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.
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News of large scale arrests of criminals in Baghdad carried out by Iraqi police are welcome, provided there is due process and it is not simply a trawling operation. It does however demonstrate the differing priorities of an army of occupation versus a police force.
The International Herald Tribune article taken from the New York Times also mentions a drop in ‘spectacular’ terrorist attacks over the past three weeks. Those of us who consider that terrorist groups usually prosper in a climate of lawlessness will ponder the Iraqi situation and reflect on Northern Ireland.
There is little doubt that massive police activity will uncover some terrorist networks and disrupt potential attacks: for example raiding the home of a criminal can turn up equipment intended for terrorist actions.
In Northern Ireland all sorts of crimes, from welfare benefit fraud, fraudulent elections, fire insurance scams, drug dealing, protection rackets, unlicensed gambling and alcohol premises, contract killings and woundings, are tolerated on the grounds that the ‘peace process’ must be kept going.
For the first time in months, I get the sense that Iraq may be going in the right direction. I wish this were the case of Londonderry and Belfast. I have felt for a long time that the violence in Northern Ireland should be considered a law-enforcement problem, separate from politics.
In Saudi Arabia the government’s response to attacks on foreign workers is to allow them to carry firearms. Any chance of that happening in London? I can get a foreign passport if necessary.
However, foreign contractors for the Saudi government will not be allowed to carry weapons because they are under the protection of the State. Good luck to them.
On balance, I think I would swap the British Home Secretary for his Saudi counterpart: less fascism, less victim disarmament, more effective law enforcement, and slightly less political correctness.
As our long time readers know, I spent much of the 1980’s as an academic research scientist at Carnegie-Mellon University. Because of this, I am a member of the academic pension fund organizations called TIAA and CREF. As with any such organization, they have annual elections, proxies and oft-times one or more ‘Participant Proposals’ up for vote. Academia being, well, academia… such proposals are most often of the form “divest of stock in companies doing business with X” or “any business that makes Y”, where X and Y belong to the set of Politically Correct causes.
So imagine my surprise when I found the following:
Resolved: No Funds shall be invested by CREF in any entity brought to its attention that publically advocates firearm control legislation or repeal of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
I voted for it, just for badness. I actually quite agree with the Board of Trustee’s statement that investments should be made on a purely financial basis.
The measure will not pass… but it is the thought that counts.
Despite some of the strictest anti-gun laws anywhere in the world and despite the abject failure of those laws to make this country a safer or better place in which to live, the anti-gun hysteria shows no signs of abating:
The Government will attempt to tackle Britain’s gun culture with plans to be unveiled this week for an overhaul of outdated firearms laws.
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will publish a consultation document which is expected to lead to tougher restrictions on the sale and manufacture of replica firearms as well as new age limits on gun ownership, especially for airguns, starter pistols and shotguns.
The consultation follows lobbying by the police and anti-gun campaigners who say Britain’s gun laws are confused, out of date and in desperate need of reform.
Of particular concern are replica firearms which are popular with gun collectors and can be bought legally but are being converted by criminals into lethal weapons to fire live ammunition.
By ‘reform’ they mean ever-greater restrictions leading inexorably to prohibition. In due course, toy guns, water pistols, potato guns and anyone with the surname ‘Gunn’ will be added to this list.
The whole subject of firearms has gone way beyond any arguments about citizen’s rights to self-defence or law and order or communal safety. Guns are now just bad ju-ju; the modern equivalent of the ‘evil-eye’ or some other medieval, peasant superstition the mere sight or mention of which is sufficient to induce an impulsive and irrational terror.
Bad ideas can be challenged with good ideas but superstitions are far more difficult to combat. For that, we need a whole new ‘Age of Reason’.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then surely accreditation must run it a very close second. There may well be pundits and scribblers who do not experience the frisson of pride when their work is quoted in other media but, if so, then I have never met them.
Speaking for myself, I simply love it when other people link to my articles or quote from them. Nor is my satisfaction diminished by even the smallest degree who link to my articles as evidence that I am mad, bad and dangerous to know. It’s the recognition, stupid. Even if my attributors despise every single sentiment I ever express, at least they consider me significant enough to be worth drawing to the attention of others.
However, some people take quite the contrary view. In this case, a certain Mr. Greg Truscott of the South London Press.
It seems that Mr.Truscott has been filing reports about the nasty violent crimes which occur with disturbing regularity in and around South London and which are published on-line at the South London Press website (above). → Continue reading: “Quote me and I’ll sue”
I used to be a singer in a rock and roll band.
Well, okay, maybe not, but I was a lead guitarist in a punk rock band. I even had my Fender copy tuned so I could play the major rock chords with a single sliding finger, just like those anarcho-punk legends, Crass.
If only our band had possessed some luck, a good manager, a driving licence between us, some money, a van, and a small pet monkey named Brian, we might have made it big. Especially if the lead guitarist had actually possessed any talent.
But, alas, this punk dream faded, as it did for a million others, and my brush with anarchy submerged itself for another twenty years. However, much to my surprise it resurfaced again last year, a little rusty but largely unscathed, when it experienced a depth charge blast from Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s mental mind bomb, Democracy: The God That Failed.
There are few in the world who dare promote the dissolution of all forms of government, especially in the hostile spitting face of a billion state-supporting rent seekers. And of those few brave men, only a tiny handful, mostly Austro-libertarians, possess the requisite economic theory, moral strength, and political knowledge to really frighten all of those state-loving horses. Foremost amongst them is Professor Hoppe, a man in the proper Austrian tradition of being a German speaker by birth, though also a man at odds with many inside proper libertarian circles, as opposed to those Christmas-voting leftist libertarian turkeys who believe the state is the ultimate guarantor of individual rights. Which makes about as much sense as taxman with genuine friends. → Continue reading: Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Defying Leviathan
For those who missed it, this morning, there was a fascinating article in the Daily Telegraph about the increasing failure of the British state to perform its most basic activity, that of providing personal security to its tax-paying citizens. It seems more and more people are simply withdrawing any hope they may have once held in the British police and are taking their own personal security matters directly into their own hands, with impressive crime reduction results to boot, through the creation and adoption of private police forces.
It seems the Individualist Revolution really is creeping up on us, unawares, as street by street, in Britain, the enfeebled state withers away and people take an ever-increasing amount of private control over their own private lives.
This is not what the state intended. But it is what is happening. Long may this withering process continue.
Like many people, I recently thoroughly enjoyed that rather silly movie romp, Pirates of the Caribbean, full of English toffs in redcoats, ghostly pirates with bad teeth, not to mention luscious wenches relying on the dubious chivalry and charm of Johnny Depp. However, lest we think piracy belongs to the era of men in wigs with parrots on their shoulders, I have news to report.
Seaborne piracy is rising fast in many parts of the world. It is particularly virulent in parts of Southeast Asia, for example in and around the coastlands of the vast stretch of islands making up Indonesia. Today’s Caribbean and the Indian Ocean are also dangerous. A while back, while I was spending a wonderful day ogling at unattainably expensive sailing yachts at the London International Boatshow, I grabbed hold of a book warning amateur sailors about the perils of being held to ransom by pirates in oceans all over the world. At the very least, you would be nuts to embark on a long passage without carrying at least two workeable firearms.
But as the report I link to makes clear, there is increasingly an ideological slant to modern piracy. In Indonesia, it appears that Islamic militants, like terrorists the world over, are mixing their religious fervour with the juicy temptations of crime.
I am frankly surprised that there has not been more written on how easy it would be for a terrorist group to get hold of even a small sized motor boat, fill it chockfull of explosives, sail it up the Thames, the Rhine or any other major river you can think of, and blow it up. As an aside, I continue to be amazed at how relatively easy it is to sail into a marina without necessarily having to immediately declare any ID. On a recent trip to France by yacht I never once was required to show so much as a passport.
If you haven’t dropped in on Clayton Cramer lately, do so. He has links to more self defense stories per day than I have typically seen in a full year.
Over at One Hand Clapping you can read about a new mobile phone technology that will simply knock you dead.
Iraqis are not just depending on government to protect their new liberty. According to this report from the Coalition Provisional Authority, they are armed and dangerous… to terrorists:
Elsewhere in Baghdad, individuals inside a white Opel fired small arms at ICDC personnel at the Al-Amil gas station. The Civil Defense Corps soldiers returned fire, and Iraqi customers waiting for fuel also fired at the Opel. The assailants broke contact, and a search of the area met with negative results.
Is it just me or does this paragraph sound like something out of an L Neil Smith novel?
Tony Martin was clearly a trailblazer:
A proposal to allow homeowners to use “any means” to defend their homes, has topped a BBC poll on the bill people would most like to see become law.
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme asked listeners to vote on suggested Private Members’ Bills, with the first choice taking 37% of the votes.
Norfolk farmer Tony Martin, whose fatal shooting of a burglar in 1999 sparked a national debate, welcomed the result.
As well he might. For him this is a vindication. For others, though, this is an embarrassment, not least of all for the Conservative MP who was supposed to be Tony Martin’s champion:
Tony Martin’s MP, Conservative Henry Bellingham said the idea went too far by suggesting homeowners should use “any means” to protect their property.
For politicians this potato is just too hot to touch. The mere mention of rights to self-defence is enough to have them scampering away whelping like whipped curs. Nor do I expect that this synthetic exercise is going to make so much as a dent in the established view that defending oneself from barbarity is morally more reprehensible than the barbarity itself:
More than 26,000 votes were registered by listeners taking part in the poll and the winning bill will now be presented to the House of Commons by Stephen Pound MP.
He will need to persuade the 20 MPs who have been chosen to put forward Private Members Bills to take up the poll winner’s suggestion.
He will have more chance trying to persuade Osama Bin Laden to book his daughters in for pole-dancing lessons. Me being cynical? No, not at all. Just hear what the same Stephen Pound has to say about the whole thing in the Guardian:
Stephen Pound, Labour MP for Ealing North, who was one of the programme’s judges, expressed surprise at the high vote for such a controversial plan among listeners to such a programme.
“My enthusiasm for direct democracy is slightly dampened,” the MP told Today. “This is a difficult result. I can’t remember who it was who said ‘The people have spoken – the bastards’.”
Hmm, colour me skeptical but I have a hunch that his heart is not really going to be behind this campaign. These people are always agitating for ‘more democracy’ until it jumps up and slaps them in the face. Democracy is only supposed to be for the compliant: no ‘bastards’ allowed.
Mr Pound, however, is one of the more sanguine respondents. Elsewhere there is enough sqwauking and clucking to drown out a poultry market. The Guardian is already denouncing the result as a fix:
The BBC was warned yesterday that it may have fallen victim to a mass lobbying campaign after a controversial plan for a “Tony Martin” law topped a Today programme poll yesterday.
Suspicions were raised when thousands of listeners voted for the mock parliamentary bill which would allow homeowners to use “any means” to defend their homes from intruders. Such a law would have protected Mr Martin, who was jailed for the manslaughter of a teenage burglar, Fred Barras, in 1999.
And from the BBC article, linked above, a dire warning of what such mad and irresponsible ideas would lead to:
But leading criminal barrister John Cooper warned that the idea was dangerously flawed.
He said: “The law as it stands at the moment, despite its critics, is functioning. If you are in your house and you are attacked by someone or threatened by someone, you can use proportionate force.
“We do not live in the wild west. This legislation that is proposed effectively may well turn us into that.”
Thus proving that it is possible to be wrong on more than one level. For a start the ‘wild west’ was nowhere near as wild as legend would have it. But I’m quibbling here because I sort of know what he is driving at. He thinks RKBA and a right to self-defence would result in a desolate landscape riven with feuds, lynchings and random acts of carnage. He is still wrong though because that is exactly the type of scenario we are heading for now. The virtually unprotected citizen is easy meat for predatory.
Having assumed a monopoly of the crime-control business, the British state has found it cannot actually do that job and, increasingly, is disinclined to even try. The only thing they can maintain is the pretence by landing like a ton of bricks on any citizen who dares to be more than a docile farm-animal.
The result of the BBC poll gives lie to the whole facade. People are losing faith in the ability (and even willingness) of the state to come to their aid in time of crisis. As the police spend more of their time collecting taxes and scoring brownie points with their political masters, this disquiet will only grow.
[This article has been cross-posted to White Rose.]
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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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