Whose own partisans turn out to be precisely as dishonest. And just as stupidly so, to think they could fence such well-known stolen goods and get away with it.
Remember the scene early in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where Butch is about to fight for his life with knives against a mastodon named Logan? “First we got to settle the rules,” Butch says, and Logan, enraged, straightens from his fighting crouch and says, “Rules? In a knife fight? No rules!” and as those last words leave his lips, Butch kicks him so hard in the groin that Logan’s boots leave the ground. That’s American politics today.
It became clear during the whole pointless Whitewater/Zippergate affair, as we all slowly realized that no matter what, the Republicans simply would not play fair and let the man who won the election govern. Obviously the Democrats feel it’s now Payback Time, and I fear we have all only begun to hate hearing about Florida electoral politics. Nobody seems to care anymore about fair, or right, or true. It’s a knife fight. At such times, truth is only the first casualty, and fast disappears beneath the other corpses. Without civility, there is no civilization.
Free Speech Is Worth Paying For
FIRST PRINTED MAY 1997
I’M PREJUDICED. Who isn’t? Some acquire prejudices by experience or analysis; some accept them prepackaged from some authoritative-seeming source. None of us could function without them. But Robert Heinlein taught me the price of prejudices: regular maintenance. I must constantly reevaluate mine, check them against new data and discard any, however cherished, which yield bad results.
Wake me in the night and ask if I believe in free speech. Yes; absolutely. Nothing should ever be censored by any group for any reason. The only conceivable alternative is to concede that any bully with enough muscle should be allowed to censor anything they want, and I’m not aware of any instance when that cure did not prove far more dangerous than any disease it was allegedly meant to fight.
But let’s check this prejudice again—three times.
Check one: a columnist for a tiny British Columbia newspaper was publicly pilloried by something calling itself a Human Rights Tribunal. Media accounts were vague on just what sanctions this tribunal is empowered to impose, but the issue seemed clear: complainants alleged that this man, hereinafter known as DC, was a hate-monger. The tribunal sought to censor or at least censure him. DC monged hate by writing that a) 6 million weren’t killed in the Holocaust; it was half a million, tops; b) Jews control the media (except his); and c) Schindler’s List maligns innocent Germans and oughta be called Swindler’s List.
The stated theory is that this palpable nonsense damages all Jews by somehow making them fear the Holocaust might return. The right to express unpopular beliefs threatens those who were once legally persecuted for holding unpopular beliefs. We can forestall Nazism by acting like Nazis. To counter nonsense, shine a spotlight on it, give it an international forum, gang up on it and give it underdog appeal.
Crackpots seek attention; to give them any is to reward them. The hearing so far has been a swell party and media opportunity for several pickup-loads of DC’s supporters, catered by their enemies at public expense. The sensible way to handle them is to try to forget they exist. Let them blather like the Internet goofs who can prove that Bill Clinton has personally ordered fifteen hits or the gummint is hiding a dead ET at Roswell: harmless background static.
Check two: the citizens of BC almost unanimously condemned the local RCMP’s abortive attempted censorship of Women on Top, Nancy Friday’s eight-year-old third book of women’s sexual fantasies—which was censored in Manitoba.
I own a copy. Guess what? Those fantasies often explicitly and graphically depict activities including incest, child sex, rape, torture, bondage, domination, bestiality and homosexuality—all specifically prohibited by Canadian law. The RCMP were simply trying to enforce the code we hired and required them to. Dozens if not hundreds of Canadians are presently serving prison time for possessing materials much less raunchy. What do most of those perverts have in common? Testicles.
Should the book then be censored? No. A fantasy is not a wish. I often fantasize strangling the yahoos who saddled us with obscenity laws, but I’m no more likely to actually do so than when I began. Heterosexual women should be permitted to fantasize about anything they please. But so should straight and gay men, and gay women.
(“What about real porn? Photos or films of actual child-abuse, videotaped rapes, snuff films?” But censorship does not apply here. No one in North America has ever attempted to commercially publish or market such material, so far as I can determine after years of inquiry and many false alarms. Pedophiles and other rapists may indeed sometimes swap or sell souvenirs, but that’s covered by existing statutes pertaining to evidence of crime and/or complicity therein.)
It’s check three that gives me the most pause.
A friend once forwarded some spam: a broadcast e-mail, a deliberate attempt to tug the coat-tail of everyone online. A joker whom I’ll call “Wart” is selling revenge, retail. He offers ten ingeniously diabolical ways to shaft someone from ambush—and for fifteen bucks, he’ll send you the really nasty ones. He specifically promises to teach you how to destroy any marriage, affair or friendship, shatter any reputation, ruin any livelihood, get any cop in trouble with IAD…and how to guarantee no one will ever suspect you or obtain justice if they do. First-strike capability. Stealth sadism.
Losing faith in the justice system? Let Wart make you a more effective vigilante. Hotheads weren’t dangerous enough behind the wheel; Wart can make them as invulnerable and mighty as they are cowardly. It’s an escalating arms race of hate and well-poisoning. My friend—a wise, educated and honorable man—prefaces his forward with, “My God! This man is sick! He’s horrible!…and I’m going to keep this list, because there’s a few here I might use. You never can tell when you might have a burning need to get even!!!”
Surely, if anyone should be censored, it’s Wart. What he does is on the same moral level as selling discount AK-47s to fist-fighting school kids. This is not gibberish about Jewish conspiracies or steamy thoughts about a poodle. Wart peddles an intrinsic evil that is almost irresistibly fascinating to even good people, by which I mean myself. I’ll be a long time forgetting some of the wickedly brilliant suggestions he made. Shouldn’t we pass a law?
No. I see Wart as the man who yells “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. I will defend his right to speak, without legal hindrance…and if any of his victims should want to form an informal group to beat him senseless, I’ll do my best to urge that his injuries be kept nonlethal and offer sympathy to any dependents if I fail. I’ll support civil action by any victim of any prank he suggests, or applaud his prosecution for criminal conspiracy. To me, Wart is more deserving of being treated as an unlicensed arms dealer than guys who write encryption software. But I won’t censor him. He has the right to publish his offer…and anyone who receives it has the right to send him a hundred blank replies. A day.
Prejudice intact. I still find no pressing reason for any honest citizen to tolerate censorship. Even in the Crazy Years…
I Want a Really Interactive Newspaper
FIRST PRINTED JUNE 2001
THERE’S ALREADY AN INTERACTIVE VERSION of most newspapers. Well…more interactive than the paper one, anyway. There are spots on it which, once poked, produce a tangible response. If you haven’t tried it, set the choke, advance the spark, crank up your browser and steer for your local paper.
Progress on this interactivity thing has been slow, though. Most stories in digital newspapers contain “hotlinks,” little cybersurfboards which, taken at the flood, will bring you to additional facts or references. If you want such data from a more traditional paper—a paper paper, if you will—all you can do is try tracking the reporter through voicemail, which is designed to enrage you. Cybernews is a step in the right direction.
But they haven’t got it down yet. Somehow they never seem to provide a hotlink to the information I
really want. And judging by the long faces on the artificial intelligence crowd, it may be awhile before that improves. Random examples:
Remember Mafiaboy, the sixteen-year-old hacker who in 2000 briefly disrupted the serenity of the gods? (CNN, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay—those gods.) His “attack” was utterly harmless, analogous to a vandal gluing the mall doors shut for an hour. His show-trial has happened, and Sidhartha Banarjee’s article (meet me under the bodhi tree, Sid; we’ll have a sitdown) in the Globe and Mail said this: a social services representative recommended to the court that the kid be made one of the first underage hackers ever to actually do hard time. Why? “Because he’s unrepentant.”
I want a hotlink explaining what secular law requires him—or anyone—to repent. Or why any reasonable person would expect him to, since his actions caused no one but himself any measurable harm and generated an international notoriety most teenagers can only dream of.
The social worker also recommended they revoke Mafiaboy’s passport, because the boy allegedly told him that “if the authorities forbade him to use computers, he’d move to a place where websites are much less secure, such as Italy.” Forget that Mafiaboy could never have said anything so hilariously cyberclueless: no authority has the right to forbid computer use, any more than it can forbid a boy to read…and in any case, no noise a minor can make with his mouth justifies abrogating his freedom to travel. So I’d like a hotlink to investigate just how contemptuous of civil liberties one can be and still find work in child social services.
Here in Vancouver a man named Stumpo, responsible for a transit strike that crippled the city, somehow managed to get his name in the papers nearly every one of the days it went on. Yet not once did he say or do anything to bring relief one day closer for his helpless victims. Where’s the button that will let us administer a nonlethal electrical shock to him, hourly?
Vancouver had a great police chief, once. How great? Bruce Chambers’ first official action was to march in the 1996 Gay Pride Parade—and he’s straight. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…) Class plus courage. He held the heretical opinion that the police should serve the needs of citizens, even at the cost of inconvenience. Vancouver also had a famous criminology pioneer, once. Dr. Kim Rossmo invented geographic profiling, an ingenious forensic tool that catches serial killers. Chief Chambers hired him: a coup. Then an “old boy’s club” of senior officers succeeded in getting the Chief turfed for being a shit disturber and admitted non-redneck. Shortly after that they decided Vancouver had no use for any internationally famous lifesavers Chambers had hired either, whatever that silly contract said.
Dr. Rossmo is suing for wrongful dismissal. Several former senior officers testified that they too were forced out or demoted for supporting Chambers. Wait, I’m almost to the punchline: the inspector who used to oversee the force’s needs for facilities and officers is now in charge of—are you ready?—organizing the Gay Pride Parade. Cop humor.
Where’s the hot button to demand compensation and/or reinstatement for Chief Chambers, Dr. Rossmo and their colleagues? Where’s the URL for a mayor with the courage to clean house, and turn the Vancouver police department from a private club controlled by a secret cabal into the world-class force a city with property taxes this high should have?
I lived in an upscale district of Vancouver for a decade. (Renting.) Very late one night I surprised two thieves breaking into my ancient Accord, and moronically chased them two blocks bellowing “CALL 911!” before it dawned on me that if I caught those fellows, they would kill me. Trudging back, oxygen-starved and adrenalin-poisoned, I saw enough houselights on to be sure several people had phoned the police, but phoned them anyway when I got home. (For a hippie, I’m fond of cops: my favorite uncle was a New York homicide detective.)
Thirty-five minutes later—half an hour past disgraceful—units responded. By then many of my neighbors and I had discovered dozens of cracked cars along our block alone, cameras, laptops, CD players and other pawnables missing. The cops took down (some of) our information and ignored (nearly all) our questions. I respectfully raised two points I thought urgent: a ton of stuff was missing…but the two I’d chased had been empty-handed. I felt this implied a staging area within walking distance, difficult to conceal from even casual search, or else a heavily-loaded, easily spotted vehicle. I kept explaining this until I realized the officers agreed…but didn’t care. My neighbors and I watched them stand by their cars chatting for an hour, hellbright lights left spinning to assure the formerly asleep they were safe, before they deigned to give us the report number they’d assigned the moment they’d arrived, so we could go to bed. None of us ever heard another word from the police, despite repeated inquiries. Several of us sent lists of missing property with descriptions and serial numbers. Nobody ever got back an acknowledgment, much less a single stolen item. Maybe not one got pawned. Maybe I’m Sir Paul McCartney.
Where’s the hotlink to a real cop? I bet Bruce Chambers would have known.
Lead Us Not Into Temptation
FIRST PRINTED OCTOBER 1998
YOU’VE HAD A LONG HARD DAY, and you’re sitting at a bus stop waiting for the bus to come take you home. A stranger sits down beside you—not a bum or a weirdo, just a guy—and leans over and murmurs, “You look like you could use a little pick-me-up, friend.” You look at him suspiciously, and with a furtive glance to either side he produces and surreptitiously shows you a baggie full of fat marijuana joints. Even through the plastic, the pungent smell reaches you. “Finest BC hydro,” he says. “Dollar a joint.”
Perhaps you smoked pot in your youth, but it’s been years since you even knew anyone who had any—and now all of a sudden you find yourself feeling nostalgic for the sixties. Perhaps you’ve never smoked pot in your life, and this is the first time you’ve ever been offered any—and all of a sudden you find you’re curious. Perhaps you know someone else who you think will be pleased by a surprise gift. For whatever reasons, you decide to accept the man’s offer and slip him a loonie.
And he puts the cuffs on you.
Spider, your science fiction background is showing again. That’s a ridiculous scenario. Law enforcement officers aren’t allowed to solicit drug purchase offers, to break the law—everybody knows that.
Wrong. In Canada they are.
But surely a cop can’t tempt you into committing a crime, and then arrest you if you succumb? That’s entrapment, isn’t it?
Yes, it is. And it’s perfectly legal…in Canada. As of May 1997, police in this country are specifically permitted to grow, manufacture, traffic and/or sell illegal drugs in the course of conducting a criminal investigation…of a crime that would not have existed without them. In (undefined) “extreme cases,” they need not even ask their senior officers for permission first.
But surely you would have noticed the passage of such a startling law. There would have been intense controversy, long and vigorous parliamentary and public debate, international publicity, threatened court challenges…Such a fundamental reversal of the most basic principles of legal ethics and human rights simply couldn’t have been accomplished in a free country without anyone noticing, could it?
Not if it had been done fair and square, no. But it wasn’t. It was done covertly, surreptitiously—not by law, but by regulation.
As Chad Skelton reported in the October 6, 1998, Vancouver Sun, “Regulations are a necessary but poorly understood part of the legislative process…Laws usually set out the broad explanation of what is and is not permitted…and delegate the fine-tuning of those rules—by means of regulations—to government departments…While new laws are usually the subject of fierce parliamentary debate and press coverage, regulations are passed quietly every day in Ottawa with few taking notice.”
You were informed of the new regulation permitting police to break the law at will. It was “published for public comment”—twice!—in the Canada Gazette, a government publication with only 9,000 subscribers. Few members of the public ha
ve ever seen a copy, and Mr. Skelton quotes John McIntyre, the director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, as saying, “Lawyers wouldn’t even read it on a regular basis.” The first time the regulation was published there, in May 1994, it was written in legalese, incomprehensible to the average layman. The second time it ran, accompanied by a “plain English” explanation (no mention is made of a “plain French” version), was the month it went into effect, May 1997. Even Mr. McIntyre had never heard of it, until the Vancouver RCMP offered fifty kilos of cocaine for sale, busted three men who agreed to buy it and confiscated the $1.2 million they had offered. (A similar “reverse sting” in Montreal also went unremarked, perhaps because the cops only grossed $140,000 then.)
Nor is the power to break the law afforded only to the RCMP: it can be given to any police force a provincial attorney-general designates. It is presently held by twelve different police forces in BC and sixty-five nationwide—with more doubtless to come. The Montreal sting was done by local police.
The solicitor-general’s office did not, of course, promulgate this stunning new “regulation” without consultation. No sir. They solicited input from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, provincial governments and Crown prosecutors. Somehow they did not get around to seeking the opinions of civil liberties groups, defense lawyers or the public during the three-year approval process. As Robert Anton Wilson said of the current controversy over medical marijuana use in California, “The people cannot be allowed to meddle in their own affairs.”
Mr. Skelton quotes a spokesman for the BC Trial Lawyers’ Association, Ian Donaldson: “The idea that police are now above the law…is something I would have thought would be public debate, as opposed to being snuck through by regulation.”
The Crazy Years Page 9
