Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Potty Training.

Religion of Pieces sends along the first item for discussion in this day's post. Britain is gone potty. The people had to learn this kind of madness over the course of years to be so adeptly loony. If you're not nuts, then for God's sake, seek counseling. You can learn to be insane.
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The police are here, and they have some bad news for us. The bad news is that they are controlled by hippies. You, dear reader, had better get over it and lose that attitude or you might well find yourself facing some very strict corrective measures. None of that, now.
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Police offer terror suspects help

Liaison officers already help relatives of serious crime victims

Police family liaison officers are to be assigned to help relatives of terrorist suspects deal with the aftermath of an arrest or raid.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said the move could help reduce community tensions after high-profile anti-terrorist operations.

A dedicated team may include Muslim officers and community volunteers.

Acpo said the plans had been discussed for some time but were given fresh impetus by the recent Forest Gate raid.

It is established practice for a specially trained officer to help families of murder victims and serious crimes.

Police apology

They liaise between the family and investigation team, as well as dealing with media enquiries and court visits.

But Acpo says families of people arrested for terrorism offences should also have liaison officers because of the "major stigma" they suffered.

Earlier this month, brothers Abul Koyair, 20, and Mohammed Abdul Kahar, 23, were the subject of a anti-terror raid by police in Forest Gate, east London, in which the latter was shot.

The men spent several days in custody following the raid.

They were later released without charge.

Metropolitan Police's Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman later released a statement in which he apologised for the "hurt" officers may have caused the men.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5119548.stm
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One of England's finest writers, Thomas Hobbes, lived through and wrote about a time similar to ours, the English Civil War. It the aftermath, Hobbes turned his mind to civil society and its organisation. We've lost it. Our world is pre-Hobbesian, and we must get it back, the sense of law for people.

A terrible stylist and another of England's greatest thinkers, J.S. Mill wrote during yet another English revolution, the Industrial Revolution. He wrote on Liberty. Ours is a post-Millian world, and we must get it back, the sense of people for the law.

Today we have hippies running amok in the Halls of State. Below we have what might be mere historical trivia on the history of the police in England; but we should consider the importance ot their tasks and the evolution of their profession to see where we stand in relation to it as citizens. Are we coming to a confrontation with our forces of law and order, our courts and police to the point we will have to act ultra vires? When the police are hippies, what of the people and the civil society they are meant to protect?

When felonious action is self-assertion against oppression by an unjust state and when self-defence by a civil person is a felony, then where do the people stand? If legitimate citizenship is latent criminality, if citizenship is a priori oppression, then where do the people stand?
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The period from 1674 to 1834 witnessed the transformation of policing in London from a system reliant on private individuals and part-time officials for apprehending criminals to the development of salaried officials and semi-official "thief-takers", and eventually a modern professionalised police system. In the process the mechanisms by which the people tried at the Old Bailey were identified and apprehended was radically transformed, and ultimately brought under the control of the state.

The Role of Private Individuals Throughout the period 1674 to 1834 many victims of crime were able to identify the culprits and secure their arrest by contacting a constable or justice of the peace. Those who witnessed a felony had a legal obligation to arrest those responsible for the crime, and to notify a constable or justice of the peace if they heard that such a crime had taken place. Moreover, if summoned by a constable to join the "hue and cry", inhabitants were required to join in the pursuit of any escaping felon.

Although these legal obligations were rarely enforced during this period, Londoners continued to help apprehend suspected criminals. As the Proceedings frequently illustrate, cries of "stop thief!" or "murder!" from victims often successfully elicited assistance from passersby in preventing crimes or apprehending suspects. It seems likely, however, that this sense of individual responsibility for law enforcement was eroded over the century, as increasing numbers of men were paid to carry out this task. For example, victims paid 'thief-takers' to locate and apprehend suspects. The difficulties the authorities had in identifying and apprehending criminals led them, too, to offer rewards to thief-takers and others, and pardons to accomplices who were willing to turn in their partners, for activities which contributed to the conviction of the perpetrators of serious crimes. Increasingly, ordinary Londoners left the task of turning in criminals to groups of people who were motivated to do so by the prospect of financial or other rewards. [....]

The Metropolitan Police, 1829

In the first decades of the nineteenth century attempts to combat crime shifted back towards the prevention of crime, as opposed to the detection of criminals. New horse and foot patrols were introduced both at night and during the day, and these men were frequently referred to as "police". Efforts to rationalise and further extend London's system of policing, which date back to the mid-eighteenth century, were finally successful in 1829 with the passage of Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police Act. This set up a centralised police force of 3,000 men under the control of the Home Secretary, with responsibility for policing the entire metropolitan area except the City of London. Uniformed and carrying truncheons, the new "Bobbies" (named after Peel) were expected to patrol the streets on prescribed beats, so frequently that there would be no opportunity to carry out crimes.

www.oldbaileyonline.org/.../crime/policing.html
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Mill writes of the legitimate democracy as protecting the right of the minority in the face of majority rule. The minority of voters in the West are civil. Too few. The minority are law-abiding and public. If their rights are violated by the majority unjustly, then the minority has a right and a duty to rebel against their oppression. Hobbes understands it, and so too does Mill. Only the hippies don't get it. The hippies and the vast majority of English voters.

We are subject to the laws of our lands even if some of those laws are illegitimate. We are subject to the laws even if they are all illegitimate. We are subject to the law because we choose privately to remain in the bounds of the land of law. So long as we have a right to leave or to change the laws by law, then we are bound. But there is a limit. the law never has a right to kill us, even if we are certainly guilty of heinous crimes. We have a right and duty to struggle for life regardless. That is the premier law of life. It transcends all others.
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Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), the son of a wealthy Lancashire mill owner, created in Ireland the model for policing systems in the rest of the British Isles. He later became a reforming Prime Minister and one of Britain's most important statesmen. His critical role in the development of policing has been immortalized by the common use of the names 'Bobbies' and 'Peelers' for the police.

www.psni.police.uk/.../pg_sir_robert_peel.htm
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We still have a right to vote in our lands. We still have a right to abandon them if we so choose. We have no legitimate right to take the law into our own hands until such time as we are faced with harm. We, like others in our lands's histories, face crises in our time. We must cope. We must seek counseling.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The British state, like the Canadian state, never tires of reasons to show up on a bloke's doorstep. Have you seen the latest?

England and Wales are developing a data base to monitor every child. They will track children for assorted "concerns" and developmental targets.

They will even being tracking whether a child is receiving the required servings of vegetables each day will be monitored.

Teachers, doctors, and police will be expected to regularly 'rat' on parents, providing information to the state about their children.

A points system will be used and if a child is short of points in three categories, their name will be red flagged and an investigation launched. Your child had better be making progress toward state targets or the state will be making progress toward your doorstep.

Aspects of this new system sound frighteningly Canadian. According to an article in the Vancovuer Sun on Monday, Dr. Eileen Munro, of the London School of Economics, criticized the planned investigative processes, claiming that they "would include subjective judgments such as 'Is the parent providing a positive role model?', as well as sensitive information such as a parent's mental health."

Subjective judgements generating sensitive information are a big money-maker for unionized social workers, psych nurses, and street workers on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. They show up at a person's home unannounced, look around and perform a housekeeping assessement. Dishes in the sink? Haven't vacuumed in a week? You've got a permanent psych file filled with "sensitive" information.
But why wait until a person is an adult to saddle them with a permanent psych file? Why not start young? The mental health establishment in Canada is now pushing to have every toddler targeted for a mental health assessment so that "treatment" can start early. That's why I'm against universal daycare in Canada. As soon as Jim Sinclair, head of the BC Federation of Labour, gets his unionized workers in place in the day care, he will prop open the door for the mental health 'teams' and the social workers. They will not have fully mined the Canadian population for client files until they have toddlers propping up the Prozac Nation.

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Dag said...

Thanks, Gyn Singh. My friend, Mandrake tells me you are one serious guy, and I certainly believe it.