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I want it on record that I deplored the theft of the banner. Thanks to me it doesn’t have a single plore left. Just Stop Oil march gets hijacked by stag-do leaving protesters furious
Video courtesy of the Daily Mail via Instapundit.
The Mail writer reveals an unexpected talent for understatement:
The demonstrators are then seen continuing their march, looking displeased.
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Just Stop Oil have no claim to property rights, when they themselves do not respect the property rights of other people.
They are outlaws by Viking standards:
not entitled to protection by the Law.
Banners should NOT be grabbed – but (yes, gentle reader, you knew there was a “but” coming) people should not obstruct the public roads – if the police refuse to clear obstructions from the public roads, then, eventually, ordinary people will clear obstructions from the public roads.
These are not protests, they are obstructions of the public highways – the police know that, but because the cause is fashionable they have sat on their hands, or even sided with the obstructers against ordinary road users.
Would the police treat anti Covid “vaccine” protests the same way? How about anti “Net Zero” protests? Or anti “Diversity” protests?
“Those are not protests – they are conspiracy-theorist-reactionary-running-dog-racists” – thank you for informing us.
By the way – before 1856 it was not compulsory for counties in England and Wales to have a police force. We were not all eating each other in 1855.
Snorri – interesting argument, and you are historically accurate.
By the standards of most ancient legal systems (yes – including the Norse) if people systematically do not respect the property rights of others, they lose their own.
People who place themselves not just outside the law, but hostile to the basis of the law (private property) are indeed “out – laws” (outside the law – outlaws), wolfheads.
Every honest man is fully entitled, under ancient law, to defend themselves against wolfheads – indeed to hunt down wolfheards.
The people in French cities are now complaining about their homes and shops being destroyed.
But the question arises – “why did you let it happen?”
No civilisation can last if the wolfheads do not fear it – the moment they no longer fear, they will loot (witness American cities).
Edmund Burke, and others of his time, feared that the “state being all in all” in France meant that people had reached the stage where they would not risk their lives fighting to protect their own property and the property of others (as he had done against the Gordon rioters in 1780 – Edmund Burke and his friends had taken muskets and made it clear to the rioters that if they attacked homes or business enterprises they-would-be-shot).
In contrast after 1789 French property owners just screamed for the police (London had no police to scream for) – police who never came, or who sided with the wolfheads.
@Snorri Godhi
Just Stop Oil have no claim to property rights, when they themselves do not respect the property rights of other people.
They are outlaws by Viking standards: not entitled to protection by the Law.
Oh please. Does a car thief also loose the protection of the law because he apparently didn’t respect the property rights of the owner? How about a drunk guy who takes a piss in a bus shelter who doesn’t respect the property rights of local council? Everyone deserves both the protection of the law, and the appropriate sanctions for breaking it.
You might loathe these people (and I do) but, relevant to a recent article here, I strongly defend their right to protest and complain and all they were doing in that video was marching. Of course I don’t defend their right to throw soup on artwork or block the public highways, they should certainly suffer the sanctions of the law for that, but this seemed to be a legitimately authorized protest march. I had another look and it looks like they might have been blocking traffic, which obviously I don’t agree with at all.
If you bring back an outlaw standard I assure you it will not be the lefties who suffer from it the most.
Fraser Orr.
You could try listening to the people who created Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion.
Although they are happy to take contributions from “capitalists” – they are quite clear that they want to get rid of “capitalist society” the family and all, the C02 thing is only part of their agenda.
Sadly the world is much worse place than you think it is Sir.
You have many such people in the United States as well – and, as you know, they are taking control of the government of many cities, and of the Federal Government.
It may well be that the government, the FBI, the IRS and so on, is in the hands of the Outlaws – that they are Wolfheads.
Indeed I believe this to be the case – “Social Justice” “Equity” (which they openly support) being the creed of Wolfheads.
From the video, it looks like the banner was made from a product of oil. Ironic or what!
Fraser:
You should read the Sagas of Icelanders.
People were not made outlaws for any violation of the law — not even for murder (as long as the murderer readily admits to it).
Only outrageous and/or repeated violations justified outlawing.
That applies to Just Stop Oil.
We’ve got soft on this, but in the past the answer to your question was: yes. It still is, in some cases.
Insurance companies, among others, are quite capable of deciding that the contract you signed and paid for with them is nullified because you were breaking the law.
You are entitled to shoot a person entering your property in much of the US.
In common law the response had to be proportionate. Public urination might earn a fist to the face. But a car thief equivalent — horse thief — would often enjoy a swift hanging in many parts.
Are we actually better off for allowing scum full protection from the course of their actions?
@Chester Draws,
I must be misunderstanding you — you think car thieves should be hung? That some drunk guy taking a whiz deserves GBH, or that shooting someone breaking into your house is about anything other than self defense? Or are you questioning that insurance companies should be able to enforce rules in their contract nullifying certain claims in face of criminal action?
To be honest I find your comment a bit of a bouibaise of different ideas, and can’t quite seem to grasp your point.
The pickle we are in with crime right now is because we are not holding criminals to the standards of law we have not because the sanctions in the law are insufficient. FWIW, I think many criminal penalties are TOO severe, often the difference between relatively benign crimes and very serious ones is not reflected by a commensurate different in penalty, but that is a discussion for another day. However, it is their lack of enforcement that is the real problem.
@ Chester Draws, who wrote:
‘You are entitled to shoot a person entering your property in much of the US.”
Please do not make such statements, which are factually untrue, but which might well lead less-informed persons to believe them, and perhaps even act upon their mistaken belief.
I don’t know where you get such ideas, but will categorize them along with many other similar ideas which people not in the US have about what goes on there, viz, “things they all know, which just ain’t so”.
llater,
llamas
Yes Snorri.
For a specific offence, even a murder, the accursed and the accuser would go before a judge (and there was a choice of judges in Iceland) – and if he accused rejected the judgement by the judge, the case would go to the people assembled.
It was only if someone rejected the principle of law (not committed a specific offence – rejected the principle of private property itself) that they were declared “outlaw” – outside the law. So every man could defend himself, and help defend other people defend themselves, against the wolfheads.
Do these organisations hold this position? Are they against the “capitalist” principle of private property (the traditional family and-so-on) – of course YES, and they make no secret of the fact.
And, no Fraser Orr, this is not state tyranny – it is a cultural principle to defend against state tyranny.
The “official bandits” (to use the old Chinese term for the servants of a corrupt regime – such as the FBI today) are wolfheads (outlaws) – indeed they are the worst wolfheads.
If people get to the stage when they have to rely on “the authorities” to defend civilisation – then they have already lost.
Much like those people in American, and now French, cities – who watched their business enterprises and homes destroyed, and 80 year old priests stripped and beaten.
All the people who watched these things, and worse, did was scream “police, police”.
But the police had been told to “stand down” to “avoid another incident” – indeed in future they (a new “reformed” police that “reflects the diverse community it serves”) may join the looters.
If a community gets to the stage when businesses and homes are being destroyed and all the people do is scream “police, police” – they have already lost. Lost everything – most importantly their self respect, by failing to come to the aid of property owners who are under attack, or even to protect their own property.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding afloat as to why the Just Stop Oil protesters get so much leeway. There has been a judgment in our Supreme Court (press summary here)
establishing that it can be wrong for the State (or its agents) to take action against acts that are criminal if the consequence of taking that action (in the case in question, prosecuting protestors who had obstructed the highway) results in an impermissible interference with the human rights of the protestors, such as the right to protest. So there is under Human Rights law, a ‘licence’ to commit some crimes if it is part of a protest and the State cannot justify interference with that right by prosecuting those involved.
Of course, you cannot know beforehand what the outcome of the ‘balancing exercise’ will be, only the courts can decide that, but in theory, this means that if obstruction is permitted, surely any crime may be committed and go unpunished if to do so would result in an impermissible interference in the right to protest. After all, there has to be a ‘balancing exercise’.
You may say that these people have every right to protest at the side of the road and not to block it, so why don’t they do that, and that people have the right to ignore the protesters, you might even say that people have the right to free passage on the highway if needing medical attention, but that is to disregard the human rights of the protesters and other factors than human rights cannot be allowed to be the prime consideration for our courts.
I wonder what would happen if someone turned up to a JSO highway blocking, said, “Yes. I quite agree with you. Let’s get rid of anything connected to, or made from, oil based products.” and then started cutting up the banners (plastic), the clothes if made from artificial fibres, or pulling off rubber soled shoes of the protestors?
Shirley, they could only be excused for their supportive actions (asking for a friend)?
These people are simply THE most nauseating, arrogant, infantile hypocrites it is pretty well possible to imagine.
How they came about, that is a huge thread in itself, but here they are, this is what they do and we have state apparatus that, for all practical purposes, empowers and protects them
Whatever actual truth there is in the last is starting to be become irrelevant as people are increasingly believing their own lying eyes.
All actions have consequences. I don’t like to think of the longer term societal consequences if this is allowed to continue, but this is vlearly something the arrogant children and their state protectors seem to be set on.
This ain’t going to end well, least of all for these “woke”. If I’m still around when it all turns to shit, well, if I find myself in a uniform “caring” for these people, I don’t think I will be caring very much.
Mr Ed
It would seem to me that “human rights” serves much the same purpose in Europe as “general welfare” and “interstate commerce” serve in the US.
The Just Stop Oil juvenile tactics do serve a valuable purpose for the anti-oil movement.
By acting in ways that annoy and enrage most of the non-activist population, they define a barrier of acceptability for the rest of the activist movement.
Now, in the face of the JSO tactics, everything that the rest of the activist world does in protest becomes more acceptable, so long as it stops just a bit short of the JSO tactics. “We may be annoying, but we’re less harmful than those JSO creeps!”
JSO has made a whole bunch of slightly-less-annoying tactics seem acceptable, and “moderate”. Every movement needs someone like them to push the boundaries further. They’re the Black Panthers of the civil rights movement.
Just to be pedantic: Paul Marks is broadly correct, but not entirely accurate about Viking Iceland.
People who had a dispute could indeed choose a set of jurors/adjudicators to settle their dispute. The only constraint, iirc, was that the jurors had to be freemen, i.e. own the means of production of their own sustenance.
To be declared an outlaw, however, it was not necessary to ‘reject the principle of law’.
For instance, Gisli Sursson was declared an outlaw simply because he killed a (free)man and did not admit to his crime.
And Gunnar of Hlidharendi was declared an outlaw because he killed too many people, some of which in the same family — even tough most of his killings were in self-defense, and even the other killings were justified by Viking standards.
Thank you Snorri – although, I believe, that the choice of judge was limited in Iceland. That one did have a choice – but only from certain families (although I would be happy to be wrong on this point).
Than you Mr Ed – although I suspect that, for example, anti Covid “vaccine” protestors who obstructed the roads would be treated rather differently to pro “New Zero” protestors (who claim to be anti establishment – but are pushing establishment policies).