AUSTRALIA TO END INTERNET FREEDOM
By Rev. Ted Pike
12 Nov 08
Australia will now join China in blocking free access to the internet.
Responding to decades of pressure from the Anti-Defamation League,
the Australian government has announced it will ban all "illegal" internet
content produced in or entering Australia. Under ADL-orchestrated
Australian hate laws, it has already been unlawful to hold up homosexuals,
Jews and Muslims to "humiliation or intimidation" in the
public forum, including the internet. Incoming material
on the internet, however, has remained largely unregulated.
The government, projecting a comprehensive internet filter, originally assured
internet users that they could legally receive banned content by contacting their
providers and circumventing such restrictions. Now the government says they can't. All illegal
content, which should include everything from pornography to political and religious
speech violating Australia's hate laws, will be forbidden. It will
be illegal to create or receive communication which the government disapproves.
Actually, according to Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers Australia, the National
Internet Filter would have little effect on such illegal internet content as
child pornography since it would not cover file-sharing networks. We may
conclude that politically incorrect speech would probably bear the brunt of censorship.
(See, "Australia
to implement mandatory internet censorship")
Meanwhile, ADL and its European arm INACH, the International Network Against
Cyber Hate, tirelessly work to find legal resources and technology capable of
ending criticism of homosexuality, Jews and Israel on the internet. ADL admits
this is difficult through conventional legal or technological means.
But it's not difficult when ADL can persuade governments to ban "hate speech" outright!
Is America Next?
How could America, ostensibly protected by the First Amendment,
also lose free speech on the internet?
For starters, Congress could pass ADL's federal hate crimes bill, the Matthew
Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, this winter. In 1971, Canada enacted
ADL's very similar federal hate law. Soon, it was extended to criminalize "hate
speech" originating on Canadian websites. Sec. 13.1 of Canada's human
rights statute outlaws even such internet speech as is "likely" to
cause embarrassment to federally protected groups.
If the Obama/ADL hate bill is passed, internet "homophobic hate speech" in
evangelical media, as well as in pulpits, will become illegal. 1 The hate bill
is ostensibly directed only against violent hate crimes in the States. However,
a federal hate bill will quickly overflow such limits, as prosecutors and judges
broaden it to protection of the "hurt feelings" of sodomites.
Hate crime laws, whether state, federal, or international, are already showing
an alarming tendency to overreach existing legal definitions and restraints.
Hate gestapos indict, letting the tedious court system catch up with them,
perhaps years later. The main objective of current hate law strategy is to
press the limits, seeing how much can be gotten away with. Prosecutors hope
to shape public opinion, frighten opponents and set legal precedents that will
provide steppingstones to even greater assaults on freedom.
Free Speech Casualty in Canada
One evangelical casualty of Canada's hate law is Rev. Stephen
Boissoin. Canada's Free Speech Monitor: "For
writing a letter critical of homosexuality to the Red Deer Advocate,
he had been ordered by the Alberta Human Rights commission to pay
a $7,000 fine, apologize for criticizing one of Canada's privileged
minorities (homosexuals) and never again, in any venue, criticize
homosexuals. He has thus been asked to renounce a key tenet of the
Christian faith. In times past, men and women have died rather than
knuckle under to political correctness and renounce their faith.
Rev. Boissoin is defiant and has vowed no apology and is appealing
the outrageous decision. In a decision reminiscent of Red China executing
dissidents and then sending a bill for the bullet to the victims' families,
Rev. Boissoin was ordered to compensate his persecutor to the tune
of $5,000 for the time and effort he had spent trying to gag the
pastor."
Quoting from LifeSite News ( June 9, 2008 ):
"On Friday [June 6], the Alberta Human Rights Commission
ordered Alberta pastor Steven Boissoin to desist from expressing
his views on homosexuality in any sort of public forum. He was
also commanded to pay damages equivalent to $7,000 as a result
of the tribunal's November decision to side with complainant
and homosexual activist Dr. Darren Lund. The tribunal has also
called for Boissoin to personally apologize to Lund via a public
statement to the local newspaper…
Lund made his complaint after Boissoin published a letter to the editor in
the Red Deer Advocate in which he denounced homosexuality as immoral
and dangerous, and called into question new gay rights curricula permeating
the province's educational system. "Children as young as five and
six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically
damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system;
all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights," wrote Boissoin in the
letter. In an interview, Boissoin told LifeSite News.com that he's
under attack not only for his letter but, more significantly, for his beliefs.'The
point I am trying to make here is what's being attacked at the core is
what I believe, according to my personal beliefs and my religious beliefs.' Most
disturbingly, says Boissoin, is that the ruling calls for him to'cease
publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, with public speeches, or
on the internet, in the future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.' Boissoin
wondered to what extent the right to freedom of expression in Canada will be
deteriorated, stating,'I am not allowed to hold onto my views.' …'Absurd
beyond absurd—I will never make a public apology; I stand by what I said.'"
Worse Could Come
Christians/conservatives, this and much worse are what you can
expect in the years ahead if ADL's federal hate bill is passed this
winter. Though discouraged by the Obama/Democrat victory,
you must rouse yourselves to protest!
Two years ago, when ADL reintroduced their federal hate crimes bill into the
House in the first week of January, the religious right did virtually nothing
to warn their constituents. Only after I alerted WorldNetDaily's Bob
Unruh of the crisis in mid-February and his crucial WND article went out to
millions did massive protest to Congress begin. (See, Killer
Instinct Needed to Defeat Hate Bill)
Free speech will not survive if Christian/conservative America repeats such
delay. From the moment the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act is
reintroduced, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, American Family
Association, WorldNetDaily, and many evangelical leadership groups must initiate
a flood of protest to the House, particularly members of the House Judiciary
Committee. We must respond as if our freedom depends on it, or we will probably
never get another chance to save liberty. As in China, Canada, and now Australia, free speech will become a memory, perhaps never to be grasped again.
Endnote:
1. The original 1968 federal hate law, upon which present
federal hate bills greatly expand, criminalizes speech. It says that
if anyone's public speech encourages another to an act of hate-motivated
violence, the original speaker can be tried as a federal hate criminal
along with the active offender whom he has influenced.
Title 18, U.S.C., Sec. 2a says:
(a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or
aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable
as a principal.
Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative
watchdog organization.
Let the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith teach you how they
have saddled 45 states with hate laws capable of persecuting Christians: http://www.adl.org/99hatecrime/intro.asp.
Learn how ADL took away free speech in Canada and wants to steal
it now in the U.S. Congress. Watch Rev. Ted Pike's Hate
Laws: Making Criminals of Christians at video.google.com.
Purchase this gripping documentary to show at church. Order online
at www.truthtellers.org for
$24.90, DVD or VHS, by calling 503-853-3688, or at the address below.
TALK SHOW HOSTS: Interview Rev. Ted Pike on this
topic. Call (503) 631-3808.
National Prayer Network, P.O. Box 828, Clackamas,
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