questions, you are subject to criminal charge. They
say they can't use the answers against you in a court. Well, that's not
true because (1) they can use the answers to go engage in further investigation
outside the answers, and that evidence can be used in court. (2) If you
ever take the stand to defend yourself, the case law is clear they can
use your answers to say that you are lying. So it is not true that they
can haul you in and anything you say will never be used against you in
court.
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- 5. Really nasty provisions that no one seems to be talking
about, quite frankly because they are so foreign to our law and our experience,
are the secret trial provisions. Right now in Canada, there is only one
instance where you get secret trials - that is on CSIS terrorist cases
under the Immigration Act. That is where someone is accused of being a
terrorist or associated with terrorism. What happens when they allege that
you are a terrorist is that you never get to see the evidence. Your lawyer
never gets to see the evidence. All you get is a summary of the allegations
against you. And then the lawyer for the government sits with the judge
and they review the evidence. And then you go into open court, and the
judge says, "What do you have to say in response to the fact that
we say you are a terrorist?"
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- And so the game goes something like this: "I was
born in a little village" somewhere, wherever. "I knew all these
people", and you literally have to ransack through a person's life
and hope that in doing so that you are addressing whatever evidence, distorted
rumor or hearsay evidence that is before the judge.
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- So these secret trials are really foreign. They've been
around since 1990 in Canada (under Immigration cases, not the Criminal
Law) . There has only been one case where it was fought and won. That
was a case I fought and won two years ago. It was called Jibala. A case
from Egypt. But lo and behold, they re-arrested him again even though
the federal court said there is nothing to the allegation. They re-arrested
him this August and we are back on the merry-go-round.
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- So now under, C36 at various stages, if the police or
the CSIS or RCMP say, "I can't answer that question, I can't divulge
that evidence because it's 'national security' (they usually lower their
voice to say that) then you don't get to see it. That's very dangerous
because our whole system is based on testing the evidence against you.
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- 6. That also goes for the confiscation of property. These
secret trials allow for the confiscation of property as well. So your daughter
has a friend who is Muslim who has a brother who may be associated with
a group that is on the list. Let's say there is any money that transfers.
Let's say your daughter is helping you with the mortgage, but she gets
some help from her [boyfriend's] brother to pay the mortgage. They can
and will confiscate your house. You will never know why.
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- Because that money is coming indirectly from a terrorist
source, even though you don't know that your daughter is getting money
from her [boyfriend's] brother, and he's associated with somebody, that
property can and will be confiscated, and you will never know why. You
will never see the evidence, and nobody will know why your property is
getting confiscated, except for a bald allegation that is tied to terrorism.
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- 7. Lastly, I want to say I personally find all this
legislation C36, C35, C22, C 42 offensive:
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- C35 which broadens state immunity to state terrorists
or dignitaries from abroad from international organization. If they are
terrorists its OK. They are immune from our law; C22 that makes lawyers
spies for the government. They have to report suspicious activity and not
tell their client; and C42 that's just been introduced which allows ministers
to delegate authority to their officers to declare military security zones
on the spot, issue orders on the spot, and nobody can discuss the orders,
even the subject of the order, because if you discuss it or publicize it,
that's a separate criminal offence;
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- If you take all these bills together, it doesn't take
a rocket scientist to see that what we have here is a road map for, essentially,
I am not exaggerating, a military junta, really in the hands of four
cabinet ministers who can delegate right down to the ground. That what's
happening. If you look at, and there's no argument against this if you
look at the legislation, it is so offensive.
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- 8. The last point I want to make about this globalization
and the militarization of that agenda is that if you look at the definition
of terrorism, what they have done is very reptilian, very slivery, so nasty.
They have included in the definition of terrorism "threats to and
including its economic security". So if you do anything that threatens
the economic security of Canada, you are engaging in a terrorist act. Now,
in addition to all the problems of protest, there is something even more
insidious than this, than just what is found in the definition of terrorism.
Another part of this omnibus bill (Bill C 36) is that they've re-defined
the Official Secrets Act and renamed it the State Security Act. Under that
legislation, S3 of that act (Official Secrets Act) which is S.27 of this
Bill C36, it says "for the purpose of this act a purpose is prejudicial
to the safety or interest of the state if a person..." Then there
are various thing that a person can do to endanger the security of the
state:
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- (a) "interferes with the service facility or
system or computer program"
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- (b) "damages property"
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- (c) (really offensive) "adversely affects the
stability of the Canadian economy, a financial system, or any financial
market in Canada without reasonable economic or financial justification"
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- So boycotts of the markets or the banks on ethical or
environmental grounds are now an act of terrorism. When you grasp that
that's "the economic security of the country" via the Official
Secrets Act, now the State Security Act, you can't even have financial
dissent.
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- And then, here are the ones that are really nice.
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- (d) "impairs or threatens the capability of
the government or the Bank of Canada to protect against or respond to economic
or financial threats or instability
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- (e) "impairs or threatens the capability of
the government of Canada to conduct diplomatic or consular relations or
conduct and manage international negotiation. So, no more Quebec city protests.
They are all an act of terrorism. No protesting any stock market, any
financial market, or ethical or environment laws. So that's how broad
this bill is, and that's how broad the net has been cast.
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- [END]
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- Thought for the Day:
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- "The constitution of Canada does not belong either
to Parliament, or to the Legislatures; it belongs to the country and it
is there that the citizens of the country will find the protection of the
rights to which they are entitled."
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- (Supreme Court of Canada A.G. of Nova Scotia and A.G.
of Canada, S.C.R. 1951 pp 32 )
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