Thursday, May 14, 2015

C-51 Hearing: NDP's Randall Garrison


So, last time, we'd just finished reading Steven Blaney's nauseatingly stupid response to some soft-ball questions from a fellow totalitarian slimeball fraudster harpercon MP.  The question was stupid and Blaney's answer was a bunch of useless assertions and generalities that told Canadians nothing of substance. Now, we'll read the NDP's Randall Garrison's questions and the witnesses' answers:
    Thank you very much, Minister.

     Mr. Garrison for five minutes.
[Translation]


    You have the floor.


    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
    I have expressed my concerns before about overinflated rhetoric when it comes to this bill. I heard the minister earlier make a reference to the Holocaust. I would assert that there is no equivalence for anything we're talking about here today to the Holocaust. At best, the reference seems to trivialize the Holocaust. I'd like to offer the minister an opportunity to withdraw that comment.

Ah! We're at this part of the hearing!

    I will answer in French.


    Violence begins with words. Hatred begins with words. I can mention the Rwandan genocide, which started on the radio. It was a horrible genocide. One of our former senators has paid the price, and his mental health has been greatly affected by it. Yes, it is important to call it what it is. A spade is a spade. Extremist speeches, the language that undermines Canadian values, basically hate propaganda has no place in Canada.
    It is time for the government to assume its responsibilities and not tolerate disrespectful, violent and hateful language. That is what the legislation basically allow us to do. I therefore stand by what I said and I repeat that the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers. It began with words. That is why it is clearly important to respect the rights and freedoms of Canadians, but we must not tolerate incitement to violence.

    Then, Mr. Minister, why did this government take away the power of the Canadian Human Rights Commission to remove hate crime material from the Internet? Your government sponsored and passed a bill through this House and through the Senate that took away the power of the Human Rights Commission to order the withdrawal of hate crimes material from the Internet. Why did you do that then and why are you advocating the opposite now?

I wondered about that too. Also, there was the Conservatives having Canada vote AGAINST a Russian proposal at the United Nations to combat the glorification of fascism. (Canada voted against it stating concerns for "freedom of speech" but, obviously, since they don't give a shit about freedom of speech, that answer is false. The fact of the matter is that besides having neo-nazi white supremacists as an important part of their political base, the Conservatives are also supporting a fascist, anti-Russian government in the Ukraine. AWKWARD!) 

Besides all that, it's kind of funny to read Blaney blithering about how the government isn't going to tolerate "disrespectful" language. Time and time again, his ilk have shown themselves to be the champions of disrespectful language, so long as it's targeted at Muslims. Or the First Nations. 
What does the idiot Blaney think of the fact that Israel has made a justice minister out of a psychotic racist who called for the destruction of the entire Palestinian people? There's a case where the words haven't led to genocidal violence; the violence had been going on since before that nut-bar was born. She just wanted to use her words to speed-up the killing. Blaney hasn't said anything on the topic. It's possible he has his brain shuts down when he encounters such information, so that he doesn't have to process it. But if one were to drag Blaney's face to the poop and rub his nose in it, that it wouldn't cause him to re-think his and his party's slavish devotion to Israel one iota. Because Blaney is a hypocrite and a fraud. He doesn't even give a shit about the safety of Canadians (ostensibly his highest priority).

But what about Garrison's question: If we have to have the power to remove hateful words from the internet, why did his party remove the state's power to take down hate-speech from the internet before?

    Mr. Garrison, what I am saying this morning is that the bill will enable us to take down websites that promote hate propaganda or propaganda related to any form of terrorism, regardless of its source. There is no place for incitement to violence in Canada. It's as simple as that. That is what the legislation says.


    I'm not sure whether you agree with me this morning, but if a website hosted in Canada promotes jihadism and tells us to kill all the infidels wherever they are in the world, I think that flies in the face of Canadian values. That is why I think we, as politicians, must continue to adopt measures to combat terrorism and prevent radicalization. That is exactly why I urge you to support Bill C-51. That is the right thing to do if we want to protect the rights and freedoms of Canadians and to protect them from the terrorist threat.

Notice that the stammering idiot hasn't answered the question.



     Mr. Minister, I'm still having trouble understanding what the difference is between the powers you took away from the Human Rights Commission and the powers you're suggesting today.

    Let me just clarify that. 

Ah! To the rescue rides the journeyman bull-shitter, Peter "Obnoxious Asswipe" MacKay: 

   Mr. Garrison, as you know full well, hate promotion, propaganda, genocide are covered in the Criminal Code of Canada and anyone engaged in that type of activity is subject to prosecution in Canada. Let's not leave any impression—I know that's not what you're trying to do—that somebody is going to be free to carry out that type of heinous activity in Canada and not be subject to charge and prosecution. It's in the Criminal Code. 

And the relevance of all that to Garrison's question is .....? It turns out that Garrison gives up on that line of questioning and goes on to another topic. So we'll pause here and just reflect on the significance of it. At an earlier time, the harpercons voted to eliminate the state's power to remove hate speech from the internet. Because they're all about the "freedom" to sow hatred against other groups of people. But, when it comes to "terrorism" (which is something that really, only Muslims or other specific groups of mainly brown people do) they want to restore that power. So, we need the "freedom" to post racist calls to violence against the First Nations whenever they protest (or, really, whenever they exist), but we've invented this new concept, this new version of the word "terrorism" that basically means the convenient bogeyman of Middle East terrorism, which is basically the replacement for the Soviet Union of the Cold War, ... an enemy for us all to hate, to distract us, and to rationalize clamp-downs on freedoms and rights. But "terrorism" is a purposefully elastic concept which can be extended to include anyone who is opposed to capitalism, or the abuses required to maintain capitalism. So, when it's a targeted group of people, racism AGAINST them on the internet is fine. Calls FROM them to fight back is "terrorism" and can be removed.

So, to repeat: Calls from bigots for the police or the military to exterminate First Nations protesters? Not terrorism. Calls for the nuclear annihilation of Arab cities by the US military? Not terrorism. Calls of support for violent police racism against Blacks in the USA (and for the gunning down of protesters against this police brutality)? Not terrorism.

Calls to Jihad against western imperialism in the Middle East? Terrorism. Criticism of Israeli expansionism and calls for boycotts? Terrorism. Blockading a railroad track to defend First Nations treaty rights? Terrorism. Calls to block a pipeline route? Terrorism. Calls to fight back against the criminal, fraudulent, anti-democratic, vile scum of the harpercons? Obviously terrorism.

That's enough for today.

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