Street fighting men against free speech (updated)

Over recent weeks Trevor Loudon has been searching out links between local anarchists and peace activists, their associations with the Green Party, Zapatistas and international anarchist networks, and the weapons training so many of these peace lovers were undergoing in the Ureweras. (See the many, many posts he's made making the links at his weblog, New Zeal).   While the Green party has maintained a stoic silence, this has upset the anarchists and so called peace activists.  So much so that at Indymedia where they hang out, they're talking about where Trevor lives ...

...also they [Trevor and his family] live in a freakishly clean suburb called Northwood where there are rules for everything from the car you park in the driveway to the amount of money you spend on landscaping. Would anyone like the address? phone number?
Another has added;
He [Trevor] has a file in the Suspected Child Molester data base at CTF, in another words, he likes young boys .

Trevor no longer lives in Northwood (so don't bother firebombing the suburb) but as he says, "you can see how this sort of carry on might be intimidating on several fronts."  Certainly can.  He makes the point that the left tend to attack or intimidate those who oppose them.  It's a common modus operandi, to vilify rather than oppose honestly (perhaps because socialists overwhelmingly view others as a route to their own power, and as Chris Trotter has written are prepared to accept any corruption as long as it keeps the left in office*).  It's something even Barrack Obama is enduring at present with wild talk of assassination in the air -- a "meme" Obama rival Hillary Clinton is apparently willing to have used to her advantage.

Even so, Labour's Electoral Finance Act requires individuals expressing political opinions such as Don't Vote Labour to publish their names and addresses, leaving them and those they live with open targets to any nutjob under the sun.

This can't be right.  It certainly isn't free speech.

-------------------------

* Zen Tiger's recent comment about Trotter is spot on: "Chris Trotter is a man of standards. He has at least two of them. And double standards equip the left so very well to argue their way to electoral victory."

UPDATE: From Jack Wheeler's To the Point comes this comment, which is, um, exactly to the point:

If you Google "Obama" and "assassination" you will get 384,000 hits.
All over the world, the media is speculating on the possibility.  Typical is the January 8 (the day of the New Hampshire primary) headline in one of Australia's major newspapers, The Australian: Obama Must Be Wary of the Assassin's Gun.
The "news angle" of thousands of such stories is the same.  The first line of The Australian story is:  "Barrack Obama is crazy brave.  His victory in Iowa puts him in the crosshairs of many a gun-toting racist for whom the thought of a black president is an abomination."
It's the drumbeat theme echoing around the globe:  evil racist-fascist right-wing war-mongering child-eating nazi conservatives will always destroy America's hopes of being a peaceful humanitarian nation.
After all, it was just such a fascist-nazi right-winger that murdered JFK and killed Camelot, right?  What's that?  Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist?  Oh...
Please ignore that impossibly embarrassing fact.  Especially since it brings up the real question that no liberal dares to think, much less ask:
Will Hillary find an Oswald of her own to take out Obama?

Read more ...

Nutjobs or something more?

So far the arrested seventeen have been charged only under evidence brought under the Arms Act and (I understand) under the Crimes Act, and since name suppression and suppression of the facts has been in action at (we understand) the request of the defendants' lawyers, we've all rather been in the dark as to what is going on.

That vacuum has left plenty of scope for speculation, which plenty of numb nuts have been happy to fill by yelling "racism!" "state oppression!" and "unconditional support!"

Even the often sensible Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn has been seen waving the simpering 'these people wouldn't hurt a fly' flag, suggesting this week for example that defending the seventeen -- "not the sort" of people who strike you as terrorists, he says without hearing the evidence -- is a "core issue of freedom." Without the evidence it's simply impossible to make a judgement about the charges laid so far, and like everyone else I look forward to seeing if there's sufficient evidence to bring charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act, and just what that evidence is.

I/S appears to offer unconditional support however, saying "Whatever evidence they have, it had better be good - because its very difficult to see what three environmental film-makers, a Palestinian rights campaigner, a stirrer and a nutjob have in common." As it turns out, it's not too difficult at all. All of them for a start are anti-everything nutjobs who hate capitalism, hate industry and hate what civilisation has brought to New Zealand, which in itself isn't a crime, of course, but when it's combined with possession of napalm, molotov cocktails and high powered snipers rifles it should at least make you sit up and pay attention.

And Trevor Loudon suggests what at least one more of those common threads might be: the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Read Trevor's posts on the subject over recent days to see what's already on the record connecting the local anti-colonialists, anti-capitalists and anti-industrialists with the Mexican Zapatista movement, an armed revolutionary group which in 1994 "declared war on the Mexican state."

And keep an eye on the evidence adduced under the Terrorism Suppression Act when it's finally made public, and on who is keeping it suppressed if it isn't.

Does calling a spade a spade dig your own hole?

Amid a blogosphere brimful of bickering and a polis rife with passions, Burgess Laughlin comes out on his own blog in favour of ... reasoned debate!  What on earth?

    In the last few years, I have frequently examined many advocacy websites. One of my purposes was to identify the manner in which the authors made their points. In some weblogs, one element of style stands out: insults to opponents. These writers call their opponents names such as: nutbars, nutjobs, morons, cowards, idiots, goat herders, ragheads, and scum. They also use adjectives such as: moronic, idiotic, stupid, nuts, crazy, loony, insane, delusional, and childish.

I plead guilty.  Meanwhile, Laughlin continues.

    Why do these writers [ie., me] use insults? Judging from their statements of purpose and the contents of their weblogs, these writers want the world around them to adopt certain views. Do these writers think that insulting their opponents will persuade their opponents to revise their values? I am not sure of the answer. I have only a "working hypothesis."?"

Answering for myself, I have two answers:

1. Colour.
2. Calling a spade a spade.

We're not having a debate in a university lunch room here.  If I can entertain, inform and enlighten by using reason and emotion, then all the better for both my readership and my advocacy.

What say you, dear readers?

[Hat tip Objectivist Carnival at Rational Jenn's]