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 topic archives: civil liberties
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V-2004: 23VI-2004: 28 29 |
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disarming the british public and the rise of crime “ By 1953, the English were effectively disarmed — and compounding the insult, courts began prosecuting people for previously legal (and even encouraged) acts of violence in defense of persons and property. In the future, only the police were to use violence, and even they tended to be quite lenient toward violent criminals. “In a "coincidence" that will surprise few readers who are familiar with the work of criminologists like John Lott and Gary Kleck, English crime rates almost immediately began a steady rise, for the first time in 500 years. The overall crime rate in England and Wales is now 60 percent higher than in the United States. And it wasn't just crime in general: Gun crimes became far more common as well. As Malcolm notes:
The disarming of the British public has continued by small attacks for much of a century. The first major move was the Firearms Act of 1920. This link gives a detailed historical background.
Both links thanks to Alan Goss. related material the web address for the article above
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fighting for civil liberties in the uk There have been a series of rather foolish and ill-informed comments recently concerning ‘hippies’. I shall attempt to inform on some aspects of the history in the United Kingdom. This is a history that goes back even before the time when Margaret Thatcher (among others) was involved in the attack on civil liberties. A society does not maintain its freedom by copping out. The people, often labelled as hippies, and more recently as travellers, have been fighting the battle for free assembly for much of the last 40 years. Here is a small part of that history. Be assured there is a great deal more which never reaches your controlled, censored media. Start here for a crude historical background. And here is the battle of the beanfield:
This comment encapsulates very precisely and tellingly an extremely common response of those caught up firsthand in the sort of behaviour described. This should help people understand how only very few stand up when state-perpetrated violence starts. The managers of the states realise this full well. Those who criticise Iraqis for their fear have not been there. There are very few heroes who simply will not lie down. The state often kills those if they can, or imprisons them and throws away the key. Being cavalier with your freedoms is of the ultimate foolishness. Your government is working night and day to remove your freedoms. Once lost, you will find it far harder than now to get them back. Now this year, we have: Thousands gather at Stonehenge
What is vital to notice is that, through persistence through decades, the police state in the UK has been steadily forced back by these people; not yet to the original state of innocence, but the state is losing against the stead pressure by those some wish to revile. The power of the media to control the thought processes of the sheep should be noted. Freedom is worth serious efforts, in whichever country. Further relevant background: Understanding so-called hippies and travellers in the UK A preponderance of these people have come out of the upper-middle classes. They are very often spoilt children who have picked up a few socialist slogans. To a degree, they do not know how to tidy up after themselves. However, one of the common tricks of the media and the police is, fully purposefully and actively, to stop any clearing up and, in fact, to strew around rubbish already gathered for photographing and demonising. Further, the police have been known to set fires and to slash at trees to increase the appearance of bad conduct. Smashing up homes in the pretence of ‘searching’ has also been commonplace. These middle-class wanna-be ecological hippies are unaware of the major effects of sewage systems, rubbish collections and energy deliveries. They often start of with the best of intentions, and then gradually realise how very difficult it is to produce substantial quantities of food without powerful ploughs, pesticides and fertilisers. So they ‘find themselves’ living off the dole and trying to justify it in terms of their ‘left-wing’ ‘philosophy’. Then, as these middle-class kids grow up, they will not put up with the crap government schools for their children, because they have often been raised to much higher expectations. So they are drawn back into a more conventional lifestyle. At the centre of their attitudes is becoming so disgusted with society that they decide to throw out baby with bathwater. Then they try to rebuild their lives from basics. Reinventing the wheel and understanding the complexity of modern ‘civilisation’ is no easy task for the brightest, let alone people who often have little in the way of practical skills usable outside a complex society. All this does not mean that the society against which they are ‘rebelling’ is any less disgusting or sleazy. It does mean that you have to rebase education and gain real and serious skills if you want to do anything about the mess. It is all to easy for the more shallow members of society to whine in ‘superior’ tones and mock ‘failures’ of the travellers and hippies. I would be more impressed if those who are negative about them had more to offer than shallow ranting. Most of the would-be hippies are indeed shallow and foolish, but that applies widely in this corrupt society. But at least the hippies try, or tried until throwing up their hands and reverting to
That they do‘give up’ is, in my view, a disgrace of weak minds; but is it not better than never to have noticed the trash society around them? Further, often they do revert to lesser and more achievable ambitions, like attempting to bring up children to better sensitivity and understanding. Thay also seek to gain a better education for those children than they obtained themselves and against which they rebelled. Thus, the next lot is better placed to be more able to contribute to a future, improved society. This is, after all, what sane and good people have tried and achieved down the ages. This is what gave us the bounty we now have. There is much to be done, and the pub-whiners are not contributing to that. What is much more to the point would be more people making focused and concentrated efforts to prepare a better more sane future. related material the web address for the article above is |
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