Since I posted that bit about 9/11 conspiracies being a lot of hooey and here say, my in box stopped beepin’ n’ boopin’ at me with very much regularity.  I mean shucks, as far as blog traffic goes, this ain’t no grand central station.  I do however get a gem from time to time that starts an interesting exchange or just incites a chuckle from yours truly but this one I thought was actually quite an interesting and earnest kind of e-mail and with the permission of the e-mailer, I’ve decided to post it here and my thoughts following.

Not that I would normally ask permission.  Whatever lands in my inbox is mine but yeah, I figured I would be polite on this one.  as follows, this email message from Barry.

Hi Zach.

I came across your blog on Google and started reading through some of your previous posts.  At first, I thought maybe you were a big C conservative but looking further, I think it’s pretty clear that you’re actually an anarchist or purist libertarian.

I’m wondering how your views are formed because they seem pretty unrealistic.  Anarchy is lawlessness and chaos.  That’s far from anything that could be described as a paradise.  Is Somalia really where we want to end up?

Firstly Barry, thanks for the e-mail.

What strikes me first off is that you mention Somalia and despite it having been described as an anarchic “state” of some sort, it’s actually anything but.  Somalia is run by warlords who exert coercive power and abuse those they lord over.  Anarchy is simply society without leaders.  While anarchy may include localized structures of law, the principles of anarchy generally preach that violence and coercion are antitheses to the notion of a working society devoid of coercive or centralized leadership.

A popular misconception of anarchy is that a lot of Molotov Cocktails are involved and that generally, anarchists want to simply run around causing damage to property because property is somehow evil.  Well, depending on what type of anarchist you talk to, property may actually be held in the highest regard and damaging what is not yours is generally looked down upon by most rational types anyhow.

This bring me to another point.  Anarchists are in fact so organized in principle that they even have a number of different sub-groups.  Not all anarchists are the same.  While I’m not sure exactly what label applies to me, (it’s probably a mix) I suppose anarcho-capitalist would be close.  I like the idea of commerce and the free flow of business but as well, I like the cooperative principles of anarcho-syndicalists.  As an anarcho-capitalist, I see value in businesses profiting and anarcho-syndicalists see value (as I do) in eliminating a top down management structure opting instead for consensus based management where all workers have an equal voice and vote.  I could get into this much more but suffice it to say, anarchy is not simply about casting aside the notion of organized society; rather, it’s generally about casting aside the notions of coercive central leadership and violent enforcement of laws.  Anarchy is the epitome of self reliance, responsibility to yourself and others, ethical living and freedom of the individual.

I might be one of the first to acknowledge that anarchy really isn’t realistic today.  On that count, you’re likely right but my ideals are not to simply convert society tomorrow.  It’s my hope that when these ideas are discussed and if people can be convinced that they are rational ideas, some day, an anarchic society may in fact be formed and if it were, I would seek to take up residence there as soon as I possibly could.  Canada could not be converted tomorrow to anarchy for instance.  It would be as foolish to think that as it would be to think that communist China could drop its bureaucracy in favour of a leaderless society.  No, the population at large first needs to understand anarchy, understand its value and then make a conscious social move toward it.  Anarchy is not a change that can be “instituted” in any way, it’s simply a social development that can’t be forced.  heck, if it were forced, it wouldn’t actually be anarchy.

How are these views formed?  Honestly, I think it’s just a natural progression for myself.  I bounced about from calling myself a conservative or a socialist…and I just wasn’t sure.  When I figured I was a small L libertarian, a discussion about the role of the state had be blurt out that “the fool” I was debating with “was just preaching rank anarchy!”  His response was that absolutely yes he was and he then reiterated his argument as to why.  For me, this was a real turning point.  I had constantly tried to figure out how to draw a line as a libertarian in regard to how big the state should be allowed to grow.  I was of the opinion that of course, the role should be minimal but I couldn’t get rid of the nagging thought that if the state is given any monopoly on power, even the power to make laws, then it could grow and grow until it became as large and overbearing as anything we have today.  I eventually saw that the problem was not the state itself but rather people like me who bought into the idea that indeed, we really do need a government.

I am firmly of the view that in fact we don’t need a government, we simply need to be an intellectually honest and ethical society.  Are we such a thing today?  No, I don’t think we’re even close but can we get there?  I think that if we survive as a species over the long term, it’s all but inevitable.

Thanks for the e-mail Barry.  I really enjoy getting this type of correspondence in my inbox and I do wish I got it more often.  For anyone else, you can always e-mail me via the address posted on my contact page.

I stopped chuckling about this kind of stuff a while back.  Now it`s just ridiculously sad.

At the Dime A Dozen blog, Robert Jago has posted an incredible demonstration of how fits of hysteria, caving to baseless fears and basically letting racially motivated arguments meant to promote fear and hatred be your basis for arguments on social policy will shred your credibility.

Go head, click the link and have a peek.  You might be like me and be tired at laughing at rank stupidity and instinctive love of hegemony…but still, it’s worth a look.  Myopic mental midgets, avert your eyes.

I have a constant fear and being a step dad doesn’t help to ease that fear.  It’s a fear that I’ve actually had since I was a small boy which makes it all the more irrational but such is life.  I have lived with a fear of this thing for almost as long as I can remember being alive and while perhaps not as irrational today as it was during my childhood, it is as ever present as one could imagine.

I fear being labelled in the public eye as a rapist, a child molester or any kind of sexual offender.  Beyond financial losses, physical harm to my person or any other type of spurious assassination of my character, I sincerely fear being labelled in the public as a sexual deviant as perhaps the worst thing that could happen to me beyond death and should this thing ever come to face me, I can’t help but wonder if I would wish for the latter.

It is perhaps with this in mind that while I have yet to voice any kind of opinion regarding WikiLeaks, their public face Julian Assange or their choice to release a large sum of unedited, classified American military documents that has endangered a great many people, I can perhaps sympathize with Assange’s recent ordeal handling charges of rape and molestation.  Assange has been, without trial, cast into the public sphere as a rapist and even if only just for a few hours, the damage has been done and certainly there are people now in the world who will think for certain that this man is a sexual deviant, more so seriously, a violent one.

In a recent story I saw on Saskboy’s twitter feed, a story about Assange being cleared of the charges that resulted him being labelled as a rapist.  It’s important that stories like these are published if some one’s reputation has been tarnished but this story is in fact terribly incomplete.  In part, it reads,

Assange — who has denied both accusations — is still suspected of molesting a woman on Aug. 13, but molestation is not a sex crime under Swedish law

I begin to wonder why on earth molestation wouldn’t be a sex crime.  Certainly when a detractor with their own biases sees this, molestation is nearly as bad as rape if not equally as bad depending on what molestation may mean.  So again, I wonder why on earth molestation wouldn’t be a sex crime in Sweden.

And so it goes that translating Assange’s criminal charges remaining (still yet to be tried in any court) may have been a second priority for English speaking journalists.

Assange has been charged with something including the word Ofredande which literally translates into molestation/harassment.  The reason this isn’t a sex crime is because it’s possible that this type of thing is merely a charge of harassment which could be anything from inappropriate comments to being overly persistent when some one denies your advances.

I’m not here to defend Assange but I think (especially in regard to this type of subject) that a person’s public character is not something to be dealt with in a flippant fashion.  being publicly named in the media when you have yet to face thr courts can be devastating to one’s public character and things like this foggy translation and non-specific wealth of “details” don’t help matters.

Think what you may of Assange and his organization but to accept that some one’s character be so terribly tarnished on speculation is at the very best, malicious and barbaric.

Goodness gracious. With such an ignominious past, one has to Wonder if the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will ever be able to cobble together their image in any kind of manner not resembling the progress made by a slug attempting to crawl across a salted cracker.  A couple of stories as published in Macleans (and picked up by basically no other media outlet at all) tackle the issue of Vancouver’s safe injection site, Insite, with a relatively new perspective.

If you’re not currently aware, Insite is a facility in which injection drug users are allowed to inject drugs under the supervision of a nurse.  the site operates under a legal exemption established by the former federal Liberal government.  The current Conservative government has made clear that it opposes spending federal money on Insite and for the record, I do as well but not because Insite fails to work.  In fact, Insite is incredibly effective.  I simply think it should be funded locally by a community that cares rather than by a federal government.  Anyhow, despite being opposed to spending money on Insite, the Canadian courts have so far made clear that the government does not have a legal right to close the facility.  Again, while this is something I don’t agree with in principle, I am none the less a supporter of the facility and this is all something of a discussion for another time.  What’s interesting in the here and now regarding Insite is that the RCMP are being implicated in scandal yet again.

In the first story linked above, MacLeans writer John Geddes details the genesis of how it came to be that the RCMP stood fast in its opposition to closing the safe injection facility despite a great deal of evidence suggesting that the centre was successful in achieving its goals and was a positive impact on the area in which it was placed.  The second story explains it clearly because some people obviously don’t understand it despite the column being pretty darned clear.

In the beginning, the RCMP had railed against the safe injection site as an enabling force in the community that would encourage injection drug use and the tune today is still much the same if you can find an RCMP spokesperson brave enough to actually play it.  Most of the fiddling these days is done by the political wings of the asylum though and there may be a very disappointing reason for that rather than politicians simply being better suited to speak publicly on issues of this nature.  Nay in fact, it is not a mere possibility but it would seem as a result of this story in Macleans that the RCMP was in fact completely prepared to recant and acknowledge that Insite was supported by all of the evidence.  Beyond that, it’s even possible that the RCMP was ready to admit that of the four studies commissioned at the behest of the mounties, the two that made a case against Insite did not meet conventional academic standards and were not credible studies from which to draw conclusions.  This wouldn’t have been a surprise seeing as both studies were from questionable sources, one of them actually being produced by Colin Mangham, research director of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada. The DPNC was founded by former Conservative Member of Parliament, Randy White, a man with a reputation for specializing in drug policy and maintaining a fanatical opposition to legalization or harm reduction practices in society.

Again though, this is another tangent. There is an issue here that goes far beyond the politicization of scientific studies and instead brings one to wonder how badly compromised our police are since they themselves have obviously been politicized. The issue here is not the dubious research; falsehoods are easily countered by the truth for any one who is willing to take a moment to consider all the information objectively. No, the greater worry here in that just as the RCMP were about to recant and some out to announce that they would no longer be condemning Insite, an order from somewhere at the top quashed the very notion of the RCMP acting honourably and with transparency.

While no one yet knows (though we will eventually) whether the order came from outside the force or from the top brass within the organization itself, the situation is clear.  The RCMP was about to admit that research that amounted to nothing more than a fishing expedition for anti-injection site information was not endorsed any longer by the RCMP.  The RCMP was about to deal an embarrassing and powerful blow to the government of the day and to others who oppose the safe injection site and this was all dashed by a decision that seems as though it could only have been political.  One of the best weapons anti-drug warriors have is that the police almost always seem to stand with them and this was about to be ripped away; a small victory for proponents of Insite and simmilar policy directions.

Of course, top cops aren’t talking but some one certainly knows who told who to do what and while it is perhaps entirely reasonably to demand an accountable and transparent action from the national police force of our land, I don’t think it is really expected.  In my eyes, our police have, at so many levels, been horribly tarnished in their image.  This type of thing only serves to further entrench my view that police can not be trusted and the only reason I’ll ever call them to defend me is because by law, there are no other options available.  As laid out in both articles above, it is clear that the RCMP had preconceived ideas regarding Insite, sought out research meant to specifically bolster those ideas, were ready to recant and admit that those ideas were wrong and then clammed up at the behest of an as of yet unknown source at the top.

I don’t know how some of you do it.  I really do think it would be just wonderful to be able to trust police but I can’t and I honestly don’t know how some of you can do it.

Now this one strikes me as exceptionally stupid and though I have a propensity for blaming police for this kind of stupidity, I don’t mind shoveling a bunch of my discontent on top of local politicians in this case as well…actually they get it way more often but I feel a need to point them both out this time around.

The subject of the above linked news story was driving around in an area frequented by sex trade workers. He was being tailed by officers in three unmarked police cars, none of whom later testified that the guy ever propositioned a street walker or even attempted to park. None the less, one of the cruisers pulled the fellow over and issued a ticket for driving around in the area. Apparently, he had turned his head and looked at a couple of sex workers and this is what prompted the police to pull the guy over.

Now, the police in the story say that the fellow has a history in the area and it’s not elaborated on. Frankly, I don’t care if he was cruising for hookers or not, the fact of the matter is that he hadn’t actually done anything wrong but the police used a tool at their disposal to detain and charge this fellow anyhow. Thats one of many things that don’t sit well with me here. The charge is spurious as well. I know where the sex trade is and I have driven through there before. I have even hawked at street walkers before and as a young single male in a car all alone, I imagine I would be the perfect suspect in regard to some one potentially picking up hookers. It seems to matter not that I don’t intend to buy sex, this tells me that simply driving about and turning my head could end up in my being issued a stupid ticket.

Add to that, my views that laws banning solicitation of sexual favor are both destructive and anti-freedom, I’m just a big ball of unhappy about this kind of thing. A stand up comic who’s name escapes me asked a pertinent question in regard to prostitution. Isn’t the ultimate test of ownership in wether or not you can sell whatever it is you own? Don’t we own our bodies?

Not to get off on a tangent here, I’m just upset that some one can get pulled over and then charged for driving about somewhere. Just because some idiots pass a law that clearly violates mobility rights in the charter and just because some one has a hard on for issuing a ticket no matter what the reason, some one is going through the court process just to defend themselves against the use of piss poor logic.