It Didn’t Take Them Long to Hit the Panic Button

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22478310
10 May 2013 Last updated at 10:18

Note: Do these people really and truly think that an order, even backed by threats of force, can uninvent what is already in the public domain? Does anyone remember the similar fuss, in the early 1990s, over PGP encryption? An American friend of mine carried the software to London on a floppy disk in his breast pocket. Getting these designs here will take even less effort. SL

US government orders removal of Defcad 3D-gun designs

 

The BBC’s Rebecca Morelle saw the 3D-printed gun’s first test in Austin, Texas

The US government has demanded designs for a 3D-printed gun be taken offline.

A Farewell to Victim Disarmament?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22421185

Working gun made with 3D printer

By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC World Service, Texas

(The Libertarian Alliance’s officers have inserted a caveat at the end of the post.)

The BBC’s Rebecca Morelle saw the 3D-printed gun’s first test in Austin, Texas

My Little Pony

by L. Neil Smith
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle467-20080511-02.html

Note: I had a long Skype conversation last night with Neil. Right at the end, he pulled out a couple of his favourite guns. Such lovely objects they were – so cruel, perhaps, to show them to a man who could get five years minimum for possession of the same. But he is working on a plan to change that state of affairs. SIG

Was Hitler Really Anti-Gun Control?

by Anthony Gregory
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thelibertarianstandard/~3/5wMyEqMkIgA/

Was Hitler Really Anti-Gun Control?

A Salon.com article by Alex Seitz-Wald called “The Hitler Gun Control Lie” is making the rounds, purporting to challenge a myth Second Amendment enthusiasts spread that blames the Holocaust on Hitler’s policies of civilian disarmament. The thrust of the argument is that Hitler’s 1938 firearms law indeed ratcheted back restrictions from the Weimar era. But here is the most telling paragraph:

Fear, Violence and the Absurd

by Trevor Hultner
http://c4ss.org/content/16185

Note: I don’t suggest he should be deported, because it’s none of my business what people do in their own country – and because it would mean his coming back to England, and I’d rather have Abu Hamza back here than him. However, why is anyone in America paying attention to Piers Morgan? He’s a resident alien.

In a normal country, such people should have the right to life and property. Of course, they should have the legal right to speak as they please. But it strikes me as bad manners if they use this right to demand changes in the law. They don’t perfectly understand the ways of the country in which they find themselves. They’ve had no ancestral part in the formation of the country. Neither they nor their children have any obligation to share in the consequences of what they recommend.

I find Janet Daley irritating for the same reason as Americans do Mr Morgan. Some years ago, when she was banging on about the need to scrap the double jeopardy rule, so the alleged killers of Stephen Lawrence could be locked away, I suggested she should clear off home to America. She hasn’t spoken to me since.

I’ll make a partial exception from this rule for the Irish, and a larger one for people from the white dominions – ie, Germaine Greer, Peter Tatchell and so forth. Then there are variable exceptions for foreign immigrants – variable according to their degree of identification with the country. Outright foreigners should have a right to speak, but none to be heard and taken seriously. SIG

Gun Control as Castration

by Michael Enoch
http://www.alternativeright.com/main/the-magazine/gun-control-as-castration/

Note: Interesting view on victim disarmament from outside the libertarian movement. SIG

Is there really any rational basis for the idea of gun control? Or is it just a desperate grasping for some kind of symbolic control after an outbreak of mass violence? Or is it something even deeper? On its face the idea of gun control is ridiculous. Conservatives, libertarians and gun enthusiasts have been making the same basic points for years whenever the issue comes up in response to whatever the latest mass shooting incident happens to be. The fact that there will be such incidents is a social inevitability at this point.

Some Observations on the Gun Control Debate

by Kevin Carson
http://c4ss.org/content/15355

Some Observations on the Gun Control Debate

As tends to happen after each such horrific occurrence, the school shooting in Connecticut was the occasion for reviving the debate over gun control in the United States.

Given the quality of this debate, I’m not really interested in engaging either the smug liberal challenges of “well, are you people finally ready to come to your senses” or the right-wing hysteria of “The Kenyan Marxist Muslim is coming to take our guns away!” I’ll just say for the record I’m an anarchist, and I don’t care much for the idea of the same state responsible for warrantless wiretapping and the NDAA regulating the public’s access to weaponry for self-defense. And I don’t want a new War on Guns carried out by the same lawless paramilitary thugs in kevlar who’re already fighting the wars on drugs and terrorism. At the same time, I can’t say I’m too crazy about the loudest anti-gun control voices on the right.

POST APOCALYPSE RECOVERY PROJECT

POST APOCALYPSE RECOVERY PROJECT
James Roger Brown
Sociologist, Intelligence Collection and Analysis Methodologist
Director
P.O. Box 101
Worthington, KY 41183-0101
thesociologist
www.thesociologycenter.com
Last updated 09/22/2011

Check back frequently, I will be adding to and improving this page.

Suggestions for inclusion may be submitted to the above e-mail address. One high priority document has not been located. Between the end of WW II and 1950 Naval Intelligence created a classified archaeology report about prior civilizations on the North American Continent. Talk to your family members who served during WW II and Korea to determine the title and author of the document. I suspect it contains maps that we need.

Introduction

Activating this Post Apocalypse Recovery Project begins an effort which there is no documented evidence has ever been done before in all of human history. The purpose is to manage information, knowledge and resources to minimize the intentional disruption of social stability caused by the engineered collapse of civilization and minimize the recovery time to develop new stable social processes among the survivors. There will be survivors.

Killing no murder – the right of the individual to defend their home

by Robert Henderson
http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/killing-no-murder-the-right-of-the-individual-to-defend-their-home/

Note: This was written after the Tony Martin case. However, it applies just as well to other cases. SIG

Killing no murder
By Robert Henderson

Tony Martin’s conviction for murder after he killed the burglar Fred Barras, raises these important issues: the right of self-defence; the protection of property, the general use of police resources; the policing of Martin’s locality, the fairness of Martin’s trial and, above all, the relationship between the individual and the state.

The right to self-defence

Any attempt at definition short of giving a person an absolute right to defend themselves how they will is doomed to failure. Once a definition includes general qualifications such as “reasonable force”, it becomes unworkable, because the qualifications are hideously imprecise. The practical result is confusion and uncertainty and anyone who defends themselves is at risk of prosecution. The problem is exemplified in comments by Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative home affairs spokesman who recently said “People whose person or property is attacked should be able to defend themselves without fear of penalty from the law” (Daily Telegraph 24/4/2000), but then qualified this by saying that prosecutions could still take place in extreme circumstances. Once that qualification is made, the uncertainty returns.

The War on Guns

by Frank Borzellieri
http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/district-of-corruption/the-war-on-guns/

The capacity on the part of liberals to devise outlandish policies intended to combat crime is rivaled in stupidity only by their propensity to avoid true solutions. Gun control has always been the pet panacea of those who possess neither the desire nor the backbone to confront the true and obvious cause of gun violence: criminals and a lenient justice system. Rather than confront this bane head on, gun controllers have striven to crack down on their favorite whipping boys, the guns themselves.

Anyone Fancy Answering These Questions about Guns?

by Sean Gabb

I am just back from Slovakia, and have a mountain of writing and other work to climb. Debating the effects of firearm ownership is very low on my agenda.

——————————–

Dear Sean

I read this on the Libertarian Alliance website:

“For us, freedom of association is about the right to deal (or not) with any other consenting adult,  for any non-aggressive purpose, and without need for explanation.”

Can’t argue that one, really (but note my italics). No argument either with your stance on drugs. But how do you square the ‘non-aggression’ clause with…

“We believe in the right to carry and use guns for self-defence…”

Who decides whether or not an act is performed for the purposes of self-defence? Who, other than the despised State and its law enforcement officers, could be in any position to ensure a proper investigation into the facts and that justice is done, in the potentially countless incidents that’d surely arise if your wish-list were to become a legally-enshrined societal code (itself an oxymoron in this context, since you don’t seem to believe in ‘laws’)?

On any Friday night you’ll find any number of lairy, Stella-fuelled twats aching not just for the chance legally to swagger into their local with ‘nines’ on their belts, but to use the things, and with an impunity that our present structure denies them. What then? Gun law? Watch your backs, and the devil take the hindmost? Literally kill or be killed? Presumably all the perps need do is bleat “self-defence, guv, he had it coming” and everything’s okay.

What a future! Interested in your case for the defence. Preferably one grounded in sense, reason and rationality and that doesn’t involve a lot of reheated, pseudo-profound Ayn Rand bilge.

Richard Butterworth
Economy with Words®

Strategic Offence and Insecurity

Christopher Houseman

So, the great threats du jour are cyber-terrorism and international terrorism in the style of al-Qaida. Hmm… I can see why we’ll need a couple of new aircraft carriers to fend off those evil beasties, especially if HMG can’t afford to put any planes aboard them. Still, at least nobody’s talking about renting the (not yet completed) aircraft under a PFI scheme, along with the refueling tankers.

Meanwhile, in the name of “not giving in to the people who’ve been angered into action by our previous intrusions into their lives terrorists”, HMG has either got to carry on with business as usual (which means buying enough kit and posting enough troops in the right places abroad to placate the US government) or at least reassure everyone that’s what it intends to do as soon as it can print enough new money convince the markets it’s solvent again.

Personally, I doubt a mere 8pc cut in the MOD budget (while everyone else takes a hit of up to 25pc) will be enough to woo foreign creditors back in their droves. But at least as Remembrance Day draws near, we can all pause a while to give thanks for this country’s glorious victory over the evil Nazi supporters of “Guns before butter”, and encourage ourselves with the thought that the British people are far too noble and wise to fall for that old lie.

Gun control kills British soldiers in Afghanistan…

Christopher Houseman

according to this BBC article. So how will it keep British civilians safe at home?

Protect the Police – abolish gun control

Christopher Houseman

It’s only 5 days since I asked in a post “Are you sure you want to trust the Police to save you?”. The question has a special, unwelcome resonance for my wife and I. We used to live first in Shiremoor and then in Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear – only a short drive from the recent shootings thought to have been perpetrated by Raoul Moat. In fact, I’m pretty sure we often drove past the chip shop in Seaton Delaval which was robbed on Monday. And all this only a little more than a month after Derrick Bird shot 12 people dead and wounded 11 more in and around Whitehaven in Cumbria.

Perhaps most revealing in current news coverage is the complete lack of any appetite for further gun control laws, and the apparently deliberate downplaying of the death of Chris Brown, Samantha Stobbart’s boyfriend. No doubt this is largely because of the ongoing efforts to persuade Mr. Moat to give himself up peaceably, in which context it would make little sense to play up the one death to date in this sorry tale. But I can’t help noticing something else, too. Like Derrick Bird, both Mr. Moat and the late Mr. Brown are a great advertisement for the unwisdom of gun control.

On the one hand, can we doubt any longer that even the most rigorous psychological profiling can’t ensure that lawfully registered gun owners will never pose a threat to the general public? On the other, what good are stringent gun control laws which can’t be consistently enforced? Raoul Moat, a violent felon known to have possessed guns and other weapons in the past, seems to have obtained both an illegal firearm and ammunition within 48 hours of being released from prison.

It’s time to acknowledge that the so-called “war on guns” has been lost. We might also reflect on how much heartache, blood, time and money might have been saved if the late Mr. Chris Brown had been allowed to take a gun to a gunfight instead of an iron bar. True, one could argue with hindsight that he should have taken cover and then dialled 999, but such behaviour might be exceptional in a boyfriend of just one week who was also reportedly a martial arts instructor.

But there is one more tragic twist in the tale: on the same day the withdrawal of British troops from Sangin province in favour of their American counterparts was announced, the BBC mentioned the possibility of bringing a number of armoured cars over from Northern Ireland for deployment in the hunt for Raoul Moat. Never mind looking after us or the Afghans; it would appear the agents of the British state can barely protect themselves. To paraphrase Phil Zimmerman, the creator of the PGP encryption program, “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”.

Perhaps it’s time to ask the Police a question: Are you sure you don’t want the general public to be able to protect themselves – or you?

PS. At time of writing, Northumbria Police seems keen to highlight that its officers, rather than the general public, appear to be the primary focus of Mr. Moat’s anger. Maybe so, but I’m glad I’m not an unarmed civilian trying to remind an armed man and myself of that on a face to face basis.

Surrey Police Authority owns up to confidence trick (almost)…

Christopher Houseman

My copy of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines a confidence trick as “an act of cheating or tricking someone by persuading them to believe something that is not true.”
Soanes, C., & Stevenson, A. (2004). Concise Oxford English dictionary (11th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

So imagine my reaction upon perusing the contents of “Policing Surrey”, a glossy puff-piece shoved through my door this morning as part of Nanny’s ongoing efforts to convince me she’s doing a bang-up job for the money. In a surely unintended moment of honesty, I note from the ten performance targets for 2010/11 listed on page 11 of the booklet that Surrey Police is hoping:

“1) For public confidence in Surrey Police to remain at or above 80%”

But further down the list, I read that Surrey Police is also hoping:

“8) To improve detection rates for serious crimes to 18.6%”

So, let me get this straight. Surrey Police currently spends a £215.8 million annual budget (page 7), almost half of which it admits (on page 11) is extracted from Surrey residents through Council tax.

In return for this largesse, more than 80% of Surrey residents are kept convinced that Surrey Police is doing a fine job. But for this coming year, the force is hoping to raise its detection rates for serious crimes to a point where perpetrators will still have an 81.4% chance of not getting caught.

If this isn’t a multi-million pound public relations confidence trick, what is it?

And by the way, in light of the force’s own assessment of its results, will the next person who tells me the right to bear arms should be left to the public safety experts kindly tell me who the experts really are in this context?

Meanwhile, should a genuinely public-spirited officer or civilian member of Surrey Police happen to read this piece… let’s swap condolences.

Has someone shot the gun control lobby’s Cumbrian fox?

Christopher Houseman

Recent events in Cumbria have led to an entirely predictable concern among UK libertarians that even more restrictions on gun ownership and usage are on the way. But on this occasion, I don’t share their pessimism.

UK domestic gun legislation is already among the tightest in the world (which is a bit ironic for a country that is one of the world’s largest arms exporters). Furthermore, even the most dyed in the wool statists are currently resigned to having their budgets (and therefore their de facto powers, at least) cut in the short to medium term. These facts, combined with the rarity of shooting sprees in the UK by licensed gun owners using their own weapons, make any attempt to administer further restrictions uneconomic.

So, might a total ban be contemplated? I couldn’t help noticing from the outset that key elements of the Whitehaven episode didn’t play out according to the standard gun control script. Jamie Reed, the local MP for Copeland was interviewed by the national media as the story broke on 2nd June. Although a Labour MP, he didn’t go along with one reporter’s efforts to corral him into calling for tighter gun control laws. Clearly, Mr. Reed knows something of the realities of his rural constituents’ daily lives. Quite simply, the prominent role of shotguns in particular in rural pest control means that a shotgun ban is unlikely to be supported.

Since 2nd June, it’s emerged that Derrick Bird had held shotgun and/or firearms licences for 20 years with no prior incidents, so it’s unlikely his actions could have been foreseen by anything short of continuous human and/or audio-visual surveillance (and then only in the very short term). Furthermore, it’s also emerged that local police officers had sight of Derrick Bird and might have been able to prevent his last 9 killings – except that the officers were unarmed, and therefore backed off when he confronted them directly.

This last snippet of news has clearly been released in an effort to deflect criticism away from Cumbrian officers. It may have the effect of relaunching the debate over the routine arming of police officers (that would be the state-thinkful option). This is unlikely to be deemed acceptable, but combined with the recent attack on 2 baby girls in their London home by a fox, it opens up new public debate opportunities for libertarians.

What’s the point of relaxing or scrapping the “reasonable force” restriction on householders’ defence of life and property against intruders if householders aren’t allowed to own and train with the best technical means available for home and self-defence (including pepper sprays, tasers and guns)? No wonder ministers are getting jittery about changing the law. And as urban foxes get more numerous and bold, isn’t it time to stop thinking of home defence purely in terms of repelling human burglars?

But what, you may ask, if the forthcoming debate does result in the police being routinely armed? In that case, civil libertarians of all stripes will unite to get it reversed. A significant number of police officers will meanwhile complain about the potential damage to their public image, and the extra pressures routine carrying of a gun will put on them. And then we will have to wait and see how well the state’s prefabricated “one rotten apple” justification will stand up to the public outcry when an armed police officer finally goes on the rampage with a Heckler and Koch. What, then, will be the justification for using the law of the land to allow only the police and the criminal classes to carry guns in Britain?

Intellectually speaking, at least, I suggest the gun control lobby is only a few steps away from shooting itself in the foot.

Cumberland Shootings: LA Statement

NEWS RELEASE FROM THE LIBERTARIAN ALLIANCE
In Association with the Libertarian International

Release Date: Wednesday 2nd June 2010
Release Time: Immediate

Contact Details:
Dr Sean Gabb, 07956 472 199, sean@libertarian.co.uk

For other contact and link details, see the foot of this message
Release url: http://www.libertarian.co.uk/news/nr081.htm

“CUMBERLAND SHOOTINGS: GUN BANS MEAN MORE GUN CRIME” SAYS FREE MARKET AND CIVIL LIBERTIES POLICY INSTITUTE

The Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties institute, today calls for the relegalisation of civilian gun ownership in the United Kingdom as the only way for ordinary people to protect themselves against gun massacres. [This news release is prompted by the killings of at least five people on the 2nd June 2010 in and around the Cumberland town of Whitehaven.]

Speaking today in London, Dr Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance, comments:

“This outrage will certainly bring calls from the police and other victim disarmament advocacy groups for further gun control. However, bearing in mind that civilian ownership of handguns was outlawed in the two Firearms Acts of 1997, we fail to see, unless the murder weapon was a shotgun, what there is left to be outlawed.

“The Libertarian Alliance notes that these shootings would have been extremely difficult in a country where the people were allowed to arm themselves. We understand that the killer, Derrick Bird, was able to drive in perfect safety around Whitehaven, shooting people at random. None of his victims was in any position to return fire. Only when armed police could eventually be brought in did he feel it necessary to run away.

“In the United States, at least one campus shooting was brought to a premature end by armed civilians. The same is true in Israel, where many members of the public go about armed. Only in a country like England, where the people have been systematically disarmed, can a killer go about like a fox among chickens.

“The Libertarian Alliance believes that all the Firearms Acts from 1920 onwards should be repealed. The largely ineffective laws of 1870 and 1902 should also be repealed. It should once again be possible for adults to walk into a gun shop and, without showing any permit or proof of identity, buy as many guns and as much ammunition as they can afford. They should also be able to use lethal force, at home and in public, for the defence of life, liberty and property.

“Only then will ordinary people be safe from evil men like Derrick Bird.”

END OF COPY

Note(s) to Editors

Dr Sean Gabb is the Director of the Libertarian Alliance. His book, Cultural Revolution, Culture War: How Conservatives Lost England, and How to Get It Back, may be downloaded for free from http://tinyurl.com/34e2o3. It may also be bought. His other books are available from Hampden Press at http://www.hampdenpress.co.uk.He can be contacted for further comment on 07956 472 199 or by email at sean@libertarian.co.uk

Extended Contact Details:

The Libertarian Alliance is Britain’s most radical free market and civil liberties policy institute. It has published over 700 articles, pamphlets and books in support of freedom and against statism in all its forms. These are freely available at http://www.libertarian.co.uk

Our postal address is

The Libertarian Alliance
Suite 35
2 Lansdowne Row
Mayfair
London
W1J 6HL
Tel: 07956 472 199

Associated Organisations

The Libertarian International – http://www.libertarian.to – is a sister organisation to the Libertarian Alliance. Its mission is to coordinate various initiatives in the defence of individual liberty throughout the world.

Sean Gabb’s personal website – http://www.seangabb.co.uk – contains about a million words of writings on themes interesting to libertarians and conservatives.

Hampden Press – http://www.hampdenpress.co.uk.- the publishing house of the Libertarian Alliance.

Liberalia – http://www.liberalia.com – maintained by by LA Executive member Christian Michel, Liberalia publishes in-depth papers in French and English on libertarianism and free enterprise. It is a prime source of documentation on these issues for students and scholars.

Citizen Safety Directive no:326

Fred Bloggs.

It’s times like this that makes me sure that Mr. Orwell got his dates a bit wrong.
I’ve now heard that the Police are using UAV’s and the government is planning on getting even bigger ones. This means that, in addition to all the CCTV cameras dotted liberally (no pun intended) around the landscape, you can also be watched from 50,000 feet.

All this goes on without you knowing however, so you will be able to expect parking, speeding, and, knowing this lot, littering fines dealt out like a bolt of lightening from the gods above. Shortly after this, we, knowing our luck and their determination, will be seeing these things being armed with missiles and smart bombs. Indeed, health and safety will take a sinister turn, for you will be driving along without your seatbelt on, by accident or on purpose, then BOOM! a streak of fire will rain down upon you and end your criminal ways, for you have to remember:
“Driving without your seatbelt on is dangerous.”

Sunday afternoon thoughts on male aggression, and socialism

David Davis

WE watched, as is usual when we have the time, the Belgian Formula 1 GP, which was slightly less unexciting than normal owing to a good pile-up on the first lap. Perhaps we subliminally enjoyed the implied violence? I do not know….

…There is something wrong with today’s car-racing tracks, which I will deal with in time. But in short, they are (1) too short, (2) have got too many really really sharp corners straight after the start, and (3) don’t allow driver/car-changes midstream if you prang or the driver gets killed, and (4) don’t allow you to jump into the spare car (and where is it then?) while the track is still covered with shrapnel. Peter Davis and I did a nice track nearly two years ago on here, about 26 miles long and rather interesting on Googleearth. We will come back to it. You can serch for it in the meantime.

But…..male aggression. It’s probably one of the things that made Homo sapiens sapiens as successful as (he) is, in the battle for survival against shithead short-arsed-bears bureaucrats, sabre-tooth tigers Soviets, and so on. I have been thinking about this for some time as I find that male students vary considerably in their ability to manage or mask or evince aggression as a statement of attitude, and it does seem to vary corelationally by school. (The Governmint might want to know that.)  Janet Daley today examines what she suggests the fascist PC-left have done to being about the explosion of gang culture and knife crime among young boys and young men. It’s worth a read, even though lots of libertarians don’t like her.

In “New Britain”, youth male aggression is not channelled, and so individual directionless crime is rife: why? Because:-

(1) There are no fathers, only “mums”. Girls are born to “mums”, but boys are born by parthenogenesis to “single partners”. “Fathers” are just devices which prodice the necessary gametes, seemingly on demand (I can’t figure out how or why.)

(2) Young boys have to have their heads shaved at three and watch football all day on the Wireless Tele Vision, and “hang out”.

(3) “Schools” have sold their football fields for the building of “affordable housing”, so there are no “competitive sports” which foster “elitism and “inequality” anyway, and so are bad.

(4) The Naitonalised Curriculum has been voided of content and also femiNazised, in order to render school (on purpose) seemingly useless to boys, so that they can be made to prefer streetgangs as a form of daytime outdoor relief.

Socialism (a fungus) of course needs this machinery to propagate within what is otherwise a highly-ordered civilisation, formed sort of accidentally under liberty.

Is socialism a fungus born out of evolution and natural selection, and which exploits a niche? DISCUSS

Afghanistan: If I was Gordon Brown and considering my policy of fostering a Taleban to take people’s eye off what I’m up to here, then I wonder how Wootton Bassett will vote in an election.

David Davis

[It seems that The Ranting Penguin already agrees with what I'm about to say.]

I don’t think I know what a “Taleban” is. Is it some kind of yoghurt? If so, why are we dying? Or is some “friendly power” secretly arming these buggers? We need to be told.

[In Lebanon, "Laban" is Greek yoghurt, and "Lebni" is a sort of slightly tart soft cheese (it's very nice, on a hot day, on a cheese-biscuit or something. With a biggish glass of Chateau Musar from the Bek'aa Valley vineyards.)]

A “Taleban” ought to be easy to eliminate in theory, faced with the theoretically-sufficiently-armed and armoured specialists of a First-World military power…..

Now, this town has the sad destiny, currently, to be where The Men Whose Names Live On These Walls and who have fallen in Afghanistan, pass through most days now, on their way to rest.

(That’s not in Wootton Bassett, it’s here.)

It is beginning to dawn on me, after years, that I am a curious sort of libertarian. I am in fact a Marxist-Leninist turned upside down. This is getting quite comfortable for me these days, and I will develop my ire further in this regard.

Thus for now: I do not object to foreign wars at all, if fought by a minimalist State based on Classical liberalism, which knows it has an obligated, indeed actually a divine, mission to supress wickednesses elsewhere, such as Statism, fabian-subverted-pre-capitalist-barbarian-survival-guide-warlordism-masquerading-as-religion, general slavery of all kinds (still going on in countries about 3,681 miles from you), “communism” (getting to be old hat now as Chè, Castro, that Sendero-Luminoso-droid, Kim-Jong-Il and Hugo Chavez, Jimmy Carter, and the fascist-pig Mitterand all died physically years ago) and the like.

Indeed, an emergent British – or more possibly English, “state”  having withdrawn from both the UK and the EU – libertarian government, may find itself with a variety of post-Bandung kleptocracies arrayed against it, with erstwhile “friends”, such as “France”, and perhaps even “Belgium”, eagerly selling modern armaments to our new potential enemies, speciifically to threaten us.

But in these wars which we now seem ot be fighting, I believe that we do //not// have to have what Sean Gabb calls a “vital national interest”, in my opinion. The very fact that terrible evils and unfathomable wickednesses are being done to humans in the name of “unity”, in the name of “progress”, and in the name of “people’s democracy”, is the justification to act to stop this nonsense and blood, if we have the power. We are in favour of Natural Rights, which human beings all possess by definition. If we do not have the power to act in these situations, then it is //our problem, and our failing//, and thus I am moving rapidly to the belief that it is [imho] our obligation to acquire the needed power – and to use it in such fashion. Sean knows quite well that he and I disagree in general terms although not necessarily specific ones on this matter and it is quite friendly: we argue about it from time to time in his sojourns up here, and thus reports of the death of the Libertarian Alliance are very premature.

The problem for GramscoFabiaNazis such as Gordon Brown, who like all socialists wants to be seen as “hard” and “warfighting” [it's in their genes sadly] while also crooning pacifistically to the post-modern British neo-CND left, is that he can’t sit on two toilets at once, like John Prescott that unexpectedly clever fellow, can. He can’t both shit and get off the pot simultaneously in two places. He wants to be seen as an important chappie in three ways: “supressing the supply of heroine and cocaine”, fighting the “War On Terror” [a contradiction in terms] and also cosying up to people like ShootinPutin187 whose gas and oil he thinks he needs and who got bloodied in Afghanistan 20-odd years ago. And yet at the same time he has also to appease his Enemy-Class-Paymasters who hate all things British (especially English) and who especially hate the Armed Forces, who of course /won’t/ cosy up to the ZanuLieBorg “Project”, and consist mostly of people either disregarded or despised and hated by the “New Labour Project”.

So where does poor little Wootton Bassett come into this terrible story? You will already all know how very, very deeply I despise and excoriate synchronised public grieving. I have never failed to bore you, year after year, with my hatred of the emotional incontinence which overtook this strong and gripped nation, at the death of the horrible Diana.

But this is different. [If the lefties can say such things, so can I.] Nobody told these poor people, sad at what was happening, to turn out. Not like the mafia-instructions to close all our shops [or else] on the day of Diana’s funeral. They just turned out.

A casualty list of eight chaps in a day, in 2009, is a disaster in today’s terms. This is not 1916, when we were locked in an insoluble battle against an equally-technologically-advanced set of enemies – this is 2009 and we are again fighting what used to pass for [pre-1914] small colonial wars against people that we called “towelheads”, in which we expected to take small but ongoing casualties while yet assuring victory. But our priorities and our perception of the deaths of soldiers in wars today has changed, while our supposed ability to deal with modern battlefields has increased.

This sort of misfortune ought not to be happening to a First-World-Economy’s armed forces, against pre-medieval barbarians [OK they are individual humans, but they "chose poorly" , as the old mailed knight said in the end-scene of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".]

Gordon Brown clearly wants and needs a war in Afghanistan. That’s why he has both flagged an increase in the number of our solders there (currently about four brigades) and also a decrease at the same time. He wants to please all his paymasters at once, and thinks we don’t listen. Either he wants “victory”, to destroy all the cocaine and heroin, please ShootinPutin187 and look hard, or else he does not, through not giving our chaps any kit at all that works, so that he puts them all off from joining the Army [a GramscoFabiaNazi medium-term-objective] and thus pleasing the neo-Harold-Pinters of this planet.

But the people of Wootton Bassett are trying to tell him something. I can’t think it will be to his advantage as a Prime-Mentalist.