D-FENS

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Unmitigated ferocity, here I come
What is the right thing to do in the face of anti-social behaviour? It's a question being asked after the deaths of a number of people who decided to step in to stop what they saw as troublemakers. Here broadcaster Jeremy Vine explains why for him, sitting back is no longer an option.
An honest, self-searching piece from Vine recounting a nasty incident on a train when he did nothing to intervene while another man got the shit punched out of him.

The main problem ordinary, non-violent people have when faced with someone threatening violence is that they are generally incapable of switching quickly into an extremely aggressive state. If the threat to you or another is serious enough you have to be prepared to take instant, drastic, violent action in order to disable the assailant. Even when taught where and how to strike most people are reluctant to do physical harm to others, even in situations where they themselves are in severe danger.

PowerTips!

Punching someone in the face is likely to damage your hand more than it damages them. A punch in the gob is rarely disabling but a broken hand definitely is. Use the heel of your hand, unless you know how to punch. No matter how well built and muscular your assailant is there are certain parts of the body which no amount of training will strengthen. Knees, feet, the font of the neck, the eyes, the region directly under the nose above the top lip, the jugular, the groin (ever seen a heavyweight boxer floored by a low punch?) and the kidneys. Truth is that most fights end up on the ground as glorified wrestling matches. Stay on your feet, even if it is just so you can run away!

What about weapons for self defence?

In reality, even if your intention is to defend yourself you are likely to be accused of possessing an 'offensive' weapon if you walk around with a baton or a pepper spray (illegal in the UK). Ways around this? Well, I collect 1p and 2p pieces and give them to the beggers in the main street. I keep them in a knotted sock. Now, should I get attacked before I get a chance to donate my stash of copper that attacker will get a sharp thump from a very effective cosh. Here's another ploy. You need a new curtain pole, right? You've got a piece of paper in your pocket with the measurements on it, right? And a small sample of the wooden pole, say six or seven inches long, right? Believe it or not, you now have something much more effective than a baton and barely visible to an assailant. Just an inch sticking out from each end while you grasp it in the centre is all you need to deliver a stunning blow to the head, hands or chest. You can use a piece of broomhandle.

In most cases all you need is to stop your assailant for long enough for you to escape. Shout, swear, show aggression. Don't get into a fight. He may have friends nearby. Just get the hell out of there!


So what?

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Lawrence killer to remain in UK
The man who knifed head teacher Philip Lawrence to death has been allowed to stay in the UK after winning an appeal against deportation. Learco Chindamo, 26, is serving a life sentence for killing Mr Lawrence outside his London school in 1995. Chindamo's lawyers argued that deporting him to Italy, where he was born, would breach his human rights. Mr Lawrence's widow said she was "unutterably depressed" by the ruling, adding, "I feel I can't survive this".
Had Chindamo been born in the UK (as most murderers convicted in British courts are) the question of his deportation would never have arisen and Mrs Lawrence, for whom I have tremendous sympathy, would have had to come to terms with the release of her husband's killer onto the streets, just as the families of almost every other murder victim have to come to terms under similar circumstances.

And, of course, we have the 'life must mean life' cry -Alan Gordon, vice-chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales said: "The fact that he may be paroled and back on our the streets as early as next year is in itself disgusting. Life should mean life."  Life has never meant life, even in the days of hanging, when a killer who's death sentence had been commuted could expect to serve, on average, LESS time in prison than nowadays.

This is just a bit of racism. Chindamo is a darkie dago and therefore should be 'sent back'.



By popular demand

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Thousands of protesters are expected to arrive today at a controversial "climate change camp" near Heathrow Airport.

Daily Telegraph 13/08/2007

The day of direct action began at noon with a peaceful march to the centre of Harmondsworth, a village which will be affected by the proposed third runway...Speakers, including the Guardian columnist George Monbiot and John McDonnell MP, addressed about 300 locals and protesters from the camp.The Guardian19/08/2007




5 Star (armchair) General

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It takes more than just the army to win
What I find so infuriating about the situation in Southern Iraq is that it was all so avoidable.
It is not like Britain lacks the troops to send in order to apply the needed force to Basra and its environs. What exactly are the 23,000 British soldiers defending Rheindahlen, Saxony and Westphalia from at the moment? It is extraordinary that the standard response to things getting rough militarily these days is not to reinforce but rather to cut back in-theatre thereby increasing the pressure of those troops left behind... hardly an approach calculated to bring success.

It takes more than just the army to win...It takes a bigger army! Send more troops! After all, it worked in Vietna...erm.

The sarfest

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diamond geezer - Compass points

When you think of South London you probably don't think of rolling cornfields and verdant hedgerows. But that's exactly what the southernmost tip of London is like, 15 miles due south of Charing Cross, down on the border between Croydon and Surrey.See the tree marked in my photograph with a green circle? That's as far south as Ken Livingstone's influence extends. It's the spot in London closest to the equator, where the sun rises highest in the sky during the summer, and where daylight is longest in midwinter. Of all the locations south of the river, it's the ultimate place that black cab drivers will never take you.
Ah, Happy Valley and Farthing Downs...sweet memories.


The Moron Report

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Tygerland has a video of Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, who claims that Web 2.0 is destroying culture and eroding moral values.

This reviewer at Amazon sums up Keen pretty well:
Andrew Keen is that classic sort of British reactionary: the sort that would bemoan the loss of the word "gay" to the English language, and regret the damage caused by industrial vacuum cleaners on the chimney sweeping industry. His book is impassioned, but simple-minded, harkening to those simpler times which concludes that our networked economy has pointlessly exalted the amateur, ruined the livelihood of experts, destroyed incentives for creating intellectual property, delivered to every man-jack amongst us the ability - never before possessed - to create and distribute our own intellectual property and monkeyed around mischievously with the title to property wrought from the very sweat of its author's brow.
And this comment made me smile:
I also find it mildly amusing, that while prepping for his appearance on the Colbert Report, Keen thought it would be a wise idea to reach out for suggestions on how to effectively debate Stephen Colbert (read above) on the very same "internet" he was going on the show to speak out against... on the very same web page which is (promoting) his book that purports the very same ideology... which is being sold over the FRIGGIN INTERNET...
Game, set and match!


Seven U.S. soldiers speak

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The Iraq war as we see it - International Herald Tribune
Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched.

As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins.


The Great Leap Under

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Dead stockbrokers: Lenin on the 'impending crash':
...it isn't simply the antics of a clutch of lenders seeking risky profit that has been driving this crisis, and it will take more than a reining in of investors to solve the problem.

Short of a generalised labour insurgency, the likely means to accomplish this will be an attack on wages and conditions. Gordon Brown's attempted pay cuts for public sector workers is certainly part of the means of handling this without making any curtailments on the privileges of investors or their profits, which is one reason why the fightback by posties is so important. It's also probable that New Labour will ratchet up attacks on immigrants and asylum seekers as a way out of its inevitable difficulties.

The US government's way out, which Brown is very likely to support, will presumably be to aggressively push to broaden its global hegemony so as to ensure greater market access, either militarily or through subversion. And if there is to be any kind of germinal radicalism or militancy, the US is busily expanding its forms of domestic repression...