Friday, January 27, 2006

Canadian Police State: Will Canada Follow U.S. "Patriot" Lead?

CAP - Connie Fogal - Anti Terrorism law in the USA has become more Totalitarian. Canada is reviewing our anti-terrorism legislation. Right wing power under the Conservative minority government puts Canadians at risk of similar totalitarianism.

www.canadianactionparty.ca



Canadian Police State:
Will Canada Follow U.S. "Patriot" Lead?

Connie Fogal

Canadian Action Party
January 25, 2006

The USA PAtriot Act had been renewed with a terrifying new term. A new permanent federal police force has been created to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed Division.'" It has Gestapo like powers. Sec. 605 of USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 empowers these police to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."

The new police are assigned a variety of jurisdictions, including "an event designated under section 3056(e) of title 18 as a special event of national significance" (SENS). "A special event of national significance" is neither defined nor does it
require the presence of a "protected person" such as the president in order to trigger it. Thus, the administration, and perhaps the police themselves, can place the SENS designation on any event. Once a SENS designation is placed on an event, the new federal police are empowered to keep out and arrest people at their discretion.

This is very bad stuff. It impacts Canadians because under agreements entered under the Liberal regime post 9/11 including the Smart Border Plan and the Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement Canada has agreed to restructure our police and legal systems to copy that of the USA. We have just been through an election in Canada in which the four
mainstream parties being the only ones with M.P.s in Parliament said nothing, nothing, nothing about any of this fundamental regime change process; nothing, nothing, nothing about the anti terrorism legislation under review in Canada. The Canadian Action Party has been unable to obtain copies of the proposed changes to the Canadian law which were under review before the writ was dropped and now will be back on resumption of Parliament in a few weeks.

No Canadian NGO's have been profiling this legislation. Indeed, the strongest NGO, the Council of Canadians, gave this issue no profile in their Election Report . Worse yet, they gave no profile to and continued their discrimination against the seven alternative parties some of whom, eg CAP (Canadian Action Party), take a strong active support position on all
the issues the COC does highlight,and more.

Voters were failed on all fronts.

Prime Minister -elect Harper is lauded by the USA who see him as more Bush friendly even than was Martin, and Martin already sold Canada out with his signature on the Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement signed by Martin Bush and Fox in March of 2004. Harper has said he would reconsider a U.S. missile defense scheme rejected by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin. He also said he wanted to move beyond the Kyoto debate by establishing different environmental controls, spend more on the Canadian military, expand its peacekeeping missions and tighten security along the U.S. border to prevent terrorists and guns from crossing.

All this means is that Harper will be more open than Martin in his acts of anti-Canadianism and regime change. His language of double speak copies Bush. He even ends his speeches with "God Bless Canada"

If I am right that no concerned thinking Canadian will support the Gestapo legislation now intact in the USA, all of us, but especially those Canadians who voted for the Conservatives, the Liberals, the NDP, the Bloq Quebecois have no time to lose. We must all immediately contact our new MPs and demand cancellation of the anti-terrorist legislation in
Canada. Even the NDP need strong prodding . Some of their candidates were talking more law and order, more punishment. Like the NAFTA, the anti-terrorist legislation is so fundamentally flawed , is so liberty stripping that it must be revoked , not re-jigged. Similarly the Smart Border declaration and the Security and Prosperity Partnership
Agreement must be revoked. All the administrative changes in process by the bureaucracy arising out of those agreements must be halted.We are either sovereign or we are not. MPs need to prove they have not been neutered.

Please read the following article respecting the U.S.A law. It is definitely not safe to travel to the USA any more, or even to fly over their airspace. Arbitrary power is unleashed there. Americans are prisoners now in their own land. Canadians await the same fate unless we compel this minority government to stop it here.

Connie Fogal, Leader, Canadian Action Party


Unfathomed Dangers In Patriot Act Renewal
By Paul Craig Roberts
1-24-6

A provision in the "Patriot Act" creates a new federal police force with power to violate the Bill of Rights. You might think that this cannot be true as you have not read about it in newspapers or heard it discussed by talking heads on TV.

Go to House Report 109-333 -USA PATRIOT IMPROVEMENT AND REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005 and check it out for yourself. Sec. 605 reads:

"There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the ’United States Secret Service Uniformed Division’."

This new federal police force is "subject to the supervision of the Secretary of Homeland Security."

The new police are empowered to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."

The new police are assigned a variety of jurisdictions, including "an event designated under section 3056(e) of title 18 as a special event of national significance" (SENS).

"A special event of national significance" is neither defined nor does it require the presence of a "protected person" such as the president in order to trigger it. Thus, the administration, and perhaps the police themselves, can place the SENS designation on any event. Once a SENS designation is placed on an event, the new federal police are empowered to keep out and to arrest people at their discretion.

The language conveys enormous discretionary and arbitrary powers. What is "an offense against the United States"? What are "reasonable grounds"?

You can bet that the Alito/Roberts court will rule that it is whatever the executive branch says.

The obvious purpose of the act is to prevent demonstrations at Bush/ Cheney events. However, nothing in the language limits the police powers from being used only in this way. Like every law in the US, this law also will be expansively interpreted and abused. It has dire implications for freedom of association and First Amendment rights. We can take for granted that the new federal police will be used to suppress dissent and to break up opposition. The Brownshirts are now arming themselves with a Gestapo.

Many naive Americans will write to me to explain that this new provision in the reauthorization of the "Patriot Act" is necessary to protect the president and other high officials from terrorists or from harm at the hands of angry demonstrators: "No one else will have anything to fear." Some will accuse me of being an alarmist, and others will say that it is unpatriotic to doubt the law’s good intentions.

Americans will write such nonsense despite the fact that the president and foreign dignitaries are already provided superb protection by the Secret Service. The naive will not comprehend that the president cannot be endangered by demonstrators at SENS at which the president is not present. For many Americans, the light refuses to turn on.

In Nazi Germany did no one but Jews have anything to fear from the Gestapo?

By Stalin’s time Lenin and Trotsky had eliminated all members of the "oppressor class," but that did not stop Stalin from sending millions of "enemies of the people" to the Gulag.

It is extremely difficult to hold even local police forces accountable. Who is going to hold accountable a federal police protected by Homeland Security and the president?

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Paul Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.


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