Post 47--:
New Arrangements
Hi! Yes, I’m back with considerable embarrassment. I just cannot seem to muster the necessary pace to keep up with three blogs on a part time basis, while also working on my current major project, namely the writing of our memoirs, the “our” here referring to my wife and myself. So, I have decided that for the next few months I will write only one post per blog and quit pushing myself beyond reasonable limits. Heh, I am in my 70s. Though I may now have the time, I no longer have the energy with which I was brimming not so long ago. If somehow here and there an extra bit of unexpected time should become available, well, I may just try to squeeze in an extra read for you. But don’t forget, there are three blogs for you to peruse, not just one. Three a month does not sound so bad, does it? Almost weekly! You think I should simply join them together?
Need for Citizen-Friendly Legal Environment
Today I present you with some musings on the Canadian Charter of Rights. Again, remember, I write as an ordinary citizen for ordinary citizens. Of course, the professionals are free to join us and even to comment. I would be happy with that, very happy. My lay status means I will not get bogged down in technicalities that so often derail court decisions and, hence, justice, causing delays reasonable only to the professional, but irking the citizen to no end. Justice is not a matter of technicalities. It is something that must be experienced by the citizen. Go ahead, professionals, and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. Do you?
Introducing Selick and Smith
Karen Selick of the Canadian Constitution Foundation had an interesting article in the Vancouver Sun recently (“Courts Milking Their Power,”Oct 17, 2011) about Farmer Michael Smith. Smith was told by an Ontario Court of Justice that he had no right to sell raw or unpasteurized milk via a system best described as “cow-sharing.” Initially he was acquitted by a justice of the peace, only to have the judgement reversed at the next level. Well, what do you know. Ever heard of such a thing before, a judgement reversed, overruled or denied by a higher court? Smith and his customers were once again subjected to that mixture of a mismash of conflicting laws that pass for our legal system and the personal worldviews and values of judges that constantly lead to contradictions and overrulings. A citizen never knows where he’s at, not even when a judgement has already been handed down. Someone higher up will overrule and undo it. Let’s not even talk about the money the system and the wolves called lawyers suck out of the hapless citizen’s pocket.
The Right to Brush My Teeth
The issue as Selick explains it is whether I have the right to brush my teeth in the morning. After all, it is not listed among my human right and is therefore not a protected right. The same is true for everything we do routinely and on a daily basis. Do I have the right to go to the bathroom? Do I have the right to choose between an apple or a pear? And does Smith have the right to sell his raw milk? None of these daily activities are listed in the Canadian Charter of Rights. Are they therefore unprotected and illegal?
Who Needs to Be Reined in?
If that is how our rights and freedoms are to be protected, then, Selic argues, the Charter would be “a zillion pages long.” Everything people do would have to be stipulated to be protected and legal. This is nonsense, of course. Actually all these mundane activities in our lives are all bundled together under “the right to liberty.” And then Selick declares what I would consider a very profound and important principle, namely that the Charter does not aim to “rein in individuals” so much as “to rein in governments.” It does not “grant us our rights,” so much as to recognize “that those freedoms already existed.”
Need for Citizen Plain Legal Understanding
There are more revelations in the Selick article, but I will let it go at this today. Possibly I will discuss her article further in the next post, but this is enough to chew on for the average citizen. I hope you will chew on it, for I, frankly, like her arguments and believe citizens will profit from a sharper awareness of these issues. We need to be freed from the lawyer regime and start developing an independent understanding of law, rights, freedom and responsibility. At one time the Catholic church prevented people from reading the Bible. Muslims on the whole cannot read the Qur’an, except perhaps to recite it in a language few of them understand. Similarly, citizens are largely prevented from understanding or even reading the law by the obscurantist jargon in which everything is expressed. It is time we make everything plain. Perhaps we need an “Occupy the Courts” movement. Game anyone?
Showing posts with label lawyers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lawyers. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Gangs are Terrorists: More Outrageous Proposals (2)
Post 31—:
My question for this post is why gangs are not considered and treated as terrorists.
My dictionary defines a terrorist as one who engages in “the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion.” That seems simple and clear enough. For my purposes, I would probably drop the term “systematic” from the definition, for I doubt that gangsters do their shooting according to a systematic schedule, but they do according to a set of priorities that they may not have defined carefully—do gangsters define anything?—but by which they operate instinctively. Applying the word “instinctively” to gangsters seems to degrade them to animalistic levels, but that is not so far off the mark.
Do we need anything more? Since terrorism is an international problem, we should listen to the international political community. Unfortunately, it has not been able to reach agreement on a definition. Some experts have found over 100 definitions and, it appears, productivity and imagination are still cranking out more. The political community generally links terrorism to violence for political ends. That is not the case with gangs. They are not primarily politically inspired and I see no reason the definition should be exclusively political. One terrorism expert, Walter Laqueur, has concluded that the “only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence.” That seems to come pretty close to the essence of gangs.
When you turn to the definition of gangs, especially the legal definition, you once again end up in the land of multiples. Alabama law has defined it more precisely than some as follows: a "street gang" is, "any combination, confederation, alliance, network, conspiracy, understanding, or similar arrangement in law or in fact, of three or more persons that, through its membership or through the agency of any member, engages in a course or pattern of criminal activity." That’s probably pretty good, except that it does not necessarily include violence. For my purposes I would like to take the Alabama version as my working definition of gangs with the addition of “frequent violence.”
But is it legitimate to subsume gangsterism under the umbrella of terrorism? Back in 1988, California enacted the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act. Since that time, at least 28 other states have enacted similar legislation. (Sorry, but I have not found parallel info about the Canadian situation. Perhaps I should try harder?) Here gangsterism is subsumed under “street terrorism.” So, my proposal to bring them together is not unheard of. I stand by it.
Why these thugs are not treated like terrorists and their organizations classified as terrorist organizations is beyond me. If they were, the gangs would be illegal and their bank accounts could be frozen. I am not a lawyer and so do not know whether simple membership in a terrorist organization is illegal in Canada, but in my opinion, it should be.
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada explains what Canada should and/or is doing to counteract terrorism in this website: http://www.international.gc.ca/crime/terrorism-terrorisme.aspx. Check it out and see how much of it you think should or could be applied to gangs and gangsters. One of the things I fail to understand is the emphasis on the need for paying special attention to human rights in this framework, unless the reference is to the human rights of the targets.
In my humble opinion, gangs should be treated like terrorist organizations and gangsters like terrorists. Their organizations should be illegal as should membership in them, whether or not an individual member has personally committed any act of violence or not. Their assets should be seized and used to pay for the expenses of countering them.
I am not done yet with these monsters. In the meantime, I invite you readers to dialogue with me on this subject. Tell me where I am wrong. Insult me all you wish. But one thing I will not accept, namely to be told that the law, whether national or international, forbids the kinds of things I am suggesting. Law is becoming oppressive. It is increasingly used to protect terrorists and gangsters. That climate must be done away with. God is the ultimate law giver, but much of today’s positive law with respect to our subject goes counter to His law and has become a prison to the ordinary citizen. In the previous post I wrote about the need for revival. Well, positive law needs to be revived and refreshed to make it more hospitable to freedom and peace. In this process, our lawyers, these so-called “legal experts,” should be assigned a backseat and the “lay” citizen take control of the process.
My question for this post is why gangs are not considered and treated as terrorists.
My dictionary defines a terrorist as one who engages in “the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion.” That seems simple and clear enough. For my purposes, I would probably drop the term “systematic” from the definition, for I doubt that gangsters do their shooting according to a systematic schedule, but they do according to a set of priorities that they may not have defined carefully—do gangsters define anything?—but by which they operate instinctively. Applying the word “instinctively” to gangsters seems to degrade them to animalistic levels, but that is not so far off the mark.
Do we need anything more? Since terrorism is an international problem, we should listen to the international political community. Unfortunately, it has not been able to reach agreement on a definition. Some experts have found over 100 definitions and, it appears, productivity and imagination are still cranking out more. The political community generally links terrorism to violence for political ends. That is not the case with gangs. They are not primarily politically inspired and I see no reason the definition should be exclusively political. One terrorism expert, Walter Laqueur, has concluded that the “only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence.” That seems to come pretty close to the essence of gangs.
When you turn to the definition of gangs, especially the legal definition, you once again end up in the land of multiples. Alabama law has defined it more precisely than some as follows: a "street gang" is, "any combination, confederation, alliance, network, conspiracy, understanding, or similar arrangement in law or in fact, of three or more persons that, through its membership or through the agency of any member, engages in a course or pattern of criminal activity." That’s probably pretty good, except that it does not necessarily include violence. For my purposes I would like to take the Alabama version as my working definition of gangs with the addition of “frequent violence.”
But is it legitimate to subsume gangsterism under the umbrella of terrorism? Back in 1988, California enacted the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act. Since that time, at least 28 other states have enacted similar legislation. (Sorry, but I have not found parallel info about the Canadian situation. Perhaps I should try harder?) Here gangsterism is subsumed under “street terrorism.” So, my proposal to bring them together is not unheard of. I stand by it.
Why these thugs are not treated like terrorists and their organizations classified as terrorist organizations is beyond me. If they were, the gangs would be illegal and their bank accounts could be frozen. I am not a lawyer and so do not know whether simple membership in a terrorist organization is illegal in Canada, but in my opinion, it should be.
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada explains what Canada should and/or is doing to counteract terrorism in this website: http://www.international.gc.ca/crime/terrorism-terrorisme.aspx. Check it out and see how much of it you think should or could be applied to gangs and gangsters. One of the things I fail to understand is the emphasis on the need for paying special attention to human rights in this framework, unless the reference is to the human rights of the targets.
In my humble opinion, gangs should be treated like terrorist organizations and gangsters like terrorists. Their organizations should be illegal as should membership in them, whether or not an individual member has personally committed any act of violence or not. Their assets should be seized and used to pay for the expenses of countering them.
I am not done yet with these monsters. In the meantime, I invite you readers to dialogue with me on this subject. Tell me where I am wrong. Insult me all you wish. But one thing I will not accept, namely to be told that the law, whether national or international, forbids the kinds of things I am suggesting. Law is becoming oppressive. It is increasingly used to protect terrorists and gangsters. That climate must be done away with. God is the ultimate law giver, but much of today’s positive law with respect to our subject goes counter to His law and has become a prison to the ordinary citizen. In the previous post I wrote about the need for revival. Well, positive law needs to be revived and refreshed to make it more hospitable to freedom and peace. In this process, our lawyers, these so-called “legal experts,” should be assigned a backseat and the “lay” citizen take control of the process.
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