The Blog of Russell M. Middleton
{Wisdom or Feel Good} — {Personal Advantage or Public Good}
Ah, the conundrum continues.
| [ my comments are in square brackets ] |
|
"My nationalism, fierce though it is, is not exclusive, is not devised to harm any nation or individual."Mahatma Gandhi
http://www.snpyouth.org/ysi/index.php?option=com_contact&task=view&contact_id=1&Itemid=7
04 Dec 2005
"...studies from the US which shows juvenile violent crime at a 30 year low, despite the violent lyrics of American rap artists."http://www.snpyouth.org/vision/vision12.pdf 11/12/2005
Scotland on Sunday Sun 18 Dec 2005
"Despite an appalling catalogue of blunders in the way Colyn Evans was overseen by the authorities, not a single police or social work employee will be called to account."[ Is this not nepotism of the highest (dis)order? ]
A Carol from Flanders by Frederick Niven 1878-1944 (A very minor Scottish poet of Great War vintage)
http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Poetry/a_carol_from_flanders.htm
This poem recounts the true story of the 1914 spontaneous Christmas truce along the lines of the Western front.
In Flanders on the Christmas morn
The trenched foemen lay,
the German and the Briton born,
And it was Christmas Day.
The red sun rose on fields accurst,
The gray fog fled away;
But neither cared to fire the first,
For it was Christmas Day!
They called from each to each across
The hideous disarray,
For terrible has been their loss:
"Oh, this is Christmas Day!"
Their rifles all they set aside,
One impulse to obey;
'Twas just the men on either side,
Just men — and Christmas Day.
They dug the graves for all their dead
And over them did pray:
And Englishmen and Germans said:
"How strange a Christmas Day!"
Between the trenches then they met,
Shook hands, and e'en did play
At games on which their hearts were set
On happy Christmas Day.
Not all the emperors and kings,
Financiers and they
Who rule us could prevent these things —
For it was Christmas Day.
Oh ye who read this truthful rime
From Flanders, kneel and say:
God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day.
The Christmas Truce of World War I by John V. Denson
http://www.mises.org/story/1978 A Carol from Flanders by Frederick Niven
http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Poetry/a_carol_from_flanders.htm
Note: For up to two days, the guns of war fell silent as men who had been enemies only hours before, after defying officers, laid down their weapons to sing carols, exchange gifts, mementos, and traditions — and to bury the dead.
"...a settled farming community had lived in Scotland for about 4,000 years before the arrival of the Romans."Professor David Breeze, Historic Scotland's Chief Inspector of Ancient
Monuments. Mon 14 Feb 2005 http://heritage.scotsman.com/places.cfm?id=41942005
"The case for free trade is that, other things equal, a given country will be materially richer if its government doesn't impose taxes on its own people when they buy foreign goods."Robert Murphy
http://www.mises.org/story/2001
"From the 6th century western Scotland was home to one of the most advanced civilisations in Europe. Dalriada was a sea kingdom centred on their capital Dunadd, the remains of which lie near Loch Awe. The Dalriadans were skilled metallurgists who influenced the rest of Europe with their craft and produced beautiful jewellery, such as the Hunterston brooch. They also mass-produced metal goods for their neighbours. Cast moulds for Anglo-Saxon buckles and bowls found in graves were unearthed at the remains of Dunadd's smithies." "The sea kingdom had a trading network that ran from Ireland, along the coastline of western Britain to what is now western France. The Dalriadans imported rare spices, precious dyes and wine, all stored in pottery, and glass vessels from Carolingian France. The mystery, according to Euan Campbell of Glasgow University's archaeology department, is what the Carolingian traders bought from Dalriada." "Before the Union with England, Scots numbered among the best smugglers in the world. To survive, they had to be. This was the era of the mercantilist economy when the imperial powers of Europe founded trading companies and protected their monopolies with force of arms. Nations further believed there was only a fixed amount of wealth and Scots were not welcome to share in the spoils of colonialism." "Scots have bought and sold goods outside of their native shores from the Stone Age onwards. Currently, the only industrialised nation to export more to other countries per head of population is Japan. Whilst we tend to believe that globalisation is a recent development it seems, looking back over Scotland's history, that we have always been part of the world economy and the world has always been a part of Scotland. "Brendan O'Brien
http://heritage.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=214072006
"The tendency to impose oppressive restraints on private property, to abuse political power, and to refuse to respect or recognize any free sphere outside or beyond the dominion of the state is too deeply ingrained in the mentality of those who control the governmental apparatus of compulsion and coercion for them ever to be able to resist it voluntarily."Ludwig von Mises
http://www.mises.org/story/1997
"Taxation is the fundamental concern of governments. Without the ability to tax and secure resources for itself, governments can do little. Without easy and ample access to taxpayer funds, governments cannot fund their programs, or pay their employees, or enforce their regulations. Governments can create any new programs or pass any new laws they like, but without funds to regulate and coerce, governments are little more than debate societies. For this reason, tax limitation measures strike at the very core of the contest between government and the private sector. It also means that the higher the stakes become, the greater and more steadfast the opposition will become."Ryan McMaken and Derek Johnson
http://www.mises.org/story/1997
"To be human means to resist greed and collective self-destruction, and to acquire true dignity by acting from an attitude of deep care and respect for all life."Fred Hageneder http://www.spirit-of-trees.net/
"How sad and pitiful it is," Gottlieb concluded, "that the New York Times has a record of supporting every deplorable, restrictive, anti-self defense gun law that ever came along; laws that disarm good people while doing nothing to stop the bad ones. These are the kinds of laws that have created risk-free working conditions for murderous predators in the District of Columbia, and ultimately, it is decent, honorable people like David Rosenbaum who so often pay the price for such despicable public policy."CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb
http://www.ccrkba.org/pub/rkba/press-releases/cc_dc_newsman_killed.htm
"It may pain Bloomberg, Kelly and other Nanny State disciples to acknowledge this, but given the opportunity, and liberty from government interference, most Americans can take care of themselves. The overwhelming majority of American citizens can be trusted with the firearms they own, because they know how to use them. They don't need millionaire politicians or Big Apple police administrators meddling with their civil rights while stripping away their personal safety." "Perhaps it's not their fault. Bloomberg and Kelly are, after all, products of their environment. That being the case, they should be encouraged to stick to their own ground, and leave the rest of us the hell alone."Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman
http://www.saf.org/viewoe.asp?id=173
David Laws, the Lib Dems' work and pensions spokesman, said: "Action to make pensions affordable is inevitable, but it is vital that this should respect existing entitlements and that top managers and owners should also demonstrate that they are accepting their share of the pain."http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=25692006
Anonymity Won't Kill the Internet "The problem isn't anonymity; it's accountability. If someone isn't accountable, then knowing his name doesn't help."Bruce Schneier
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70000-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_2
"Michigan's allowance for trucks up to 164,000 pounds elected gross vehicle weight has caused considerable concern. Most states allow just 80,000 pound maximum. However, many engineers believe that Michigan's super heavy trucks actually impose less damage than the lighter trucks in other states. Michigan's 164,000-pound trucks must spread their weight over 11 axles, compared to just five axles on conventional 80,000-pound trucks. In Michigan, the 11-axle trucks are allowed a maximum weight per axle of 13,000 pounds, compared to 18,000 pounds per axle on 80,000-pound trucks. Axle weight determines damage, not total gross weight."Dr. John C. Taylor
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=905
"It is remarkable what organised crime can achieve with the assistance of the dolts and fanatics in a prohibitionist lobby."Gordon McNeill
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/58884.html (page 3)
"For American Indians the scars of injustice inflicted upon them in the past are deep, painful, and, tragically, are inherited from one generation to the next. Those injustices have become ghosts in the cultural memory of a people crying out for justice. We must fully disclose the past in order to deal with the many years and generations of unresolved grief and distrust."Tom Hamilton
http://www.kansasheritage.org/pbp/people/trail_map.html
(see also:
http://www.ku.edu/~kansite/pbp/history/trail_mtls.html,
http://dilbert.htctech.net/~fchs/,
http://www.icss.net/~fchs/)
"Who could fail to admire the people who worked in those yards (Clydeside) and the awesome ships they built? Their skill, their industriousness and their capacity for not only coping with, but producing extraordinary work in, extremes of weather conditions still amazes me." ~Sir Alex Ferguson
http://heritage.scotsman.com/ingenuity.cfm?id=253202006
[I'll tell you who could fail to admire...Baroness Thatcher et al. she had referred to the striking miners (and by implication all workers) as "the enemy within", who had to be defeated for the good of liberty and democracy. What a curious notion of democracy and whose liberty? Contrast what Thatcher's policies toward labour have done for the UK with what Dr. W. Edwards Deming's famous 14 Points did for post-war Japan.] [The USA is criticised, and rightly so, for collateral damage in its implementation of its anti-terrorist policies. Yet isn't the British government, both Right and Left, guilty of grievous damage to the British people dating well back into the mists of time? The solution to terrorism is not more police or policy. Government is the problem!] [The ultimate economy of scale. Offend more people faster than ever before.]
"Bureaucratic elites control information in order to help maintain their control. When employees speak out, this is a challenge to bureaucratic power and its corruptions."Brian Martin
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/98il/il05.html
The Scotsman Fri 5 May 2006
"...who in government is so all-knowing and all-wise as to confidently interpret and determine on our behalf what does, and does not, make the greatest number of us happy and contented? Many might feel the loss of personal choice through intervention would leave them far more dissatisfied than before the government started meddling." "AND how exactly is government to go about the business of making us happier? There is a tension between, on the one hand, a workplace policy of more holidays and less work (whatever this may mean for employment and productivity) and the "busybody" approach so beloved of the Scottish Executive. It does not take much to imagine the interventionist Holyrood "authoritarian happiness" model: it would have a "happiness quango" tooled up with a huge budget and staff, together with policy co-ordinators assessing and monitoring a Sustainable Happiness Strategy. And it would all succumb to target failure and expenses overshoot."Bill Jamieson Source:
"It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong."G.K. Chesterton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigotry
"Systematically identify top designers as early as possible. The best are often not the most experienced."Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/f/frederick_p_brooks_jr.html
"Everyone is just like us, you see. Rich, violent, corrupt, and susceptible to pressure. That's why, when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we fear no evil; because we're the meanest SOB in a valley full of SOB's just like us, except not quite as mean. More fool them. And that, of course, is what government is: the meanest SOB in the valley. The one with the most legitimate claim to the use of violence. Because violence is what provides the basic order to society. Except, as we have learned, as we should have learned, the world is nothing like that, and a poet, not a warrior, turns out to have been right: 'Those to whom violence is done/Do violence in return.'"Rmj 17/05/2006
http://rmadisonj.blogspot.com/2006/02/law-order.html
"The "commie", on the other hand, is a more perfidious creature, because he instinctively knows that you do not know what is best for you and that he was born to rule. His belief in this "truth" transcends all other reality for him; it has the emotional power of religious revelation for him and he truely believes (when it is expedient to believe, that is). No communist or marxist government has ever been egalitarian; there is always a ruling cadre and mister, you just aren?t going to be included in that club. It is, in the end, a social and philisophical refuge for the weak minded, the dishonest, and the amoral individuals in our midst." "It all goes to prove my theory that movements for the good of mankind that ignore the enlightened self interest of individuals are dangerous."B Dubya - 20060509 @ 0635
http://www.sgtstryker.com/index.php/archives/which-is-worse/
"Kill them all. God will know his own."Arnaud-Armaury(sic)(d. 1225), the Abbot of Citeaux, and "spiritual advisor" to the Albigensian Crusade.
http://www.manbottle.com/trivia/kill_them_all.../kill_them_all..._answer
The Scotsman Wed 17 May 2006 The voice of freedom that has lessons for today by James Kirkup
"Only by weighing all the options and freely choosing the route ourselves can we ever truly reach a position of happiness. Put your faith in people: leave them alone to make their own decisions and they will make the right decisions. And the actions we freely choose are worth so much more than those we are pushed into."http://premium.news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=733122006&resource=tssubscrip
"Unfortunately there is much documented history of technology being quashed, patents being bought and buried, innovations left by the wayside to discourage change, discourage having to retool, reinvent, reinvest...and if you don't think that auto/oil/gov are all complicit in this, how naive can one be?"joepizzo-ebiz (former engineer with both GM and Ford) 18/05/2006
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur9025701/comments
"At one point GM was the largest corporation ever in the United States, in terms of its revenues as a percent of GDP. In 1953 Charles Erwin Wilson, then GM president, was named by Eisenhower as Secretary of Defense. When he was asked during the hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee if as secretary of defense he could make a decision adverse to the interests of General Motors, Wilson answered affirmatively but added that he could not conceive of such a situation "because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa". Later this statement was often garbled when quoted, suggesting that Wilson had said simply, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." At the time, GM was the one of the largest employers in the world ? only Soviet state industries employed more people."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors 18/05/2006 12:10
"Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., long-time president of GM in the early 20th century, developed a business strategy to expand auto sales and maximize profits by eliminating streetcars. In 1922, according to GM's own files, Sloan established a special unit within the corporation which was charged, among other things, with the task of replacing the United States' electric railways with cars, trucks, and buses." "For instance, between 1926 and 1936 GM acquired New York Railways. Bad service reduced reliability and thus actively created the trend towards private transport that GM advertised. By underinvestment and poor service the public transport system was systematically destroyed." "A 1974 report by government attorney Bradford Snell ignited the conspiracy theory by claiming that General Motors was convicted of conspiracy in 1949 (and fined $5000) in its program to buy up and destroy electric urban trolley systems so that urban transit would be forced to rely on GMC buses, and that this is the principal reason that modern-day trolley systems are rare in the United States today. Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines, a holding company sponsored and funded by GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil of California, bought out more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities (including New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, Baltimore, and Los Angeles) to be dismantled and replaced with GM buses. In 1949 GM and its partners were convicted in U.S. district court in Chicago of criminal conspiracy in this matter and fined $5,000."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy 18/05/2006
A NATION OF COWARDS by Jeffrey R. Snyder published in the Fall, '93 issue of The Public Interest, a quarterly journal of opinion published by National Affairs, Inc. [excerpt]
"It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended victim. Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers." "The beliefs of both our liberal and conservative elites are in fact abetting the criminal rampage through our society." "The liberal elite know that they are philosopher-kings. They know that the people simply cannot be trusted; that they are incapable of just and fair self-government; that left to their own devices, their society will be racist, sexist, homophobic, and inequitable -- and the liberal elite know how to fix things. They are going to help us live the good and just life, even if they have to lie to us and force us to do it. And they detest those who stand in their way." "The private ownership of firearms is a rebuke to this utopian zeal. To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from the state. It is to reserve final judgment about whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to defend that freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the state's totalitarian reach." "Other evidence also suggests that armed citizens are very responsible in using guns to defend themselves. Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, using surveys and other data, has determined that armed citizens defend their lives or property with firearms against criminals approximately 1 million times a year. In 98 percent of these instances, the citizen merely brandishes the weapon or fires a warning shot. Only in 2 percent of the cases do citizens actually shoot their assailants. In defending themselves with their firearms, armed citizens kill 2,000 to 3,000 criminals each year, three times the number killed by the police. A nationwide study by Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The "error rate" for the police, however, was 11 percent, over five times as high." "What we certainly do not need is more gun control. Those who call for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we can really begin controlling firearms betray a serious misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people." "At one time this was even understood by the Supreme Court. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the first case in which the Court had an opportunity to interpret the Second Amendment, it stated that the right confirmed by the Second Amendment "is not a right granted by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence." The repeal of the Second Amendment would no more render the outlawing of firearms legitimate than the repeal of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment would authorize the government to imprison and kill people at will. A government that abrogates any of the Bill of Rights, with or without majoritarian approval, forever acts illegitimately, becomes tyrannical, and loses the moral right to govern."http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/cowards.html
"When columnist Carl Rowan preaches gun control and uses a gun to defend his home, when Maryland Governor William Donald Schaefer seeks legislation year after year to ban semiautomatic "assault weapons" whose only purpose, we are told, is to kill people, while he is at the same time escorted by state police armed with large-capacity 9mm semiautomatic pistols, it is not simple hypocrisy. It is the workings of that habit of mind possessed by all superior beings who have taken upon themselves the terrible burden of civilizing the masses and who understand, like our Congress, that laws are for other people." "While it may be that a society in which crime is so rare that no one ever needs to carry a weapon is "civilized," a society that stigmatizes the carrying of weapons by the law-abiding--because it distrusts its citizens more than it fears rapists, robbers, and murderers--certainly cannot claim this distinction. Far from being "civilized," the beliefs that counterviolence and killing are always wrong are an invitation to the spread of barbarism. Such beliefs announce loudly and clearly that those who do not respect the lives and property of others will rule over those who do."Jeffrey Snyder http://www.issues-views.com/index.php/sect/2001/article/2010
"It is now self-evident that small bodies are nearly always more efficient than large ones - indeed the more centralised and distant governance becomes, the more expensive and inefficient it proves to be."Mike Russell
http://premium.news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=756332006&resource=tssubscrip
Still a nation of cowards By Dr. Michael S. Brown web posted July 16, 2001
"The unspoken objective of pre-emptive laws is to reduce the need for self-restraint and personal responsibility. If people do not have the means to harm each other, it is no longer important for them to control their tempers or act politely. We are asking the government to protect us from ourselves so that we can be freed from that responsibility. This might seem like a logical plan, especially to lazy slackers who aren't willing to assume the basic duties of a free person." "One flaw in the logic is that laws themselves do not prevent crime. Laws work when most individuals choose to respect the law and exercise self-restraint. Unfortunately, the violent people we fear are lacking in those basic virtues. That is why pre-emptive laws are ineffective. They are nothing more than a political tool to satisfy the emotional needs of the electorate and they have a corrosive effect on personal values."http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0701nationcowards.htm
[Scotland's sustainable green energy problems could be solved within five years with four simple steps: (those who argue the opposite will have a vested interested in the status quo)
1. suspend VAT on alternative energy hardware costs up to £20,000 per home per source type
2. let home owners feed excess power back into grid through their existing meter
3. let bureaucratic big wigs spend their energies upgrading the national grid infrastructure (if necessary)
4. let the greens et al. "Haud yer wheesht!" regarding pylons (see below)]
"Quite often, from my personal experience, we don't notice what the incomer or passer-by balks at. We had pylons across the farm, but only noticed them as a nuisance when ploughing, sowing and combining, not as a blot on the landscape." "Opinions have to be teased out, to make people feel they have a seat at the table when decisions are made."Fordyce Maxwell
http://premium.business.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=605&id=756202006&resource=tssubscrip
"If you're anti-gun, anti-self-reliant, anti-self-defense then you're a sheep just waiting to be a victim. I'm sure you won't read any farther because you just can't tolerate the thought that others aren't sheep. It's too much strain on your ego to see that your preconceived notions are just hollow dreams." "...I choose to take personal responsibility for the protection of myself and my family. This is my duty. The handgun is the best tool for this purpose."The Beagle Express http://www.beaglexp.com/archives/cat_gun_ownership.html
[After more than two decades of lethargy and the failed railway modernisation plan of the 1950s, the Beeching Axe, under Minister of Transport Ernest Marples, fell with uncharacteristic efficiency. Why? Who gained?]
"The line carried both goods and passengers for almost 100 years, but was closed as a through route by British Railways, despite strong local objections. The route over Stainmore closed in 1962; British Railways very quickly lifted the track, demolished Belah viaduct and other structures, leaving only the section from Hartley Quarry to Appleby open to carry goods traffic until October 1974. This included a section of the South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway near Kirkby Stephen. This traffic eventually went onto road transport, and then only the section from Appleby to Warcop was left, carrying goods to the Army training centre. The remaining branch effectively closed on 16th March 1989, but the track was not lifted over this 6 mile stretch."http://www.evr.org.uk/Inrto1.htm
[Why?]
"Are CEOs Worth Their Salaries? As Firms Founder, Critics Question the Pay Formula In 1980, on average, the CEOs of the biggest U.S. companies were paid 40 times as much as hourly wage earners at their companies. Now that number is approaching 500 times as much."By a Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, October 2, 2002; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A29673-2002Oct1
"Scotland is uniquely endowed with an enviable suite of natural resources." "It remains a conundrum then why this resource should be so spectacularly underexploited in Scotland." "Scotland is still shackled to a cycle of de-skilling directed by the flat-earthers of London for whom the M25 represents the edge of the world."Siol nan Gaidheal
http://www.siol-nan-gaidheal.com/wind.htm
"There is little logic to the war on knives, because it has little to do with knives themselves. Rather, this looks like another attempt by the authorities to attach themselves to a cause in a desperate bid to appear caring and right-minded. In the absence of any political vision, or much of a political programme, the government is a sucker for moral crusades, where everything can be reduced to a simple clash between good (those who express concern about knives) and evil (knives). That's one reason why the campaign snowballed so quickly, from the Met's comments in November to the launch of the victims' families campaign in December to Blunkett, Blair and Clarke getting involved; government officials always on the lookout for seemingly simple moral issues were not about to let a campaign against evil knives pass them by."Brendan O'Neill
http://www.spiked-online.co.uk/Printable/0000000CA825.htm
"...the real problem we face today: not a problem of antisocial behaviour but rather the problem of living in an asocial society. In other words, ours is a society that lacks the capacity to connect people with one another through a system of meaning."Stuart Waiton
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/385/
Westerners have long travelled to conflicts abroad, as missionaries or as revolutionaries, but today?s globe-hopping is different. Activists seem to be trying to find themselves by stepping into Palestinian shoes, empathising with Palestinian suffering. Young Westerners disillusioned with pampered modern lives go looking for their antidote in the Middle Eastern territories. These activists don?t do anything much. Missionaries of the past thought they were bringing the light of Christian civilisation to ignorant natives; leftists of the past campaigned to win political solidarity with those they saw as oppressed, or even took up guns in support of their struggle. Today?s peace activists merely plonk themselves in the Palestinians? vicinity and say that they feel their pain. They are ?human shields?, sitting in front of houses that are about to be demolished or escorting children across the road. These activists come across as self-obsessed. This is all about young Westerners? search for personal meaning.Josie Appleton
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/168/
It is mainstream society, not the hijackers, who made 9/11 into something historic, the premise from which to launch wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to ratchet up fear of the terrorist threat, and to introduce new laws that have undermined liberty and free speech. To put it another way, where the passengers of Flight 93 did not fall for the scare tactics of the four losers who hijacked their plane, others outside the plane did.Brendan O'Neill
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/358/
Recent anti-terror raids have all been over-the-top. In the past, the dominant view was that we should not give terrorists the oxygen of publicity. Today, any nihilistic loner with a grudge is likely to receive blanket coverage for a week. We can be sure that there will be more such incidents to come.Bill Durodi, 5/06/2006
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/376/
[The Beeching Axe cut off a portion of the Scottish Borders as demonstrated on this travel-time map from Edinburgh Waverley station.
http://www.mysociety.org/2006/travel-time-maps/rail-edinburgh-1500px.png
Why, out of the whole of mainland Britain, is it only in Scotland that areas fall outwith the 'by rail plus an hour-long taxi journey' criteria? Westminster planning is and has been bad for Scotland since 1603.]
By 1796, nearly eight hundred people were living in the area so-called Moss of Kincardine. Part of the Blair Drummond estate, Stirling, 90% of them were from the Highlands. Being Gaelic speaking poverty-stricken dispossessed Highlanders from Perthshire who were still suffering from the consequences of the Jacobite Uprising fifty years before. Most came from a very close knit community in the Balquhidder area. In addition, as the Old Statistical Account has it "not a single instance has occurred amongst them of theft, bad neighbourhood or any other misdemeanour that required the interposition of the civil magistrate."John L Wilson
http://www.perthshirediary.com/html/day1027.html
Archie MacKerracher
http://www.chuckspeed.com/balquhidder/history/The%20Moss%20Lairds.htm
[Could this exemplify what highland life was like when not subjected to policies of divide and rule perpetrated by an absentee landlord, local/regional Council or Crown authority? What are your assumptions? And where do they come from?]
The Enlightenment, how 18th-century Scots thinkers invented the modern mindset of progress, individualism, and scientific rationalism. Not bad for a wee Presbyterian country on the edge of the Atlantic.George Kerevan
http://premium.news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=877482006&resource=tssubscrip
"The collectivist thinking that overtook Europe in the 20th century committed the fallacy of identifying communities with the state. The assump-tion that Americans are anti-social individualists derives from this same error. Certainly, they are suspicious of the claims of government, but that is precisely because they value real communities of family, neighbourhood, locality or common identity, and see these as threatened by bureaucrats and politicians. To anyone familiar with life on both sides of the Atlantic it is striking how in Britain every aspect of life is taken to permit, and even to require, political action. Believing in the value of real communities, Americans strive to protect them from public ownership."John Haldane, professor of philosophy at the University of St Andrews.
http://premium.news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=419012006&resource=tssubscrip
http://www.usacitylink.com/usa/ssb.htmlNational Anthem of the United States of America
(all four stanzas)
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wiped out their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner forever shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_the_QueenNational Anthem of Great Britain
(There is no authorised version of the National Anthem as the words are a matter of tradition. Additional verses have been added down the years, but these are rarely used.
The words used today are those sung in 1745, substituting 'Queen' for 'King' where appropriate. On official occasions, only the first verse is usually sung. http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/page5010.asp)
- 1
- God save our gracious Queen,
- Long live our noble Queen,
- God save the Queen:
- Send her victorious,
- Happy and glorious,
- Long to reign over us:
- God save the Queen.
- 2
- O Lord, our God, arise,
- Scatter her enemies,
- And make them fall.
- Confound their politics,
- Frustrate their knavish tricks,
- On Thee our hopes we fix,
- God save us all.
- 3
- Thy choicest gifts in store,
- On her be pleased to pour;
- Long may she reign:
- May she defend our laws,
- And ever give us cause
- To sing with heart and voice
- God save the Queen 1.
- 4
- Not in this land alone,
- But be God's mercies known,
- From shore to shore!
- Lord make the nations see,
- That men should brothers be,
- And form one family,
- The wide world o'er.
- 5
- From every latent foe,
- From the assassins blow,
- God save the Queen!
- O'er her thine arm extend,
- For Britain's sake defend,
- Our mother, prince, and friend,
- God save the Queen!
- 6
- Lord grant that Marshal Wade
- May by thy mighty aid
- Victory bring.
- May he sedition hush,
- And like a torrent rush,
- Rebellious Scots to crush.
- God save the Queen!
- 7
- George is magnanimous,
- Subjects unanimous;
- Peace to us bring:
- His fame is glorious,
- Reign meritorious,
- God save the King!
- 8
- From France and Pretender
- Great Britain defend her,
- Foes let them fall;
- From foreign slavery,
- Priests and their knavery,
- And Popish Reverie,
- God save us all.
In 1836, William Edward Hickson wrote four alternative verses:
- 1
- God bless our native land!
- May heaven's protecting hand
- Still guard our shore:
- May peace her power extend,
- Foe be transformed to friend,
- And Britain's rights depend
- On war no more.
- 2
- O Lord, our monarch bless
- With strength and righteousness:
- Long may she reign:
- Her heart inspire and move
- With wisdom from above;
- And in a nation's love
- Her throne maintain
- 3
- May just and righteous laws
- Uphold the public cause,
- And bless our isle:
- Home of the brave and free,
- Thou land of liberty,
- We pray that still on thee
- Kind heaven may smile.
- 4
- Nor on this land alone,
- But be God's mercies known
- From shore to shore:
- Lord make the nations see
- That men should brothers be,
- And form one family
- The wide world o'er
"The final connection is that, since the first atomic explosions and the thousands of tests since, all steel manufactured in the world has a miniscule Strontium 90 content. In order to make sensitive radiation detection instruments radiation-free steel is needed, and 40 meters of water is pretty good shielding. Also the German armour used perhaps the best steel available in the world at the time. So, periodically, the Scapa Flow Wrecks are "mined" for their steel."Frank McVey
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/125775/Main/123920
"For hundreds of years the salt fish trade was in the hands of German merchants of the Hanseatic League. The museum in the Symbister Pier House tells how ships from Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck sailed to Shetland every summer, bringing seeds, cloth, iron tools, salt, spirits, luxury goods and hard currency. Generations of the same families made the voyage and some merchants are buried in the islands. The restored Hanseatic booth in Symbister. This picturesque old building, restored with its dock and cargo hoist, was one of two Hansiatic booths, or warehouses, in Whalsay until the Germans were forced out by import duties after the 1707 Treaty of Union between England and Scotland."http://www.visitshetland.com/area_guides/whalsay/whalsay/
[Starting with the introduction of feudalism to Scotland after Malcolm III married his second wife, Margaret, more good has flowed South than flowed North.]
"Hoffer also took solace in being an outcast, believing that the outcasts have always been the pioneers of society. He did not consider himself an "intellectual", and scorned the term as descriptive of the mostly anti-American academics of the West. Academics, he believed, craved power; but they were denied it in the democratic countries of the West (though not in totalitarian countries, which Hoffer saw as an intellectual's dream). Instead, Hoffer believed academics chose to bite the hand that fed them in their quest for power and influence." "Hoffer was among the first to recognize the central importance of self-esteem to psychological well-being. While most recent writers focus on the benefits of a positive self-esteem, Hoffer focused on the consequences of a lack of self-esteem. Concerned about the rise of totalitarian governments, especially those of Hitler and Stalin, he tried to find the roots of these "madhouses" in human psychology. He discovered that fanaticism and self-righteousness are rooted in self-hatred, self-doubt, and insecurity. As he describes in The True Believer, a passionate obsession with the outside world or with the private lives of other people is merely a craven attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life. Extensively researched, this slim volume contains more ideas per page than some entire books." "The mass movements discussed in The True Believer include religious mass movements as well as political, including extensive discussions of Islam and Christianity. They also include seemingly benign mass movements which are neither political nor religious. A core principle in the book is Hoffer's insight that mass movements are interchangeable; he notes fanatical Nazis later becoming fanatical Communists, fanatical Communists later becoming fanatical anti-Communists, and Saul, persecutor of Christians, becoming Paul, a fanatical Christian himself. For the true believer the substance of the mass movement isn't so important as that he or she is part of that movement. Hoffer furthermore suggests that it is possible to head off the rise of an undesirable mass movement by substituting a benign mass movement, which will give those prone to joining movements an outlet for their insecurities." "His work was not only original, it was completely out of step with dominant academic trends. In particular, it was completely non-Freudian, at a time when almost all American psychology was confined to the Freudian paradigm. In avoiding the academic mainstream, Hoffer managed to avoid the straitjacket of established thought. Many argue that it is because of his lack of a University education that his book has remained a classic and insightful (ie non-Freudian). Hoffer appeared on Public Television in 1964 and then in two one-hour conversations on CBS with Eric Sevareid in the late 1960s. Both times he drew wide response for his patiently considered but unorthodox views."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer
"In order to preserve peaceful cooperation, one must be ready to resort to violent suppression of those disturbing the peace. Society cannot do without a social apparatus of coercion and compulsion, i.e., without state and government. Then a further problem emerges: to restrain the men who are in charge of the governmental functions lest they abuse their power and convert all other people into virtual slaves. The aim of all struggles for liberty is to keep in bounds the armed defenders of peace, the governors and their constables. Freedom always means: freedom from arbitrary action on the part of the police power."Ludwig von Mises http://www.mises.org/story/2222
"Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer." - Ludwig von Miseshttp://www.mises.org/story/2221
Stirling Observer - 1908
"Coal mining is an old industry in Stirlingshire, and particularly in the eastern district, where it has been carried on for at least two hundred years in one form or another. ...indeed there is coal all round Stirling--east, west, north, and south--and those versed in the matter inform us that in the near future the county town will be the centre of a much larger coal-mining community than we have at present. Indeed Stirlingshire, and particularly the Stirling part of it, is, in their opinion, destined to become one of the biggest coal-producing counties in the country."http://web.ukonline.co.uk/members/tom.paterson/mining/Polmaise.htm
Who Killed the Electric Car?
"...probably the most advanced car Detroit ever built, and the most maintenance-free car. And when all the car companies were forced to do it, they realized that it threatened their business model. It also threatened the oil industry. So they wanted to dismantle it."Chris Paine
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/6/26/172718/341
"The latest allegations came to light following a campaign to lift the secrecy on the Dunblane massacre. Large sections of the police report were banned from the public domain under a 100-year secrecy order. Lord Cullen, an establishment insider, also omitted and censored references to the documents in his final report. Parents and teachers were advised to concentrate their efforts on a campaign to outlaw handguns instead of focusing on how the mentally unstable Freemason, already known by the police to be a paedophile, had obtained a firearms licence for six handguns. Hamilton allegedly enjoyed good relations with both local Labour luminary George Robertson and Michael Forsyth, the then Scottish Secretary of State and MP for Stirling. Forsyth congratulated and encouraged Hamilton for running a boy's club. Hamilton was also found to have exchanged letters with the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth."Mike James
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/blair_protection.html
"...high taxes have eroded the culture of giving in Europe. Research at Johns Hopkins University estimates that US charitable giving averaged 1.85 per cent of GDP in recent years. In the UK, the figure is 0.84 per cent. Citizens elsewhere are even meaner: in France, private giving is 0.32 per cent of GDP, and only 0.13 per cent in Germany." "Meanwhile in Britain, our most successful entrepreneurs spend much of their careers fighting the tax man. There's a lesson here."George Kerevan
http://premium.news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=945992006&resource=tssubscrip
No Gods And Precious Few Heroes
— (Brian McNeill)Chorus:
'Cause there's no gods and there's precious few heroes
But there's plenty on the dole in the land o' the leal
And it's time now to sweep the future clear
Of the lies of a past that we know was never real
I was listening to the news the other day
I heard a fat politician who had the cheek to say
He was proud to be Scottish, by the way
With the glories of our past to remember
Here's tae us, wha's like us, listen to the cry
No surrender to the truth, and here's the reason why
The pride and the glory's just another bloody lie
They use to keep us all in line
So to hell with the heather and the glen
They cleared us off once, and they'll do it all again
'Cause they still prefer sheep to thinking men
Ah but men that think like sheep are even better
There's nothing much to choose between the old laird and the new
They still don't give a damn for the likes of me and you
Just mind you pay your rent to the factor when it's due
And mind your bloody manners when you pay
And tell me, will we never hear the end
Of poor bloody Charlie and Culloden yet again
Though he ran like a rabbit doon the glen
Leaving better folk than him to be butchered
Or are you sitting in your council house, thinking o' your clan
Waiting for the Jacobites to come and free the land
Try going doon the broo wi' a claymore in your hand
And count all the princes in the queue
So don't talk to me of Scotland the Brave
'Cause if we don't fight soon there'll be nothing left to save
Or would you rather stand and watch them dig your grave
While you wait for the Tartan Messiah
He'll lead us to the Promised Land wi' laughter in his eye
We'll all live off the oil and the whisky, by and by
Free heavy beer, pie suppers in the sky
Will we never hae the sense to learn
Final chorus:
Ah, there's no gods and there's precious few heroes
But there's plenty on the dole in the land o' the leal
And I'm damn sure that there's plenty live in fear
Of the day we stand together with our shoulders to the wheel
Ay, there's no gods!
land o' the leal - place of the faithful and true of heart, Heaven (here: Scotland)
broo - unemployment bureau
"CeaseFire New Jersey is essentially a criminal support group," Waldron added, "because they fight for laws that provide a safe working environment for criminals. You do not fight crime by disarming victims."http://www.ccrkba.org/pub/rkba/press-releases/jersey_city_gun_sham.htm
"In considering Dickens, as we almost always must consider him, as a man of rich originality, we may possibly miss the forces from which he drew even his original energy. It is not well for man to be alone. We, in the modern world, are ready enough to admit that when it is applied to some problem of monasticism or of an ecstatic life. But we will not admit that our modern artistic claim to absolute originality is really a claim to absolute unsociability; a claim to absolute loneliness. The anarchist is at least as solitary as the ascetic. And the men of very vivid vigour in literature, the men such as Dickens, have generally displayed a large sociability towards the society of letters, always expressed in the happy pursuit of pre-existent themes, sometimes expressed, as in the case of Moli? or Sterne, in downright plagiarism."Gilbert Keith Chesterton
http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/olivertwist/
"Free speech is perhaps the single greatest threat to central governments, because speech is the ultimate form of decentralized social cooperation - people conveying information to one another. It is no surprise, then, that politicians and regulators, people whose livelihoods depend on the existence of social conflict, target free speech as a threat to various "national interests." These interests are always expressed in collectivist terms that often employ the facade of rights - i.e., 'consumer rights.'" "As history - and the Internet - demonstrates, a decentralized market out-performs even the most rabid regulator in discerning false or misleading speech, whether that speech advertises a political candidate or a consumer product."S.M. Oliva
http://mises.org/story/2234
"The terms of the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended the French and Indian War prohibited both British settlement beyond the Appalachian Mountains and private treaties with Native Americans, however. Since the Cherokees did not enjoy exclusive access to the Transylvania purchase and did not have settlements there, in effect the company illegally bought land that could not legally be settled from people that did not have the right to sell it. As was the case with much U.S. settlement, legalities were manufactured after the fact."http://www.kspg.org/pdf/03fieldguide.pdf
"...John Craig had faith, faith in Scotland, faith in himself, faith in the army of workers by hand and brain who had laboured him to build up Scottish steel." "'It may be', as he said at the time, 'that we have worked out reserves of once plentiful raw materials, but we have not worked out the reserves of human skill that abound in Scotland. So long as we have the men, we'll have a strong Scottish iron and steel industry'."From Colville's Magazine, January 1920
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/steelworks/Colville's.htm
07/07/2006 15:38
[This quote was said sufficiently after the horrendous casualties of the Great War to be aware of the humans cost. What was in short supply over the rest of the 20th century -- were captains of industry like John Craig who believed in the Scottish worker.
A drought of capital brought Scotland from the pinnacle of engineering, mining, manufacturing, iron and steel production to its current service centred economy which doesn't even have the skills to annalise its own parliament roof beams.]
[When is "in public" - in view of other people; when others are present - not public? When you have a data protection act.]
"The data protection act does not allow for the public transmission of camera images that can identify people or their car number plate."http://www.trafficscotland.org/FAQ.asp
[Could it be that simply posting holiday snap shots on the Web is now illegal? Could an eyewitness be subject to legal action for identifying criminal suspects?]
08/07/2006 09:05
"Distrust is a formal way of not trusting any one party too much in a situation of grave risk or deep doubt. It is commonly expressed in civics as a division or balance of powers, or in politics as means of validating treaty terms. Systems based on distrust simply divide the responsibility so that checks and balances can operate. The phrase trust but verify refers specifically to distrust." "Distrust should not be confused with mistrust, which is believing that a particular party has a hidden agenda. When such is the case, however, distrust plays a role in minimizing the power of specific individuals with roles in "the system." For instance providing the benefit of the doubt to someone accused of a crime."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distrust
It is wise not to lean on the user's chunking capacity and ability to selectively ignore features too hard, because those capabilities have costs and require effort. The more you can hold the number of items a user must grasp at any one time below seven, the happier and more comfortable they will be. It is especially important for expert programmers to internalize this habit, for two reasons. One is that expert programmers are disproportionately drawn from the high end of the bell curve in their working-set size; therefore they tend to systematically overestimate the amount of complexity other people can handle easily. The other is that, for a particular well-known task, apparent working-set size can increase because some knowledge about the interface has been committed to long-term memory. Expert programmers tend to evaluate interfaces by what they are like when they are familiar (e.g. a lot about them has gone into long-term storage); thus they systematically underestimate the degree to which complex interfaces strain the novice user and present barriers to learning. Thus, for an audience of programmers, we emphasize the number seven. It may not be right in all circumstances, but using it as a hard threshold will bias programmers in a good direction, which is simpler than their own reflexes and working-set size would usually take them.Eric Steven Raymond & Rob W. Landley. What's Old is New Again Chapter 2. History: A Brief History of User Interfaces The Art of Unix Usability Copyright © 2004 Eric S. Raymond
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taouu/html/ch02s03.html
"The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair."H.L. Mencken (letter to Upton Sinclair, October 14, 1917)
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/031122-9.htm
"The idea that people can provide things for themselves either individually or through the family frightens the state. It delegitimizes its role. The role of the family is dangerous to its survival."Vedran Vuk, student of Economics, Loyola University, New Orleans
http://www.mises.org/story/2218
"Legally-armed citizens are a threat to nobody but criminals, and Florida?s crime statistics prove that the presence of firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens benefits the entire community."Alan Gottlieb, Chairman, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA)
http://www.ccrkba.org/pub/rkba/press-releases/bush_fl_ccw_reduces_crime.htm
[No matter where they live or travel American citizens have a right to defend themselves. Progressive states like Florida and 47 other American States with concealed carry and self-defense laws will lead this world out of the Dark Ages of insane gun control and broken justice systems. New data shows that the gun control and criminal rights extremists have been wrong.]
13/07/2006 10:56
"In Florida, which first introduced "shall-issue" concealed carry laws, crimes committed against residents dropped markedly upon the general issuance of concealed-carry licenses, which had the unintended consequence of putting tourists in Florida driving marked rental cars at risk from criminals (since tourists may be readily presumed unarmed.) Florida responded by enacting laws prohibiting the obvious marking of rental cars. With this change, crime rates continued to fall alongside the issuance of concealed weapons licenses."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_(USA)
"Initially, Portugal dominated the slave trade. These slaves came mostly from Angola and other West African areas (the so called slave coast). Later in history, Britain and Holland dominated the slave trade. The slaves were sent mostly to the New World colonies. At the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Treaty of Utrecht gave to Great Britain a thirty-year asiento, or contract, to furnish (supply) slaves to the Spanish colonies, providing British traders and smugglers potential inroads into the traditionally closed Spanish markets in America. "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiento
NO ONE IS FORGOTTEN; NOTHING IS FORGOTTEN Soviet Perspective. The VVA Veteran, July/August 2006, vol. 26 no. 4
"To the American pilots' credit, they never violated agreements not to bomb certain objectives, places where Soviet specialists and diplomats were located. The North Vietnamese, on the other hand, held prisoners of war near the presidential palace, near the Hanoi electrical power station, in factories, and around military academies to prevent strikes on them. American pilots behaved with dignity, even during interrogations."by Retired Col. Nikolay Shershnev, veteran of the Vietnam War, Professor of the Kharkiv Air Force University, Ministry of Defense, Ukraine. Translated from Russian by Irina Romanchenko and Michael Lunini.
(This quote from an article in response to, "The '65 Decision: Bombing Soviet SAM Sites in North Vietnam," by John Brados in the January/February of The VVA Veteran issue tells of the start of the conflict in the skies over North Vietnam between American air forces and the Soviet anti-aircraft missile systems.)
[Curious? Didn't the Anti-War protesters of the Vietnam era accuse American pilots of 'war crimes'? Could it be that former enemy combatants have a greater human respect for each other and sense of honour in their commitment to the truth than the protestors?]
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."~ John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
"I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country. If I were Mustapha Mond of Brave New World, I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police ... What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. ["Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, published in that same issue of The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology] The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. ...I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence. The National Crime Victim Survey does not directly contravene this latest survey, nor do the Mauser and Hart Studies. ... the methodological soundness of the current Kleck and Gertz study is clear. I cannot further debate it. ... The Kleck and Gertz study impresses me for the caution the authors exercise and the elaborate nuances they examine methodologically. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well."Marvin Wolfgang, the late Director of the Sellin Center for Studies in Criminology and Criminal Law at the University of Pennsylvania, considered by many to be the foremost criminologist in the country, wrote in The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, Volume 86, Number 1, Fall, 1995.
http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/noframedex.html
"It is the weak who are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong" -- Leo Roskinhttp://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/409192893/m/1520080670001
1.An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.
2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.
3. Glock: The original point and click interface.
4. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.
5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?
6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.
7. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.
8. If you don't know your rights you don't have any.
9. Those who trade liberty for security have neither.
10. The United States Constitution (c) 1791. All rights reserved.
11. What part of "shall not be infringed" do you not understand?
12. The Second Admendment is in place in case they ignore the others.
13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.
14. Guns only have two enemies: rust and liberals.
15. Know guns, know peace and safety. No guns, no peace nor safety.
16. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.
17. 911-government sponsored Dial-aPrayer.
18. Assualt is a behavior, not a device.
19. Criminals love gun control-it makes their jobs safer.
20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.
21. Only a government that is afraid of it's citizens tries to control them.
22. You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.
23. Enforce the "gun control laws" we have, don't make more.
Q: WHY HAVE A GUN IN THE FIRST PLACE? For the same reasons we have smoke detectors, first aid kits, fire extinguishers; life, health, dental and home insurance. Because planning, preparation and investment in proper tools and devices -- give us more control over ourselves and our destiny and well being in any arena.Jody Hudson http://www.ezinearticles.com/?Gun-Defense-Questions-and-Answers.-Why-have-a-gun- in-the-first-place?&id=3748
Gun Fighting Principles * It is better to have a gun and not need it than to need it and not have it.http://www.thearmedcitizen.com/safety/
Globalisation means free movement of capital, goods, technology, ideas and, yes, people. Any globalisation that is limited to the first three or four freedoms but omits the last one is partial and not sustainable.Branko Milanovic, economist at the Washington DC-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. http://premium.news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1051762006&resource=tssubscrip
...factors that are often taken for granted in the rich world (institutions, governance, private property protection, absence of war)...Branko Milanovic
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/CP62.Milanovic.FINAL.pdf
[All of the following quotes are referred to by the web page "Small Arms--they cause 90% of civilian casualties - Global Issues"]
"The five permanent members of the UN Security Council - France, Russia, China, the UK, and the USA - together account for 88 per cent of the world's conventional arms exports; and these exports contribute regularly to gross abuses of human rights." from[Of which only the USA has an effective 'Bill of Rights']
http://www.controlarms.org/documents/arms_report_full.pdf
[Then the UK is held up as a good example while taking another swipe at the U.S.]
"As the Guardian in Britain reported, the United Kingdom, a close ally of the U.S., offered £19.5m to UN efforts to curb the supply of small arms, and yet, the "US is opposed to even a commitment to negotiations on a binding legal agreement." A partial reason for this, as explained in the Guardian article, is due to the influential gun lobby in the U.S."[In 1997 the Labour government of Tony Blair introduced the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997, building on precedent of the Firearms (Amendment) Act, 1988, the British Empire plunged down the road to disarmament (of lawful citizens). But what are domestic firearms policies doing to the citizens of the UK? See:
http://russcelt.eu/guns1986.htm
In the late 18th Century (ungrateful?) British subjects in North America rebelled against the Monarchy and established a constitutional republic governed in part by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution (the right of the people to keep and bear arms). Could a belated refutation of that rebellion be spurring, in part, this experiment in social engineering?]
"...confuses the issue of of domestic gun control with the trade and transfer of small arms and light weapons across international borders, which is what the UN conference was about."[So 'Global Issues' claims yet, the following quotes are served up further down the page.]
"# We need greater recognition that domestic laws and international policies are interdependent, and that each country's national laws affect the small arms proliferation problems of its neighbours and even countries in other regions."[The Global Issues page closes with this quote thinking that it succinctly expresses the issue yet, it may just as well support a different path.]
"# We need greater recognition that the legal and the illegal markets for small arms are inter-related, that many illicit transfers start out as legal ones, and that small arms are responsible for deaths and destruction whether they are technically held illegally or not." from http://www.iansa.org/media/bms_finalpr110703.htm
"Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups" ~ Paul Krugmanhttp://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/SmallArms.asp
[Freedom loving men and women everywhere should be afraid, very afraid!]
"Rich men exist today, but more frequently than not they owe their fortunes directly or indirectly to the state. Hence, they are often more dependent on the state's continued favors than many people of far-lesser wealth. They are typically no longer the heads of long-established leading families, but "nouveaux riches." Their conduct is not characterized by virtue, wisdom, dignity, or taste, but is a reflection of the same proletarian mass-culture of present-orientation, opportunism, and hedonism that the rich and famous now share with everyone else. Consequently - and thank goodness - their opinions carry no more weight in public opinion than most other people's." "There are almost no economists, philosophers, historians, or social theorists of rank employed privately by members of the natural elite. And those few of the old elite who remain and who might have purchased their services can no longer afford intellectuals financially. Instead, intellectuals are now typically public employees, even if they work for nominally private institutions or foundations. Almost completely protected from the vagaries of consumer demand ("tenured"), their number has dramatically increased and their compensation is on average far above their genuine market value. At the same time the quality of their intellectual output has constantly fallen."Hans-Hermann Hoppe
http://www.mises.org/story/2214
"It is a standard response when things go wrong for nationalists in Scotland to say 'If it is a question of cock-up or conspiracy, I believe in cock-up'. This is normally repeated in a self satisfied tone of voice, as if it was a badge of political maturity to hold this opinion. However, what this response is really saying is 'I may be a nationalist who wants to change the current structure of the British state; nevertheless, I am so fundamentally convinced of the basic decency of that same British state that I will not even countenance the possibility that someone might be playing at dirty tricks'. Put this way, the standard 'cock-up or conspiracy' response can more readily be seen for what it is: a response based on a level of political immaturity, and ignorance, which would be laughed out of court in Ireland, or in any other former colony. What the nationalist community in Scotland needs to do is to open its eyes to the ample evidence for the kind of techniques used against independence movements. Armed then with a healthy degree of paranoia and suspicion (too much would be fatal) it then needs to develop structures and attitudes which are robust in the face of attempted penetration and black operations. Until it achieves this transition, it is open to the accusation that it is merely playing at nationalist politics."Jim Cuthbert
http://www.scottishleftreview.org/index.php?action=article&docid=339
"DAVE Morris, of the Ramblers Association (RA), and Maf Smith, of Scottish Renewables, have not been seeing eye to eye lately. Dave objects to wind farms in scenic places. Maf tries to persuade the Scottish Executive to override Dave's objections. If they were ever on one another's Christmas card list, they probably aren't now. But Dave and Maf agree on one subject - the problem of dealing with Scottish Natural Heritage." "Many farmers have opted out of the government-led rat-race and are exercising their own ideas about crop yields and use of pesticides. And the small farmers and crofters of the west coast have maintained unique habitats without help for centuries. They are the real custodians of Scottish natural heritage, custodians who deeply resent having ancient rights and responsibilities stripped away by what they perceive to be city-based, clipboard-wielding youngsters." DAVE Morris puts it this way: "SNH often acts like God. It expects everyone else to adapt to its thinking. It uses conservation arguments and references to European law to intimidate people; 90 per cent of the time they are rubbish."Lesley Riddoch
http://premium.news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1070592006&resource=tssubscrip
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."William Hutchinson Murray (1913-1996), founding trustee of the John Muir Trust
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hutchinson_Murray
"There seems to be some limitation built into us either by learning or by the design of the nervous systems, a limit that keeps our channel capacities in this general range (i.e. the human minds inability to comprehend things beyond sets 7)" ~ George Miller "The Magical Number Seven" "The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us. Putting it another way, it's the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar." ~ Robin DunbarRobert Paterson's Radio Weblog - Tipping Point - Net Version
http://radio.weblogs.com/0107127/stories/2003/01/01/tippingPointNetVersion.html
"...Daniel Quinn often wrote, the world is not at risk because of our excess, but because of our lack--our lack of the vital things that humans need, like commuity and security."The Anthropik Network
http://www.anthropik.com/frontpage.php
[While searching for more quotes from Daniel Quinn I discovered this page containing quotes about the relationship between humans and Planet Earth:
http://www.blackhole.on.ca/quotes.html
]
"I can think of nothing more absurd than the notion that the members of a political system, whether elected, engaged as bureaucrats, or otherwise able to hold power, can alleviate or cure the human race of whatever limitations it might possess. For if we have defects, so do they. And the possession of power is likely to magnify whatever defects they have and nurture more. The institutional apparatus of government is always less responsive and less accountable to human needs and desires than free markets."Michael S. Rozeff, Louis M. Jacobs Professor of Finance at the SUNY-Buffalo, Jacobs Center, Buffalo, NY 14260-0001, United States.
http://www.mises.org/story/2249
"Just think about this general principle. When some good or service is in high demand, and economically feasible to deliver to those who demand it, and it is not being delivered in a way that is consistent with consumer welfare, you can bet that the state is involved."from The Real Cause of Blackouts by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Posted on Thursday, July 27, 2006
http://www.mises.org/story/2264
"After 3 years of study of published research material and a great deal of discussion, as well as writing to police, governmental and other authorities in several different countries, in 1982 I was forced to accept that none of the jurisdictions considered (which included the UK), could demonstrate any measurable social benefits, or crime reduction, of any kind arising from the introduction of either new, or stricter firearm laws. This was true whether one considered specific control mechanisms, like individual firearm registration, or the effects of the law as a whole." "Since then I have continued my work in this field for a further 22 years, which has had the effect of greatly reinforcing the conclusions stated above." "That does not mean that the laws are without effect. They tend to have a number of significant effects, all of them socially perverse:" "1. They generally have the effect of increasing violent crime, of precisely the type that they were introduced to reduce, sometimes quite dramatically. Simultaneously they rapidly depress lawful shooting activities. Each major tightening of the UK firearm laws over the last 30+ years, e.g. in 1968, 1988 and 1997/8, has had this dual effect to a very marked degree. Briefly, the '68 Act had the effect by 1971 of reducing the number of FACs in England & Wales from 216,281 to 190,000, a reduction of over 12%; and of increasing Robberies with Firearms from 464 to 560, an increase of 20%, much higher than the previous trend. The 1988 Act greatly increased the "controls" on shotguns, with the immediate effect of changing the previous, long-standing gentle growth in lawful Shotgun Certificates of +2.6% p.a., into a savage decline of over a 1,000 a week, every week for the next 4 years, a reduction of well over 20%. Over the same 4 years, the previously relatively stable rate of Robberies with Shotguns, amounting to 692 in 1988, grew rapidly to 1,008 in 1992, an increase of over 40%. The 1997/8 Acts totally destroyed virtually all cartridge target pistol shooting in mainland UK, an effective and immediate reduction of 100%; while the volume of pistol crime since the ban appears to have increased very substantially indeed, i.e. by between 40 and over 100%, depending on the source of the data. "Derek Bernard, St. Clement, Jersey
http://www.gunowners.org/op0442.htm
"7.9 Organised criminals often use violence and intimidation when conducting their criminal business in order to protect their interests and those of their group. The evidence suggests they are most likely to threaten to use firearms against other criminals, close associates or members of their own community in a show of strength or in response to some failing, challenge or slight."United Kingdom Threat Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime 2003
7. Firearms
http://www.ncis.co.uk/ukta/2003/threat07.asp
[Is this fundamentally different to the way government behaves?]
"Since 1920 England has enacted more and more draconian gun legislation, one step at a time, with the advertised purpose of making its citizens safer. Remember the words of Alan Michael: "Britain now has some of the toughest gun laws in the world. We recognize that only the strictest control of firearms will protect the public." If that has been their true aim, they have failed. While still low, England now has a overall homicide rate nearly double what it had when it began enacting gun control legislation. They have a higher firearm-related homicide rate, even though it has "some of the toughest gun laws in the world". They have achieved a violent crime rate higher than even the United States."Kevin Baker
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0301sterling.htm
"As for the direction that a world headed for liberty would be taking (descending or ascending) the Tannehills and many others have reviewed the record of the nation state and have discovered a curiously powerful fact. The nation state has never been associated with peace on earth. Its most powerful recommendation and record is, as a matter of fact, as a wager of war. The history of nation states is written around the dates of wars, not peace, around arms and not arts. The organization of warfare without the coercive power of the nation state is simply unimaginable at the scale with which we have become familiar."The Market For Liberty Foreword by Karl Hess
http://www.mises.org/story/2220
"The society we propose is based on one fundamental principle: No man or group of men -- including any group of men calling themselves "the government" -- is morally entitled to initiate (that is, to start) the use of physical force, the threat of force, or any substitute for force (such as fraud) against any other man or group of men. This means that no man, no gang, and no government may morally use force in even the smallest degree against even the most unimportant individual so long as that individual has not himself initiated force.[1]" "[1] The terms "initiated force" and "coercion" are used to include not only the actual Initiation of force but also the threat of such force and any substitute for force. This is because a man can be coerced into acting against his will by threats or deprived of a value by force-substitutes such as fraud or theft by stealth, just as surely as he can by the actual use of physical force. The threat of force is intimidation, which is, itself, a form of force."The Market For Liberty by Linda Tannehill and Morris Tannehill Chapter 1: If We Don't Know Where We're Going?
http://www.mises.org/story/2220
"The Focke-Wulf Fw 200 was a German all-metal four-engined monoplane that entered service as an airliner and later as long range reconnaissance and anti-shipping bomber aircraft for the Luftwaffe. It was the very first airplane to fly non-stop between Berlin and New York making the journey on August 10, 1938 in 24 hours and 56 minutes. The return trip on August 13 1938 took only 19 hours and 47 minutes." (emphasis added)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_200
"The Arab states just want to get rid of Israel and don't care what happens to the Palestinian Arabs or the Jews. Despotic Muslim and Arab regimes use the Israel issue to divert discontent from their own shortcomings. Professional anti-Zionists, regardless of cant about "compassion" and human rights and "justice," are not interested in peaceful solutions or Palestinian rights, but rather in vindicating their anti-Zionism. As long as Israel is constantly delegitimized and eventually, they hope, destroyed, it doesn't really matter to them what happens to the Arabs of Palestine or how many generations of Palestinian Arabs will suffer in refugee camps." "All those who justify the Hamas are supporting the winner take all solution and closing out the two state solution, and likewise those who support Greater Israel are making peace impossible. Each does it because of their ideologies - luxuries that neither real Israelis nor actual Palestinians can really afford."Ami Isseroff
http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000484.htm
"The Conservative & Unionist party still clings to the halcyon days of Empire where conquest and control were largely reliant on the Scottish infantry. Labour on the other hand view Scotland as being their proverbial birth right whilst knowing full well that without the Scottish Labour MP's at Westminster there would rarely be a Labour led administration there."http://www.scottishenterpriseparty.org/
[A must see this year, 2006, on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. "Black Watch". An unauthorised biography of the famous Scottish regiment by Gregory Burke. See, no, FEEL what it is like for ordinary Scots to become part of the greatest fighting Regiment in the world. Learn how their reputation built over 300 years with countless lives and oceans of Scot's blood is being destroyed by current British government policy.]
"EVERYBODY KNOWS (from the album I'M YOUR MAN)(L. Cohen - S. Robinson) Stranger Music, Inc." http://www.sonymusic.com/artists/LeonardCohen/lc10_03.htmlEverybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows
And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows
And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows
"Management has to help employees perform, which in many cases means getting out of the way."http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4166062.stm
"When Andy Wightman wrote WHO OWNS SCOTLAND five years ago, it was a political bombshell. With charts and maps and footnotes he exposed how a small group of nobles, foreign millionaires, pop stars and oil sheiks monopolize most of the land. The problem began 900 years ago with feudalism - with English monarchs granting land titles to noblemen and their heirs in return for military support and allegiance. The lords, or LAIRDS as they're called here, gobbled up more land when Roman Catholic properties were taken over in the Reformation. And then came the Highland Clearances of the 1700s - when clan chiefs hounded farmers off the land, to put sheep on it for the English textile mills. Those displaced farmers ended up in city slums or on emigration ships headed to the New World, to populate places like Cape Breton. Andy Wightman say's there hasn't been any real change in land ownership in Scotland in several centuries."Common Ground - A Documentary by Bob Carty
http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/features/common.html
"Economists now suspect that any net losses to society produced by government policies are the result of rent seeking rather than ignorance or irrationality on the part of policymakers. Rent seeking is a search for privilege and personal gain through the political process. Rent seeking is distinguished from corruption in that rent seeking is legal and corruption is not."The Economics of Prohibition by Mark Thornton
http://www.mises.org/story/2269
"When someone has been separated by exile or emigration from their homeland for one or two generations they may change completely. We all adapt to our immediate culture and environment, but in an increasingly materialistic world that often means cultural poverty and spiritual ignorance. After three or four generations we feel a need to rediscover our roots in the same way that an adopted child will one day wish to know their biological parents. Everyone has a physical and spiritual need to connect with their heritage and understand their historical roots."Choje Akong Rinpoche
http://www.stupa.org/index.htm
"Knowledge may be power, but the suppression of knowledge is far more dangerous. It is something we can ill afford - unless of course we are willing to return to a strictly peasant economy and reduce the world's current population a thousandfold more or less overnight. Our survival now depends on how well our science can anticipate and control the problems we have created for ourselves."Robin Dunbar, Fundamentalism must not strangle science, Science & Technology, The Scotsman, Sat 23 Sep 2006.
http://premium.news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1407162006&resource=tssubscrip
"Whether seen as erotic or romantic, a symbol of oppression or a sign of piety, modesty, or purity, the veil carries thousands of years of religious, sexual, social, and political significance."http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=SHIRAS01
University Press of Florida
"Most women concede to wearing the veil more because of intimidation from men than anything else. They feel that by not wearing the veil, they would be the victims of great social pressure. In addition, nationalistic pride persuades women to want to dress differently from Westerners. They believe that by wearing the veil their "honor, dignity, chastity, purity, and integrity are protected."http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/MidEast/04/regel/regelbrugge.htm
Abdul-Ati, Hammuda. "The Status of Women in Islam." Internet. 26 October 2000.
" -- for a nation to regain its soul it must also regain its language."http://www.scots-online.org/grammar/whits.htm
Hugh MacDiarmid
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."http://phobialist.com/fears.html
Frank Herbert, Dune - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
"The heavy-handed behaviour of mine owners like those at Blantyre undoubtedly had a great influence on the rise of left-wing politics in industrial Scotland and stimulated men like the Red Clydesiders to act on behalf of the poor and downtrodden."http://heritage.scotsman.com/people.cfm?id=621352006
Iain Lundy,
"The big government nanny-state is based on the assumption that free markets can't provide the maximum good for the largest number of people. It assumes people are not smart or responsible enough to take care of themselves, and thus their needs must be filled through the government's forcible redistribution of wealth. Our system of intervention assumes that politicians and bureaucrats have superior knowledge, and are endowed with certain talents that produce efficiency."[Sound like any politicians/bureaucrats you know? Me neither!]
http://www.mises.org/story/2358
By Mark Thornton
"...the Enlightenment gave us - the understanding that we can think for ourselves."PETER JONES The Scotsman
"When asked if violence did not simply beget more violence, Colonel Cooper responded 'It is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure and in some cases I have that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.'" "The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles." "Let us note that almost no one ever resorts to force and violence unless he is convinced that his cause is right, but without going into that let us reflect upon the fact that a man who covers his face shows reason to be ashamed of what he is doing. A man who takes it upon himself to shed blood while concealing his identity is a revolting perversion of the warrior ethic." "Our British cousins seem truly to have lost their viscera on the fields of Flanders in World War I. They enjoyed a conspicuous carryover in World War II, and there was a brief flash of inspiration in the Falklands, but as of today, they seem to have developed a psychopathic horror of violence, apparently unaware that violence comes with the package. The Colonial English of the 19th century were a splendid race and their exploits will ring forever in the minds of those few who continue to read history. As we enter the 21st century, however, it is possible that our ancestral traditions are a lost cause." Jeff Cooper's Commentaries Vol. 6, No. 6 June 1998 "We thought by now that everyone realized that the only acceptable response to the threat of lethal violence is immediate and savage counterattack. If you resist, you just may get killed. If you don't resist, you almost certainly will get killed. It is a tough choice, but there is only one right answer." Vol. 10, No. 12 November 2002Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper
"Research shows that too much of undergraduate science education has not gone beyond the highly discredited model that education is a process of information transmission, where the notes of the lecturer become the notes of the student without going through the minds of either."Jonathan Osborne, professor of science education at King's College London
02/Nov/2006 08:37
http://education.guardian.co.uk/gcses/story/0,,1923746,00.html
"Is "green" investing economic diversion or production? Life is holistic but success is in finding the right niche."Rm² 06/Nov/2006 10:09
"Freedom, as people enjoyed it in the democratic countries of Western civilization in the years of the old liberalism's triumph, was not a product of constitutions, bills of rights, laws, and statutes. Those documents aimed only at safeguarding liberty and freedom, firmly established by the operation of the market economy, against encroachments on the part of officeholders. No government and no civil law can guarantee and bring about freedom otherwise than by supporting and defending the fundamental institutions of the market economy."Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), Human Action, p. 283.
http://mises.org/story/2368
07/Nov/2006 18:30
"When you hold three aces (people, resources and land) and you're not winning, then someone's cheating you. For generations Scotland has been cheated by the 'British' political parties who talk glibly of 'National issues' when they mean 'English issues' and who only condescend to call Scots 'British' when they do something good."Jim Lynch
http://www.scotsindependent.org/features/quotations/quotations_3.htm
"I sought for merit wherever it could be found. It is my boast that I was the first minister who looked for it, and found it, in the mountains of the north. I called it forth, and drew into your service a hardy and intrepid race of men; men who, when left by your jealousy, became a prey to the artifices of your enemies, and had gone nigh to have overturned the State, in the war before last. These men, in the last war, were brought to combat on your side; they served with fidelity, as they fought with valour, and conquered for you in every quarter of the world." [emphasis added]William Pitt (the Elder), 1st Earl of Chatham (1707-1778): English Prime Minister (1757-61, 1766-68)
(From his famous eulogy on the Highland Regiments, delivered in Westminster 1766.)
(He is remembered for his vocal criticism of harsh British policy levied against the American colonies and his skills as a wartime leader during the Seven Years' War.)
http://www.scotsindependent.org/features/quotations/quotations_3.htm
...at least 700 brochs are known to have existed across Scotland, constructed and developed over the period between 600 BC and 100 AD. "To construct stable walls of such height, in unmortared masonry or undressed stones shaped only by splitting, called for an engineer's understanding of force and stress."Dr Raymond Lamb
http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/brochs/index.html
"After a shooting spree, [why do] they always want to take guns away from the people who didn't do it."William Burroughs, 1992
http://www.jpfo.org/alert20061031.htm#responses
08/Nov/2006 21:58
"...police have the highest accidental discharge rates from unsafe handling of any group of firearms users." "...peace officers are known within shooting circles nationwide as the most inaccurate and unsafe people at the range..."JC ibid.
...docs Emma Hern, Will Glazebrook and Mike Beckett of the West Middlesex University Hospital in London, according to a NY Times report, note with concern that "the rate of violent crime in Britain rose nearly 18 per cent from 2003 to 2004, and that in the first two weeks of 2005, 15 killings and 16 nonfatal attacks involved stabbings".http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/30/pointy_knives_can_kill/
10/Nov/2006 09:31
"This is what made me uneasy as I watched Sir! No Sir!, the documentary about the Vietnam War GI antiwar movement that was released earlier this year and took home a slew of film festival awards: the absolute certainty of the interviewees that what they did back then was 100 percent right and the unstated corollary that the rest of us who didn't do what they did were wrong." [emphasis added]Leepson, Marc. "One Side of the Picture: The GI Antiwar Movement." The VVA Veteran 26.5 (2006): 33.
5. Flying Scotsman - rude? let's avoid the issue. MURDER! 6. Captain Fantastic - do you really believe Thomas Lee Wood is capable of reflection? 7. jackitin - where do I apply? 14. jennie - Thomas Lee Wood will be right over for his first reading lesson. The process of being treated like a human being should start at birth. 17. Rob Moore - "It's not the thugs fault..." you've got to be kidding! 68. freetalkscotland - "it's also highly unlikely that he (Thomas Lee Wood) would murder again." And what do you base that statement on? I really don't care whether Mr Wood will murder again. I think he has adequately demonstrated his inability to function in a civilised society. 70. Canadian Prairie Girl - bullying may be a contributing cause in this case, but it so hard to tell because the UK government is the biggest bully on these sceptred isles. On 23 August 1305 the British government dealt with someone whom they believed was a serious threat to civilised society without anywhere near the legal safe guards that Mr Wood has enjoyed. I think Mr Wood has enjoyed consuming the earths finite resources long enough.http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1669482006#comment162596
"...the cure for local tyranny is not less decentralization but more. First, break up empires into states, states into counties, counties into wards, wards into townships, townships into neighborhoods, and so on down to the level of the sovereign individual."Roderick T. Long
http://www.mises.org/story/2374
13-Nov-2006 19:57
"Marine Corps Rules for Gun FightingJoe Carter
1. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns.
2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.
3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.
4. If your shooting stance is good, you're probably not moving fast enough nor using cover correctly.
5. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral and diagonal movement are preferred.)
6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a long gun and a friend with a long gun.
7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running.
9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on "pucker factor" than the inherent accuracy of the gun.
10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.
11. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
12. Have a plan.
13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won't work.
14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.
15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.
16. Don't drop your guard.
17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees.
18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. In God we trust. Everyone else, keep your hands where I can see them.
19. Decide to be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.
20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.
21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
22. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.
23. Your number one option for personal security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.
24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with a "4."
Navy Rules for Gun fighting:
1. Go to Sea
2. Send the Marines
3. Drink Coffee"
http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/003253.html
"Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools."Group Captain Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader, CBE, DSO and Bar, DFC and Bar, FRAeS, DL, LegH, CdeG, RAF (21 February 1910 ? 5 September 1982) double amputee Spitfire pilot WW2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Bader
19-Nov-2006 14:05
"A man's got to know his limitations."Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood): Magnum Force (1973).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070355/quotes
"The iron industry peaked by about 1871, at which time it employed nearly 40% of the Scottish workforce, and 25% of its' steam power. Between 1830 and 1847 Scottish iron production increased from 37,500 tons a year to 540,000 tons a year, providing the leading 27% of British iron production."http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/clydebridge/Brief%20History.html
23-Nov-2006 11:04
"Although mining is now only a very small industry in Britain, it is more productive than in France, Germany or in the United States. This serves as an exception to the usual "productivity gap" that exists between Britain and those other countries." [emphasis added]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners'_strike_(1984-1985)
"Russell M / 12:59pm 1 Dec 2006 [Choosing Scotland's most significant historical moment was not a political or economic exorcize. It was an emotional one, so using the arts of the head, accounting et. al., was not helpful. It was the great heart of the Scots that spoke. When people around the world are feeling persecuted with no hope of relief, what a stirring message. "And stood against him, Proud Edward's Army, And sent him homeward, Tae think again." That is pure emotion. It could also be called strength of heart. What else gave the Scots the notion that they could withstand a cavalry charge at Balaclava, harness fire and water to drive industry and transportation, understand the human body and economic interaction. Until the Union the loudest voice in Scottish ears said, "I can understand this, I can solve that, I can fix the other, I can do for myself." Without hope the human spirit dies. Maybe not this year, or this decade, or this century, but eventually the nanny state will self-destruct."]http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1781262006#comment203549
"The Labour Party in Scotland has done its damnedest to scupper Scottish independence. There's a parliament in Edinburgh because Labour thought it would spike the Nationalists' guns."Brian Walden
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6199034.stm
04-Dec-2006 16:59
Shortly before World War I, the German Kaiser was the guest of the Swiss government to observe military maneuvers. The Kaiser asked a Swiss militiaman: "You are 500,000 and you shoot well, but if we attack with 1,000,000 men what will you do?" The soldier replied: "We will shoot twice and go home."Stephen P. Halbrook, in an interview with Carlo Stagnaro
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/stagnaro5.html
[To insure Scotland's independence in perpetuity, when it is finally recovered from Westminster, reconstitute the Highland Regiments on the Swiss Model. Every Scottish citizen on reaching age 20 years old will be required to attend recruit school and issued an 'assault' rifle to keep at home. With this rifle, Scots are liable every hour, if the country calls, to defend their hearth, their home, their family, their birthplace. The weapon will be to the Scot a pledge and sign of honor and freedom. The Scot will not part with his weapon except by death or criminal misuse.]paraphrased from a statement by Stephen P. Halbrook
The state is terrified of productive, work-a-day citizens, who may someday awaken and put an end to its massive predations on their lives and property and maybe to the ruling class itself.paraphrased from " Imperialism and the Logic of War Making" by Joseph T. Salerno
http://www.mises.org/story/2405
["For the children is the cry. Children that will grow up and consume resources, even own a car, heaven forbid. The Green Party might consider rationalising their policies. On a global basis overpopulation and environmental carrying capacity has been under discussion since the 1970's. We may be running out of time to get it right. In this discussion minority rights and diversity have been put forth as reasons why this policy should become law. A noble sentiment but aren't we quite selective in which minorities we defend? Gun owners, more law abiding than the average citizen, are pillared and persecuted because a rare few violent criminals use guns to commit their horrendous acts. It has been suggested that children from alternative families of the past be consulted about the tradeoffs between a loving family and growing up being different. We, as a society call ourselves civilised, yet continue to make public policy on good intentions rather than sound research. We are caught in a trial and error loop. The more powerful the trials, i.e. no latitude in implementation at the local or individual level, the more damaging the errors. And errors will happen. We need to understand what the historical norm is and implement policies that would change it with great caution."]http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1822862006#comment217109
08-Dec-2006 20:54
"The earth trembled and a great rift appeared, separating the first man and woman from the rest of the animal kingdom. As the chasm grew deeper and wider, all the other creatures, afraid for their lives, returned to the forest — except for the dog, who after much consideration leapt the perilous rift to stay with the humans on the other side. His love for humanity was greater than his bond to other creatures, he explained, and he willingly forfeited his place in paradise to prove it." — Native American folktale From The Lost History of the Canine Race by Mary Elizabeth Thurston, Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City, 1996.http://www.terriertribe.com/ttribe.php
"Guns, Gun Ownership, & Right-to-Carry at All-Time Highs, Less "Gun Control," and Violent Crime at 30-Year Low" (in the USA) []http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=126 09-Dec-2006 23:13
[Most humans are predators — animals that live by killing and eating other animals. Sure, we don't participate in the actual killing of the animals, but we share in the product of that killing. Predation is the source of our intelligence. That intelligence has allowed us to become the most successful species on the planet. It has also given us an arrogance that we can solve any problem, even while ignoring the environment and our relationships with it. Relationships do not mean nothing dies, but do mean that each death serves a purpose. Will we, as a species, be able to take the next step by learning to share the environment with other species especially predators?](edited 1/1/2008)http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1833552006#comment220557
[As a warrior of the 'Cold War' and the Vietnam Era in the United States I am heartened by the triumph of humanity over nationalism, order and discipline in my grandfather's war. If only for a day. As #1. JSP, observes the political, military and media leadership made dam sure it never happened again through a campaign to dehumanize the enemy. Look at propaganda posters from every conflict since. If it were left to the real warriors (the fresh faced youth from the fields and factories), how many wars of aggression would be fought?]http://heritage.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1840222006#comment226508
[Do-gooders are foot soldiers in the war of cultural imperialism and sadly sometimes there are casualties. I pray that the police investigation finds Mr Pawan Bhardwaj innocent for his child's sake. I have concerns about the commitment of Ms Rachel Owen's (Mrs Pawan Bhardwaj) to her husband.]http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1843102006#comment226521
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1854992006#comment231642[From the story: "Wars and campaigns, triumphs and disasters have been shared equally with Scotland's Union partners."
Ah but if it were only so: The Scots were less than 12% of the United Kingdom population, yet suffered more than 25% of British casualties in World War I.
Scotland will do very well as an independent county if her neighbour to the south, that nation of shop keepers, will get over its jealousy and stop interfering. A jealousy first observed by William Pitt (the Elder), 1st Earl of Chatham (1707-1778): English Prime Minister (1757-61, 1766-68) in his famous eulogy on the Highland Regiments, delivered in Westminster 1766.
As for defence, Scotland should adopt the Swiss model of armed neutrality. Least anyone think this wee country would be ripe for the picking, we Scots are fiercely loyal friends and equally fierce enemies.
Wha daur meddle wi me?]
[If you love dogs, you'll love this site:]http://www.gentlegiantsrescue.com/
[On way for the majority to marginalize minorities is to belittle their belief systems. Because pedigree is important to the Gaels it's not surprising that "Britons" would find it unimportant. To give credibility to the heathen barbarians from the North would call into question many policies that have been issued by Whitehall over the centuries.]http://heritage.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1853412006#comment234095
"Etiquette is the barrier which society draws arounds itself as a protection against offenses the "law" cannot touch--" --Hints on Etiquette and the Usages of Society, 1836.http://www.ladiesofreenacting.com/Victorianetiquette.html [Social norms, standards, conventions) or etiquette have been used by the oligarchy to protect its position since the dawn of civilisation. Witness the romanticisation of Highland Scotland in the 19th Century. Precise rules of form and function effectively insured that there was not a revival of Gaelic Culture among the common folk.]
"When you consider the ranks of the enemies of free markets, you can feel overwhelmed. Who are they? The special interests who live off intervention are everywhere. The intellectuals can always score points at the expense of our liberties. The state's appetite for our taxes and its desire to control us are insatiable. When you consider the odds against freedom, it is a wonder that the darkness of tyranny hasn't been a permanent condition."http://www.mises.org/story/2394
"As terrible as it is to allow central planners to decide how and where to produce shoes, cars, or widgets and where to divert them, it is a bigger problem when central planners are given free rein to decide how force is to be used in all of society. Indeed, by capitulating to its monopoly on violence, we accept its very power to monopolize and socialize. Freedom is never secure so long as a ruling class of people is permitted to monopolize the very means of monopolization, from which further abuses of the market and liberty can only follow."http://www.mises.org/story/2423
"The average strength of a windmill was the same as that of a watermill - 5 to 10 horsepower."24-12-2006 21:23http://www.schoolsliaison.org.uk/astonhall/changingtimes/themes/inventions/ninvent.htm"The mill had a 50 horsepower potential."http://www.lemoulinduport.com/loirevalley/gite/Historique-eng.htm"A person, working a full day, can maintain 0.05 horsepower (somewhat less than 50 W). An ox can maintain about ten times that rate of working. A water mill might manage 5 horsepower, Watt's steam engine about a factor of ten more."http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0031-9120/35/2/205"The growth of mills was accompanied by the growth in the power of waterwheels. From the first half of the 18th century to the first half of the 19th century, the average horsepower increased 300% to 12-18 horsepower. the largest wheels were 60 and 70 feet in diameter and capable of producing upwards of 250 horsepower."http://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/essays/histbeth/vertical_waterwheel.html"Actually, until 1870 in America and much later elsewhere, the waterwheel performed a large part of the mechanical work of mankind. Americans built thousands of small mills, particularly along the rivers of the northeast. Although they developed only a few horsepower, these mills provided the motive power for sawing wood, milling flour and sugar, forging iron, tanning hides, carding wool, ginning cotton, and making paper, powder, linseed oil, and plaster." ~ Louts C. Hunter. A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1780-1930. Vol. 1, Waterpower in the Century of the Steam Engine. Charlottes-ville: The University Press of Virginia for the Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, 1979. xxv + 606 pp. Tables, illustrations, appendixes, and index. $24.95. as referenced in WATERMILLS AND THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY by Mark H. Rosehttp://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0048-7511(198103)9%3A1%3C34%3AWATHOA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D
"FEW features of modern life more worry the business community than the relentless torrent of regulation from the EU. For it is not Holyrood legislation that most concerns business, but the stream of directives from Brussels."Bill Jamieson
"Indeed, more than 70 per cent of "Westminster legislation" actually originates in Brussels. It is doubtless well intended. Some of it is good. But there is much that is badly drafted and blind to unintended consequence. "
"(the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter) Steinmeier added: "The need for institutional reform is urgent." He said there would be a "political declaration" on 25 March, followed by a draft of a constitution text in June to be adopted at the end of 2007 and ratified before the European elections in 2009."
"All this is based on a set of arrogant assumptions, not least of which is that Gordon Brown, as prime minister, would be able to push a new treaty through Parliament without a referendum, possibly bought off by the promise of CAP and EU budget reform."
"How comfortable are we in Scotland about a new EU constitution or, indeed, "independence within the EU"? One of the backers of the new ThinkScotland website, Professor Gavin Don, has posed the question: what place would an independent Scotland have in the European Union?"
[emphasis added]
The Scotsman, Tue 26 Dec 2006
http://premium.business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1911322006&resource=tssubscrip
[The following quotes were discovered by following links in Dave Kopel's free Second Amendment Project e-mail newsletter of December 27, 2006.
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Newsletter.htm ]
"The public tends to overestimate virtually any risk that the media harp on year after year."$100 Billion Mistake
"More adolescents die from high school football than from school shootings, but only the latter gets guaranteed front-page national coverage every time it occurs."
by Dave Kopel
http://davekopel.org/NRO/2002/hundred-billion-mistake.htm
"Given that handguns are made to be carried, he finds it illogical for laws to forbid lawful handgun owners from carrying their guns in public places."Shaky Aim
"Handgun Control, Inc. (renamed "the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence" after Vizzard's book was published) pursues an utterly illogical and opportunistic agenda, pushing whatever control du jour looks politically feasible, with no coherent vision of long-term policy (except, Vizzard admits, possibly satisfying many of its supporters' desire to ban gun ownership over the long term)."
"One Nation [by Arnie Grossman] can help readers better understand the dystopian world view which has convinced so many gun control advocates that anyone who disagrees with them must be insane, cowardly, or brainless."
by Dave Kopel
http://davekopel.org/NRO/2001/Shaky-Aim.htm
"http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Foreign/UN-To-World.htmU.N. To World: You Have No Human Right to Self-Defense
Thwarted by the demise of its global gun ban treaty, the United Nations declares the human right of self-defense null and void
by Dave Kopel
America's First Freedom, November 2006, pp. 26-29, 62-63.
"
"Irish homeowners should be allowed to kill intruders in order to defend their family and property"http://firstrung.co.uk/articles.asp?pageid=NEWS&articlekey=3397&cat=47-0-0
Firstrung represents the leading mortgage packager and distributor in the UK.
"71. Russell M, Stirling / 1:01am 29 Dec 2006 "You do not examine legislation in light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered." ~ Lyndon B. Johnson It is time for a written Bill of Rights for Scotland."http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1920582006#comment252702
"What's the difference between healing wounds and cover-up? Ford was nothing more than an oligarchic Good ol' Boy. With Ford's conditional pardon of draft evaders the stage was set for the ultimate betrayal of Vietnam Era Veterans by Jimmy Carter. Somebody's wounds may have been healed but for this Veteran of that Era those wounds eventually led to self imposed exile outwith the USA."http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1920302006#comment252708
"31. Russell M, Stirling / 9:59am 29 Dec 2006 "There doubtless are many causes for the loss of freedom, but surely a major cause has been the growth of government and its increasing control of our lives." - Milton Friedman - 1998 "Those who do not take an interest in public affairs are doomed to be ruled by evil men" - PLATO - 300 B.C."http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1924862006#comment252987
Even the directors of the East India Company admitted that "the vast fortunes acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most tyrannical and oppressive conduct that was ever known in any age or country."Albert Jay Nock (October 13, 1870 or 1872 — August 19, 1945)
"Democratic" State practice is nothing more or less than State practice. It does not differ from Marxist State practice, Fascist State practice, or any other. Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: you get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you. A citizenry which has learned that one short lesson has but little more left to learn.
The Criminality of the State
(This essay first appeared in The American Mercury in March 1939.)
http://www.mises.org/story/2352
[excerpt from] Jeff Cooper's Commentaries (Previously Gunsite Gossip)"Today, when we are inured to the idea of armed robbery and drive-by shootings, the aspect of the "Tottenham Outrage" that is most likely to shock is the fact that so many ordinary members of the public at that time should have been carrying guns in the street. Bombarded with headlines about an emergent "gun culture" in Britain now, we are apt to forget that the real novelty is the notion that the general populace in this country should be disarmed."
"Restrictive "gun control" in Britain is a recent experiment, in which the progressive "toughening" of the regulation of legal gun ownership has been followed by an increasingly dramatic rise in violent armed crime. Eighty-four years after the legal availability of pistols was restricted to Firearm Certificate holders, and seven years after their private possession was generally prohibited, they still figure in 58 percent of armed crimes. Home Office evidence to the Dunblane Inquiry prior to the handgun ban indicated that there was an annual average of just two incidents in which licensed pistols appeared in crime. If, as the Home Office still asserts, "there are links between firearms licensing and armed crime," the past century of Britain's experience has shown the link to be a sharply negative one."
"Britain was a safer country without our present system of denying firearms to the law-abiding, is deregulation an option? That is precisely the course that has been pursued, with conspicuous success in combating violent crime, in the United States."
"Issue of the new permits to law-abiding citizens was non-discretionary, and of course aroused a furore among gun control advocates, who predicted that blood would flow in the streets. The prediction proved false; Florida's homicide rate dropped, and firearms abuse by permit holders was virtually non-existent. State after state followed Florida's suit, and mandatory right-to-carry policies are now in place in 35 of the United States."
"In a nationwide survey of the impact of the legislation, John Lott and David Mustard of the University of Chicago found that by 1992, right-to-carry states had already seen an 8 percent reduction in murders, 7 percent reduction in aggravated assaults, and 5 percent reduction in rapes. Extrapolating from the 10 states that had then implemented the policy, Lott and Mustard calculated that had right-to-carry legislation been nationwide, an annual average of some 1,400 murders, 4,200 rapes and more than 60,000 aggravated assaults might have been averted. The survey has lent further support to the research of Professor Kleck, of Florida State University, who found that firearms in America serve to deter crime at least three times as often as they appear in its commission."
"Over the last 25 years the number of firearms in private hands in the United States has more than doubled. At the same time the violent crime rate has dropped dramatically, with the significant downswing following the spread of right-to-carry legislation. The US Bureau of Justice observes that "firearms-related crime has plummeted since 1993," and it has declined also as a proportion of overall violent offences. Violent crime in total has declined so much since 1994 that it has now reached, the bureau states, "the lowest level ever recorded." While American "gun culture" is still regularly the sensational subject of media demonisation in Britain, the grim fact is that in this country we now suffer three times the level of violent crime committed in the United States."
"Today, on this anniversary of the "Tottenham Outrage (23 January 1909)," it is appropriate that we reflect upon how the objects of outrage in Britain have changed within a lifetime. If we now find the notion of an armed citizenry anathema, what might the Londoners of 1909 have made of our own violent, disarmed society?"
Volume Thirteen, Special Edition
February 2005
UK Report
http://www.dvc.org.uk/jeff/ukreport.html