Yes, this is more ranting about what is happening in Ottawa… so many eyes will glaze over and click over to another, more ‘global’ post elsewhere…
BUT…
This is more than just ‘local politics’.
If one follows the proverbial ‘money’, it becomes clear that this show trial is less about the figures involved (as fun as it is to pull them apart) and more about – labour unions.
Because it was the labour unions who had declared a war on this rookie Mayor – a successful hi-tech business guy – for winning on a platform to ‘reign in the unions’… And the unions all around the country are watching the legal precedent this sets!
Does this seem far fetched?
Let’s connect the dots….
I’ll intentionally strip out the details, to reduce the ‘noise’ and make the facts stand out.
The Union of Unions laid the complaint….few months into the 4-year-Mayoral term.
The police (belonging to the Union of Unions) investigated the complaint….for over a year.
The civil servants (belonging to the Union of Unions) decided to lay charges….against the advice of their own prosecuting attorneys, none of which would take the case.
The civil servants (belonging to the Union of Unions) scheduled the trial a year later: for a time when most of the city union contracts are up for renewal…coincidence? Really?
During the Mayor’s leave of absence – for the trial – the city unions (belonging to the Union of Unions) negotiate ‘new contracts’ which are much more generous (money and control) to them than could ever happen if the Mayor were in his chair…..and even gave back concessions the Mayor had won earlier, when he refused to give in to a winter bus-strike.
By now, the Mayor has effectively been crippled by this lawfare for most of his term in office…and the next race has already begun!
Whether the Mayor is found guilty or innocent, it seems to me that the Union of Unions – the Canadian Labour Congress and its constituents and minions – have already won!
OK – I am suspending my rant against institutionalizing young children, in order to comment on something WAY OVER THE TOP!!!
Yesterday, our Conservative Ministers of Justice (!) and Public Safety (Rob Nicholson and Peter Van Loan, respectively) have announced sweeping new legislation which would give police the power to snoop on all internet traffic – and the identity of people on the net – WITHOUT A WARRANT!!!
From The Canadian Press:
The proposed legislation would:
-enable police to access information on an Internet subscriber, such as name, street address and email address, without having to get a search warrant.
-force Internet service providers to freeze data on their hard drives to prevent subscribers under investigation from deleting potentially important evidence.
-require telecommunications companies to invest in technology that allows for the interception of Internet communications.
-allow police to remotely activate tracking devices already embedded in cellphones and certain cars, to help with investigations.
-allow police to obtain data about where Internet communications are coming from and going to.
-make it a crime to arrange with a second person over the Internet the sexual exploitation of a child.
Did you notice that???
They ‘tack on’ the last one – protecting children from sexual exploitation – on to a whole set of really, really oppressive things. This way, if anyone speaks up against it – they can SMEAR him/her by saying he/she does not want to ‘protect our children’!
I don’t even know where to begin my rant!!!
Do I start with the oppressive police-powers, or do I start with how the issue was intentionally manipulated, using our children’s well-being as a guise to strip us of our rights!!!
OK, I am a ‘little’ angry.
And I think I am right to be angry! And every Canadian ought to be bloody angry about this, too!!!
The Harper government has repeatedly failed to reign in the Stalinist HRCs – which have now been shown to be staffed with political activists, religious extremists and corrupt ex-police officers, and which are trampling on REAL human rights in this country!
It is frightening that the federal Conservative Finance Minister’s wife, Christine Elliot, is running for the leadership of the Ontario Provincial Conservative Party leadership: this kind of ‘political dynasties’ are bad for everyone….and I cannot believe that Conservatives (I am a ‘little ‘c’ conservative – so it is not my place to do so), in Ontario AND federally, have not caused major fuss about this. But, her stand on the HRCs is truly frightening: it is not’ politically expedient’ to reign them in – and the people be damned…this is about ME getting elected!!!
Now, it appears that her shalowness and political opportunism are a reflection of her husband’s federal Conservative policy… and THAT explains why the HRCs are allowed to rattle their sabres and continue to persecute anyone who dares to speak up against them!!!
SHAME, SHAME, SHAME, SHAME!!!
But, even worse, now federal CONSERVATIVES(!) are planning to pass LAWS which would make it easier for the HRCs to abuse people who have committed thought crime – and will give such corrupting power to the police forces, too!
I don’t even know what is happening any more…
How could they?!?!?
Has Ezra’s lesson not sunk in?!?!?
How DARE they?!?!?
This is one lesson that if we wait until after we have learned what it means, it will be too late to ‘undo’ it!!!
What the (insert expletive of your choice) is going on?!?!?
He absolutely relishes sleeping on the sofa – and this is one dog that has elevated ‘sleeping’ into an art form. Really – I have known many dogs, and owned a few, but I have never met a dog who relishes sleep like this crazy canine does!
Also, he does not like strangers to sit on his the sofa. He’ll watch to see if the person gets up for some reason – even for a moment, sneak in behind them, steal the spot and immediately start pretending that he’s asleep, has been asleep in that spot for a very long time, and why is everyone getting all worked up about this?
He also loves to steal blankets: and has been known to quietly grab a corner and, slowly but steadily, sneak off with the blanket of an unwary person lying down on the sofa, watching TV late at night.
When my son and I came home Monday, he greeted us with great enthusiasm. He slithered off the sofa, stretched slowly and thoroughly, and wandered over to the front hallway to greet us. Honestly – this passes as ‘enthusiastic’ from him: sometimes, he just lifts his head off the sofa’s arm-rest and wags his tail a tiny bit to show he’s noticed you came in.
So, today’s was an enthusiastic greeting! Then, after he followed me to the kitchen and stopped in front of the fridge, hoping that his beautiful brown eyes would hypnotize me to give him a pepperette, when – suddenly and visibly – a though struck him.
Quite suddenly, he abandoned begging communicating and, with unusual swiftness, he ran to the living room. OK, we knew when we adopted him that he was ‘special’ and, though incredibly good natured, he was no border collie in the brain department – so I thought nothing of it.
Later, when I came into the living room, I noticed that he was not lying down on the sofa, but on a chair. And he was not really lying down in his usual way… instead, he was more ‘splayed’: all four paws spread as far apart as possible, his centre of gravity as low as he could get it. His head was not resting, but just slightly elevated in a high-strung sort of way. And his eyes…
His eyes were priceless! They were ‘big’ – his ‘vigilant look’ (well, as vigilant as he gets) – with lots of ‘white’ showing. And they were flashing, side to side – in a particularly self-pleased way!
Had his behaviour not been so ‘obvious’, I would not have looked around too closely to see what he was doing. But, his very demeanour gave away that he was ‘being tricky’: that he had ‘done’ something naughty and thought he was getting away with it!
It turns out that my son – in a fit of insomnia – brought his blanket down, watched some TV, then forgot his blanket on the chair. The dog knows ‘bed blankets’ are off limits to him: but this blanket was not on a bed, was it? So he lay down on it, spread his body as wide as possible to hide the fact that he was indeed occuppying a ‘bed blenket’ which was currently ‘not a bed blanket’… The dog was very, very pleased with himself!
So, what does this story have to do with my post today?
Yes, it was a bit of a long segway, and this story took me a few days to write up, but…
Why, that is almost as convincing as a ‘Cure-all’ salesman saying this potion in this here bottle will ‘cure all’!!! Better buy a few!!!
And, Mr. McGuinty, he is so concerned about the welfare of children, he’ll have to do what is best for all of the children! (Will somebody please shut up the parents of those peskyAutistic kids? They’re not even photogenic: no photo-ops from that lot!)
As I was saying: Mr. McGuinty, he is so caring, he only wants what is best for the children! And since that report by a guy who gets rich by sticking EVERY child into a ‘one-size-fits-all’ ‘institutions of teaching’, that is exactly what this kind and caring man announced he would do!!!
Aside: make no mistake! Our public schools are ‘institutions of teaching’, NOT ‘institutions of learning’!!! They are centered around the needs and desires of teachers, whose powerful union regularly holds the whole population hostage by refusing to ‘teach’ unless it is ‘on their terms’ – ONLY! Therefore, schedules, methodology, material and just about every aspect of ‘teaching’ you can name is tailored to suit the comfort of teachers. Students, who have no union to represent them, are just pawns to be cycled through the system – a pesky annoyance to be minimized and with which the teachers have to put up with as a minor part of this ‘education system’…
So, what is it that this caring, loving man (who is reportedly married to a teachers’ union activist) proposing to do???
He wants to institutionalize our children for 10.5 hours a day, 5-days per week, 50 weeks per year, from toddlerhood on!!!
Of course, the words he used to make his announcement were not as direct as my statement of it is – but the meaning is identical. His version is all about ‘what is best for the children’! And he has that ‘study’ (by a guy who, among others, will have an increased revenue stream if McGuinty institutes) this to back him up!
Here is the video – I invite you to watch the body language:
Did you notice it?
The way he shifts his eyes, the way he enunciates certain words, the way he uses his whole body to help him spit out some ‘concepts’?
It’s that SAME body language my not-so-bright (but way more lovable than McGuinty) dog used when he was trying to ‘pull one over’!
This sent me ‘looking for’ what it is that is ‘the loophole’ here: what is this man ‘pulling over’ on us?
One of my young American friends has asked me an honest question: “What is wrong with the Ontario Human Rights Commission?”
Where do I begin?!?!?
But, it is my bane that I always seem to think that if I know something, then it must be clear and obvious to everyone else! Of course, this is not so – and I KNOW that… I just forget it sometimes and do not explain things as thoroughly or clearly as I ought to. My apologies!
The topic of our Human Rights Commissions is less clear to people who do not live in Canada and have not been following what has been happening to our rights and freedoms…. but it is NO LESS important to them, because these things are spreading in Medusa-like fashion and subverting the very foundations on which our ‘Western’ civilization is built.
So, here is a little explanation (sorry if it is a bit of a rant – I get very emotional about this!)
OHRC is called ‘Ontario Human Rights Commission‘. It is a fancy name which suggests that its aims are to protect human rights: and, it – along with it mother-organization, the Canadian Human Rights Agency and sister ones, one for each Province and Territory in Canada – was created with that in mind. It was meant to be a non-threatening place that people who were denied housing or jobs because of the colour of their skin could go and record their grievance.
This was especially aimed at the less-privileged members of society who would not be able to afford an attorney and try to get justice in court.
So, the theory goes, the agency accepts the grievance/complaint, investigates it on its own and, if it finds it meritorious, it is then supposed to (somehow – without ever going to court) figure out a way to fix the problem. The solution it decides on then becomes legally binding, as if it were a declaration of a real court.
In effect, the ‘Human Rights Commissions’ – and/or their tribunals – become the complainant, the investigator, prosecutor and judge… It answers to nobody!
Can you spot the problem?
What has happened with Canadian HRCs – federal and provincial/territorial – is that they have been staffed with people who ‘have causes’. And these people are promoting their ’causes’ at the expense of REAL human rights.
Their main line is that ‘human rights’ have to be ‘balanced’ against the need of the society to ‘promote tolerance’. In other words, anything which these people find ‘rude’ or ‘intolerant’, they have the power to censor, ban and so on.
Here is a recent example from the Ontario HRC. A guy was smoking pot in the doorway of a restaurant. Pot is, of course, illegal – but this guy had a ‘medical exemption’. Smoking, however – inside and within 2 m (I think – this does vary from place to place) of a restaurant (or any other place where people work) is forbidden. The law does NOT specify cigarette smoke or pot or whatever else.
The ‘no smoking’ laws came about because people insisted that EVERYONE has the RIGHT to work in a smoke-free environment. And, nobody has the right to CHOOSE to work where people smoke, because ‘poor people’ might be coerced…. OK, so we all banned smoking in or near workplaces.
Now, this restaurant owner finds himself in front of the OHRC, because he asked a guy NOT to smoke within the legal ‘no-smoking’ boundary. He ended up – when it was all over – with tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs….
And, he lost: the OHRC said that because the guy has a ‘medical exemption’, he can smoke his pot anywhere he wants to – including INSIDE this guy’s restaurant.’
A couple of weeks later, the ‘no-smoking enforcement’ people show up at the restaurant for inspection, and see this guy smoking pot. They cite the restaurant owner for violation of the rights of his workers to work in a smoke-free environment – and the restaurant owner looses his liquor license….
The OHRC people are enforcing THEIR ruling and care nothing about the smoking bannies laws. The smoking bannies are enforcing THEIR laws, and don’t care about the OHRCs ruling – not their jurisdiction!
The poor sap gets caught in the middle – and pays, pays pays legal fees, fines and eventually looses his right to run his business (his type of restaurant cannot survive without a liquor license!).
But THAT is just ONE of MANY such cases.
And these HRCs have the right to issue a lifetime gag-order on people: forbidding them from speaking, writing, or communicating in any way, shape or form, publicly or privately, on specific topics. These lifetime gag-orders, once issued, are legally binding!
If you thought things could not get worse….
The ‘double jeopardy’ – where you can only be tried for a crime in one jurisdiction – does NOT APPLY with HRCs in Canada. For example, MacLeans magazine was charged – for the same complaint – in three different jurisdictions: Ontario, BC AND federally! And, they HAD TO prepare a defense – and pay lawyers – for each one of the three trials!
Recently, the OHRC’s head, Barbara Hall, has been making noises about expanding the scope of the ‘transgressions’ they will assume jurisdiction over.
Oh – by the way – TRUTH is NO DEFENSE against the HRCs!
The complainant does NOT have to prove anything. And, even if the defendant proves that what they said/did was TRUE, it does not matter – IF it has a POTENTIAL to harm someone by making them FEEL discriminated against!
So, no CRIME, no HARM is needed: only the POTENTIAL for ANYONE to PERCEIVE something MIGHT be hurtful or seen as discriminatory is sufficient to find one guilty…
Another thing I revile these organizations for is that they are often used at the tool to enforce linguistic apartheid which is like a cancer on our Canadian society.
The people running this – the investigators AND the ‘judges’ – do NOT have to have ANY training in law whatsoever. Many don’t! Evidence has shown that a cop dismissed for some serious corruption is now a mover and a shaker at the Ontario HRC… As well, some evidence seems to be coming that several of these HRCs have been infiltrated by radical Islamists who find anything short of instituting Sharia to be ‘offensive’!
Just think about it: extrajudicial process – with none of the restraints cops and real trials have (the HRCs can enter your premises and seize things without a warrant or notification to you – and you are NOT presumed innocent until proven guilty – and truth is no defense…), in the hands of people who think that individual rights are things that must systematically bow and be supplanted by ‘community needs’.
THAT – ALL of the things I listed above…and much more – is why so many of us want to get rid of these corrupt, un-accountable, oppressive organizations who now have the power to limit our human rights at their whim to serve their own special interests!
OK – I have to declare my personal bias: while I am not a member of any political party, I like Randy Hillier – and have liked him long before this leadership race started. I like what he stands for and I like the way he stands for it. Also, I am not a fan of the only leadership-hopeful who is a fan of the OHRC (whose federal counterpart has, BTW, just rejected their own reviewer’s call to clean up their act), Ms. Elliot.
This morning, I had the pleasure of being invited to the ‘post-debate’ breakfast with Tim Hudak.
Very interesting.
Of the conservative leadership candidates, Mr. Hudak is philosophically the closest to Mr. Hillier. Here’s a quick summary (from my point of view):
Human Rights Commissions – bad
Rule of law – good
Nanny state – bad
Individual freedoms – even in the workplace – good
Dalton McGuinty – bad
Tax cuts – good
Can’t really argue against that!
And, I do like the nifty little quote on his website:
“For too long, individual rights have been trampled by a dysfunctional human rights bureaucracy… and the democracy of our unionized workplaces has been eroded.”
– Tim Hudak
I must admit, in person, Mr. Hudak made a very good impression on me.
Despite the early hour – following a long and exhausting evening, he was bright and fresh and smiling and pleasant. Abandoning the microphone, he preferred to use his voice directly. Always a good move – if the venue allows it.
And he spoke well. He said all the ‘right’ pre-canned things, as is to be expected, touching on the his main campaign platforms. I was pleasantly surprised to find he sounded more conservative – and less ‘watered down’ – than I had expected. He even mentioned Ronals Regan! That is always a hit conservatives – and it certainly scored him points with this breakfast crowd.
This is important: if the people I talked to were representative of the whole group, many of them have not yet decided whom they will vote for when the time to elect a new leader comes. Many were weighing the Mike Harris endorsment of Tim (good) against the rumours that he has inherited a lot of the ‘John Tory people’ (bad). Many liked Randy Hillier, but worried about his electability in the Greater Toronto Area.
The main issues on people’s minds? Scrap the HRCs, lower taxes, fire the nanny and replace it with a state which respects people’s individual rights…. There might have been more, but these were what I heard most often and most loudly.
Still, I find it hard to gage people at these types of things. Things are all prepared, rehearsed, people know they are ‘on the record’ and so it’s hard to separate the ‘personna’ from the ‘person’ – if you know what I mean. So, despite the fact I quite liked Tim Hudak, I was not sure of my judgment.
Kids, on the other hand, are very good at judging a person!
Luckily, there was a lone kid at this breakfast. Lisa MacLeod had dragged along her young daughter, Victoria (then promptly left her to find entertainment on her own, while she herself went to schmooze talk to important people). Looking for someone to help her from her boredom, little Victoria turned to – you guessed it – Tim Hudak!
It was easy to see that Victoria knew him – and liked him. And, she obviously trusted him – and knew he would talk to her. Which he did. He got down to her level, so she could talk to him eye-to-eye, and instead of brushing her off, he actually talked to her. Until, that is, her mom ushered her away…
And, while I think (and I am not alone) that the endorsment by Lisa MacLeod is more likely going to hurt Tim Hudak in this leadership race than help him, the genuine endorsement by Ms. MacLeod Jr. is a strong plus for Mr. Hudak.
‘My mission’s purpose? Report on the fundraising event for Mohamed Elmasry’s nascent online magazine the Canadian Charger featuring Islamist gadabout Yvonne Ridley.’
‘It would appear that a never-challenged, little known law from 1934…You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.’
…
‘The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts.’
…
‘But refusing the FCC admittance can carry a harsh financial penalty. In a 2007 case, a Corpus Christi, Texas, man got a visit from the FCC’s direction-finders after rebroadcasting an AM radio station through a CB radio in his home. An FCC agent tracked the signal to his house and asked to see the equipment; Donald Winton refused to let him in, but did turn off the radio. Winton was later fined $7,000 for refusing entry to the officer.’
…
‘But if inspectors should notice evidence of unrelated criminal behavior — say, a marijuana plant or stolen property — a Supreme Court decision suggests the search can be used against the resident.’
So, let’s get this straight…
The FCC’s agents can enter any private property where they have a reason to believe someone is using any RF device.
Denying the agents entry is illegal
While the agents are on the private property, they are empowered to search it for RF devices and inspect the devices
If they uncover any evidence of ‘illegal activity’ of any kind, they can collect the evidence
This evidence can be handed over to police and can be used to prosecute the resident
Ah!
So, the US is not becoming a ‘police state’ – it is much too sophisticated for that! Instead, the police use minions and sidekicks to do their ‘dirty work’ and remain beyond criticism…
This is just a tiny peek at Canadian ‘organized labour’ in particular, though I expect that the results will be similar for many of the ‘developed’ countries – and I am not naive enough not to understand that a supranatural organization of labour unions also exists.
This is only natural: one just has to look at the nature of people who are drawn to ‘organized labour’ to start with!
These are usually people who are very, very good at ‘organizing’ things – and other people. So, it is only natural that they would – well – organize themselves, too! And, there is nothing wrong with that: freedom of association and all that. Plus, many (perhaps most) of them are motivated by a belief that they are doing right by their members – also a commendable thing!
Where I DO have a problem is that in Canada (and many other places), this very freedom of association – something the labour unions had to fight bitter battles to win a legal right for – is now not respected BY the labour unions themselves…
As in, we have ‘closed shop‘ workplaces (or something practically indistinguishable from it), where every single employee is forced to belong to a specified labour union. These ‘exclusively union-held’ workplaces are to be found in private industry and – perhaps this is the most troubling aspect – they have a monopoly on all levels of the civil service! While I am very uncomfortable with all the aspects of this, that is not the topic of this rant.
Unions arose because there was a need for balance: as the industrial revolution transformed the ‘Western World’, the employer-employee relationship gave too much power to the employer and not enough to the employee. Following the age-long adage ‘there is strength in numbers’, people refused to give in to oppression and did something to change it, both in law and in practice. I suspect that were I living back then, I might well have been proud to be part of this movement!
But, the effects of human actions tend to act a little bit like a pendulum: if you push hard to correct a wrong, chances are that a really successful ‘push’ will ‘swing the pendulum’ to the opposite extreme… and, with ‘organized labour’, I fear that that is exactly where we are now! (At least, in the ‘Western world’!)
Now, we have a situation where an employer may not be allowed to hire the best people for a specific job (or, at least, the people the employer wishes to hire), but must have all their employment choices approved by a labour union. In effect, the Unions in Canada (at the present time) form a layer of management which is NOT under the control of the employer, but whose very existence is predicated on ensuring that there is strife between the employer and the employee (as the ‘raison d’etre’ of the union is to mediate any disputes between the two, ensuring there is plenty of ‘stuff’ to mediate seems only prudent).
As in that story (sorry, I cannot find an online link, but it happened in the 1980s, so there may not be an online copy) where a lady owned a business and wanted to leave it to her grandson in her will. To make sure that he really knew the business, from the bottom up, she wanted to hire him during his summer holidays in different departments of her company – working in the entry-level jobs of all the departments and getting to know them from the ‘bottom up’!
Frankly, I think this is commendable: if you intend to leave a company in someone’s hands, it is only responsible that he know all the aspects of its workings!
However, not long before, this lady’s company became unionized. AND, it was a ‘closed shop’…
And – since the labour union (I don’t know which one was involved) saw the hiring of the owner’s grandson as ‘nepotism’ and something to be opposed, they refused to grant him a memership in the union. That meant that – whether paid or not – the grandson was not allowed to work at this company…except, perhaps, as the CEO…but he was denied the ability to ‘learn the business’ in order to become an effective manager!
The story ends sadly. The confrontation between the owner and the labour union did not resolve the situation: and, rather than be denied the right to hire whom she chose, the owned closed the company – putting everyone out of work.
Yes, it sounds like an urban legend: still, at the time, it was a big story, covered by the major papers…
I guess what I am trying to say is that while 100+ years ago, the ‘strength’ was with the employers, that is no longer the case. Now, the ‘strength’ lies with the unions who control BOTH the employer AND the employees, without any accountability to the former and with only a ‘lip-service’ level of accountability to the latter.
That, in my never-hmble-opinion, is a problem!
Because, like it or not – notice it or not – what has happened over the last 100 years (or so) is that individual workers have united to form unions, restoring balance to the ‘equation’: but, they then went much, much further! They created ‘unions of unions’ – until now, in Canada, there is one body – the Canadian Labour congress – which controls the vast majority of unionized employees in the land!
From their ‘about’ page:
…
‘The Canadian Labour Congress brings together Canada’s national and international unions, the provincial and territorial federations of labour and 136 district labour councils.’
…
‘With roots everywhere in Canada, the labour movement plays a key role…’
…
‘Active in every aspect of the economic, social and political life of Canadians…’
…
‘On Parliament Hill, in boardrooms, at international conferences, in media events, in demonstrations or on picket lines, the CLC supports and educates unionists in the fight for strong workplaces, pressures governments for change, builds coalitions with like-minded groups, and strengthens solidarity between workers in Canada and other countries.’
This really does seem to be an organization – perhaps with supranational strings attached – which controls a great deal of what goes on in the daily life of Canadians!
If the CLC were to decide that each one of its members (or the members of its minion organizations) were to go on strike, the whole country would come to a standstill! Industry, government, infrastructure, construction – even entertainment: all these workers are subject to the whims of the CLC… either directly, or through the labour unions that they belong to – and which all answer to the CLC!
Is this not too much control in the hands of just one group of people – especially a group of people NOT ACCOUNTABLE to Canadians?
We all have the responsibility – as individuals and as members of the human race – to never again let this happen! It does not matter who the victims are: if they are a specific race, or religion, or whatever! Because, as my favourite philosopher says:
A person’s a person, no matter how small!
So, as we ponder and remember this horrible thing that happened – the Holocaust – we must not lie to ourselves about HOW something like that could possibly occur.
Some people are quick to point out that the Holocaust did not begin with actions – and they are right. The Holocaust began with the BANNING OF FREE SPEECH!
Pre-Hitler Germany had very strong ‘hate-speech laws’ – ones which were eerily similar to the ‘hate-speech’ laws we, in Canada, much of the EU, and other ‘Western countries’, have now. And, the Jewish community in Germany then was quite ‘satisfied’ with the way these laws were used to prosecute people who SPOKE anti-semitic sentiments. Just as many Jewish groups say they are ‘satisfied’ with the ‘hate-speech’ laws here, now…
These very same ‘hate-speech’ laws were used in 1930’s Germany to muzzle anyone who spoke up against the ACTIONS and government policies which brought about the Holocaust! Remember my first law of human dynamics: if a law CAN be abused in any way – IT WILL. Do people really not see the danger how laws which allow governments to silence people on topics of their choice can be abused? Or that they are indeed being abused now…that the seeds of abuse of these very laws have already been sown in our society and are beginning to sprout?
Look around yourself now: we are seeing more and more people becoming muzzled (even including lifetime bans to speak or communicate in any way on a whole topic!) for speaking up against certain government policies!!!
This is ONE lesson we MUST learn from history – because the Holocaust is something we must never allow to be repeated!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 