We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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When I first heard about this case, a few days ago, I was glumly convinced that this man would be convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison.
I was wrong:
A company director accused of killing a burglar who had sneaked into his business to steal a lorry has been cleared of manslaughter.
Steven Parkin, 46, of Derby Road, Nottingham, was alleged to have battered Mark Brealey with a pickaxe handle and slashed him with a knife as he fled the site.
It remains to be seen whether or not the Crown intends to pursue any other charges against Mr.Parkin but there is no mention of this either way in the story. All I can say is that I certainly hope not.
Judge Richard Pollard directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty after a pathologist told the court he could not rule out the possibility death was caused by an accident.
Given the Judge’s direction, I think it is a little premature to assess whether or not this marks any sort of change in the judiciary’s institutional anti-self-defence culture. Probably not. But at least this man is not languishing in prison for defending his property and that is good news.
Should people be allowed to own their own cruise missiles? It’s a favourite question among libertarians discussing gun control, and always good for a chuckle. But now we are going to have to grapple with this issue for real.
Says Bruce Simpson, 49:
Some time ago I wrote an article in which I suggested that it would not be difficult for terrorists to build their own relatively sophisticated cruise missiles using off-the-shelf components and materials.
Not surprisingly, that piece has produced a significant amount of feedback from the tens of thousands of people who have read it so far.
→ Continue reading: So how do we feel about cruise missile control?
Hint: it is not about health and safety…
at least not your health and safety
Robert Theron Brockman II observers how not to liberate a country from tyranny and chaos
It seems that the United States government has decided to disarm the Iraqi populace as part of its newly found desire to restore order.
This smells like the sort of thing that could lead to disaster, for all the usual reasons – only outlaws will have guns and whatnot. And if any population needs to be armed as a check on a potentially tyrannical government, it is the population of Iraq.
It almost seems like a clerical error – surely the guys who were the driving force behind the invasion over at Central Command aren’t gun control nuts, are they?
This seems like a good basis for a lively discussion here at Samizdata.
Robert Theron Brockman II
As a rebuttal to all those bloggers who think that the BBC has a left-wing bias, I refer you to this hysterical nonsense:
Gun crime is growing in the UK “like a cancer”, police chiefs were warned on Tuesday.
The Association of Chief Police Officers’ annual conference was told by the organisation’s firearms spokesman: “It’s coming your way, believe me.”
How can they possibly expect any halfway sensible person to believe rubbish like this? Don’t they realise that our government has enacted the most draconian and prohibitive anti-gun laws in the developed world? No, scrub that, the entire cosmos. So this cannot possibly be happening. It is nothing but a tissue of bald-faced lies. In fact, it’s probably a fabrication by some bunch of swivel-eyed, right-wing, warmongering lunatics intent on trying to give the completely false impression that our noble and progressive anti-self-defence laws are not working.
Do not click on the link. Do not read the article. I do not want our readers minds to be poisoned by this filthy propoganda. Go away. Move onto the next posting. Find another blog. Now!
Tony Martin will not be released from jail. He will remain inside for the crime of defending his property for the full five year period of his sentance (he was initially sentanced to life).
The people who make up the parole board which has just decided that he poses an unacceptable threat to people who may in the future break into his home are wonderful examples of what Sean Gabb describes as The Enemy Class.
I strongly suspect their treatment of Tony Martin, found guilty of shooting dead a serial burglar in August 1999, has more to do with the fact he refuses to apologise or acknowledge any wrong doing in his act of defending his property from predators. That a group of parole board members whose salaries are paid by the state predating taxpayers should think that way is perhaps not such a surprise.
As I said before, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. As the political process in Britain has decayed to the point that there appears to be no political cost to the established power elite for the de facto criminalisation of self-defence (never mind that the state can gun you down in the street with scarcely a murmur), and de jure criminalisation of defending your own property, be it from the state or criminals (and the difference between them narrows daily), I wonder if people may simply start going out of their way to avoid involving the state in the aftermath of any act of self-defence.
As people seem to be unclear who to blame for the state deciding it is easier to prosecute law abiding homeowners than to go after housebreakers, and thus most seem unclear who are the correct people in need of having bricks thrown through their windows given that voting seems to make no difference, I expect sales of shovels, bin-bags, deep freezers, hacksaws and baseball bats to start increasing in high crime areas. There may even be a business opportunity for specialised discreet garbage disposal companies to assist this possible future trend.
The core of that problem is rooted in the contempt for private property found amongst the statists who make up the majority of the political class in Britain. Never forget that defending yourself is the ultimate expression of self-ownership and that is something the British state cannot tolerate, particularly the overt socialist parts: these people support ‘democratic’, which is to say political, control of the means of production and that includes your body. Just ask Tony Martin… the state is not your friend.
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
– Thomas Paine, Common Sense,1776
For a measure of the institutional senile dementia that grips the British state, you need look no further than here:
Government lawyers trying to keep the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin behind bars will tell a High Court judge tomorrow that burglars are members of the public who must be protected from violent householders.
The case could help hundreds of criminals bring claims for damages for injury suffered while committing offences.
In legal papers seen by The Independent, Home Office lawyers dispute Mr Martin’s contention that he poses no risk to the public because he only represents a threat to burglars and other criminals who trespass on his property.
They say: “The suggestion … that the Parole Board was not required to assess the risk posed by Mr Martin to future burglars or intruders (on the grounds that they do not form part of the public at large) is remarkable.”
“It cannot possibly be suggested that members of the public cease to be so whilst committing criminal offences, and whilst society naturally condemns, and punishes such persons judicially, it can not possibly condone their (unlawful) murder or injury.”
Whilst it should be clear from this that the lunatics have indeed taken over the asylum, the pathology at work here should be clear. Private property, far from being the bedrock upon which western liberal civilization is based, is instead seen as having no genuine value at all to those who see ‘The State’ as the axis around which all revolves and nothing whatsoever that is distinctly separate called ‘civil society’. Thus private property is seen as a distasteful aberration that does not really make any sense, at best ‘property which the state does not yet own’. Therefore to use force to defend that which has no real value is clearly unacceptable.
As the people who think that way have made sure they have a near monopoly on the means of violence and coercion, that does not bode well for… well, anyone who is not happy to just be an drone-like adjunct of the state.
And she is in need of your assistance. Psychotic ex-boyfriend. Restraining order about to expire. Needs to move. Pronto. Go here to help out.
Blogatrix in need of assistance… its a Blog-eat-Blog world out there.
In what I am sure will be a crashing disappointment to lots of people who go around calling themselves ‘human rights campaigners’, the British legal system has opted not to further persecute a victim:
A burglar has failed in his attempt to win damages from the jailed farmer, Tony Martin, who shot him.
Malcolm Starr, who has led the campaign for Martin’s freedom, said Martin’s lawyers had contacted him to say that a planned legal action by burglar Brendon Fearon had failed.
I cannot really bring myself to call this justice because if there was even a smidgeon of justice then Tony Martin would not have been incarcerated in the first place.
“Tony has probably had more letters about this issue of him being sued for damages than he did after the original shooting incident. He does want the law changed to stop this happening again.”
It is not just the law that needs changing.
People in Baghdad have been protesting to US troops regarding the breakdown of law and order in that city and elsewhere in Iraq. The solution is simple… when the protesters turn up, lead them to one of the large piles of abandoned small arms dotting Iraq, issue each one of them with a Kalashnikov, 30 rounds of ammunition and a fluorescent yellow armband with the letters INW (Iraqi Neighbourhood Watch) in Latin and Arabic letters, and then tell them “Scram… this is your city so take care of the problem yourself and only call us if things get really out of hand”.
At a stroke the Iraqis are given the means to stop the looters, they are empowered to take their post-Ba’athist future into their own hands and they are shown that the coalition is serious about Iraqis running Iraq.
Will this mean some weapons get into the hands of the wacko bad guys? Sure, but those guys are already armed. However the upside is that for every one of them, there will be many dozens of normal armed Iraqi people who just want to live a normal life and who then will be able to say “never will be suffer this nightmare again”… and say it with a Kalashnikov in their hands. Ba’athist or Islamist thugs swaggering around your neighbourhood? Now that the Iraqis have had a taste of freedom, let them cap those bastards.
All political power does indeed grow out of the barrel of a gun… so lets make sure everyone has one.
A Civitas report on crime, ominously called The Failure of Britain’s Police, argues that forces of law and order have lost control. Police in Britain are so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of crime that even recent extra recruits are making no difference according to the report published today.
The comparison with New York figures is startling. In 1991 there were 22,000 robberies in London. In 2002 there were 44,600, an increase of 105 per cent. In 1991 there were 99,000 robberies in New York City. In 2002 there were 27,000, a decrease of 73 per cent. To draw equal with New York’s achievement, London would thus have to gain no fewer than 178 percentage points in its fight against street crime.
The report concludes that to halt the rising levels of street crime, substantial increases in numbers of policemen, as seen in New York, are necessary. Zero tolence policing is called for to set clear boundaries and re-take the public places from anti-social elements.
However, that has not been the Home office’s priority. Their approach is predictable:
In the face of staggering volumes of crime, the police and the Home Office are reduced to ‘bringing crime under control’ by legalising or decriminalising many offences on the grounds that they aren’t so bad after all.
Oh, and here is the government’s story about crime figures. Crime is 9 per cent down and believe this, if you can:
These figures show Government measures to reduce crime are working. Crime is continuing a downward trend and the risk of being a victim remains at its lowest level for 20 years.
I know whether I feel safe in London or not. How about this radical solution – allow people defend themselves!
At my last-Friday-of-the-month meetings chez moi, my computer – and especially its round-the-clock Internet connection – tends to degenerate into a tragedy of the commons illustration.
And thus spake Antoine at Brian’s Friday…
…and his adoring audience rejoiced
But sometimes I come across vaguely good stuff this way. This, which found itself on my screen as things began to wind down last night, is quite good. It is a Richard Littlejohn Sunpage, and sports as its main headline the following: “You’re Salford Shi’ite and you know you are.” That’s about the British Muslim captured in Iraq, fighting against Britain.
That headline is the world crisis in one phrase. Daft Muslims do daft things, and by the time the abuse has settled, all the other Muslims have been insulted.
Next to that story was another, in a grey box on the right hand side. That looks like a Samizdata story I said. Yes it does, said someone else closer even than I to the heart of things Samizdatarian. So here it all is. It doesn’t deserve to be swallowed up in the pay-per-view maw of the Murdoch archives.
If he were a few years younger, Patrick Hamilton would be on the front line in Iraq today.
A former paratrooper, he is a Falklands veteran and served seven tours of duty in Northern Ireland.
He spent 25 years in the Army ready and willing to lay down his life for freedom and justice.
Today, he must be wondering why he bothered. When Mr Hamilton, 52, saw his 16-year-old daughter Catherine being menaced by a gang of hooligans, he rushed to her defence.
She was being threatened by a gang of teenage boys and girls who followed her back from her part time job at McDonald’s, in North Shields, Tyne and Wear.
Mr Hamilton gave chase, grabbed hold of one of the gang and tried to make a citizen’s arrest.
When police arrived, he called out: “I’ve got one, I’ve got one.”
But the police weren’t interested in nicking the troublemaker or going after the gang.
Instead, they arrested Mr Hamilton, handcuffed him and drove him away in a police car. He was held at the local police station for an hour before being released without charge.
Mr Hamilton, who now works as a college lecturer teaching youngsters who want to join the police or armed forces, was livid.
And rightly so. He said: “I can’t believe the police treated me and my family like this. It’s disgusting. I can’t believe the police protected these scum.”
I can.
The police have gone from being on the side of the law-abiding, through being neutral, to actively siding with vermin.
Mr Hamilton’s arrest is par for the course.
The Old Bill can’t be bothered to go after thugs, either because they’re frightened of getting a kicking, or because they’re scared of the Left-wing, legally-aided lawyers who infest our so-called justice system.
So they take the easy option and nick the good guys.
Tens of thousands of British servicemen and women are risking their lives in Iraq because they believe in freedom and justice.
But, on the home front, exactly what kind of “justice” can they expect?
It could be a long war.
I’ve just been watching the weekly highlights of the Johnny Vaughan TV show which is on BBC Nobody-watches-that 3. One of his guests was complaining about how depressing the Oscars show was. Said Vaughan:
“I had to switch over and watch some war coverage just to cheer myself up.”
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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