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Wear a Mask During a Protest In Canada: 10 Years In Jail
Phrogman writes "The Conservative government of Steven Harper in Canada has proposed a new bill that would impose a jail term of 10 years for anyone wearing a mask while 'participating in a riot or unlawful assembly.' The conservative backbencher who proposed the bill makes it clear that he intended it to allow police to arrest anyone wearing a mask 'before protests spiral out of control.' Since this is the same government that arrested hundreds of protesters during the G8/G20 summit using a law that didn't actually exist, it raises the question as to how they will define 'unlawful.' The 10-year penalty is more than double the penalty awarded to a person who murdered someone in a fit of 'road-rage' recently."
Canada was co-opted by a fascist coup led most recently by the harper dirtbag. The entire harper cabal is pure evil. haper's bully-boy left-hand shitbag is also an evil fat smelly blowhard pig.
1. It is not Harper proposing the bill it ias a Conservative backbencher. I think it is funny that when Harper controls caucus he is "acting. like a dictator" but when he does not "he is not leading as he should".
2. The ten years is tha maximum sentence for the mask offence. Someone convicted of this new crime could get no time at all. The article referenced the read rage conviction in Langly BC where the sentence was 5 years six months. The defendant was convicted of criminal negligence causing death which has a maximum penalty of life in prison. Comparing a sentence for one crime with the maximum sentence for another is not valid. The valid comparison is 10 years for the mask law and life for manslaughter.
3. Masks are being used more and more by agitators, anarchist and thugs who have no interest in the protest. They are there just to have a good time smashing things and injuring police. There needs to be a way of dealing with these people. Is a mask law a good way? Maybe, maybe not. What it hopefully does is spark the debate on the difference between protesting for a cause and rioting for fun.
This sort of law is the inevitable response to the G8/G20 and the student riots in Quebec as well as various recents sports-related riots.
Average folk in the business community, working folk, plus of course the cops, the firemen, the EMS guys, politicians, bankers, and students who don't want their ability to go to school impeded are all demanding the government deal with these violent protests.
Yes, free speech is a right. Impeding me going places is debatable and the more people use that sort of approach (and threaten me if I cross a picket line), the more likely I am likely to vote for a law that makes that sort of crap harder for the ***clowns involved.
Just because somebody has the right to speak freely to me does not mean I'm obliged to listen nor does it give them the right to impede my passage or cost me money by impeding my right to an education.
So, these sorts of issues, which go with all the recent protests and riots, will (if the riots and protests get worse) continue to be passed into law with broad support.
And in the long run, if the protesters push hard enough, they will find out the state cannot allow itself to be dictated to by pressure groups. I don't want to see that day come because their will be blood spilled if that happens. But if the protesters can't recognize when they have exceeded the boundaries of general public toleration, they'll find out what happens the hard way.
I think the Quebec students can protest as they want to and the G20 crowd to up until it impedes my ability to do what I want to. What gives them the right to impact my activities? Does that give me a reciprocal right to resist their impact on my activites? That's not the kind of scenario we want playing out because that just gets into mob clashes.
Your right to do whatever you want extends until it enters my personal space (generally). Many protesters at G8/G20 and at the Quebec protests violated this.
Also, the destruction of property is a criminal act. This includes the injury of police (which costs taxpayers money) and the destruction of government behicles. These things all requrie law enforcement to gear up their ability to pursue, capture, and prosecute offenders successfully.
The right to protest is not the right to commit crimes. Crimes against property or the government are not victimless crimes.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."