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The fact Belgian newspapers want it to be harder to find the content they put on the internet is weird (why bother having an on-line presence at all then?), the fact they went to court to force Google to stop driving traffic to their sites is bizarre, the fact a Belgian court found against Google is insane.

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Miss Czech Republic 1999 to be exact. She also has a charity for impoverished children that operates in nine different countries. Talk about a heart of gold and the hair to go with it, eh? This woman visited Cuba, the real Cuba, to get a sense of whether or not her charity could help people there. What she found made her squeamish.

Not only did she find tens of thousands of people living in shantytowns, children starving in the streets, and HIV-positive workers forced into psychiatric wards, but that the Cuban secret police didn’t want anyone to know about it. So when they caught her taking photos and tried to sieze her camera, she resisted and was arrested for eleven hours without access to the Czech consulate. Then she did what every revolution babe does and hid the camera chip in her bra!

And unlike other NGO-types and EU bureaucrats, this woman knows the deal. She opened an exhibit featuring the photos she took and used it as a platform to denounce the inhumanity of the Castro regime: “People can’t do what they love. People can’t speak what they want… That’s what’s happening. The fact that the [government] says there is no poverty [only makes it worse].”

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The number of attacks on mosques, as he pointed out, had been exaggerated. The number of Iraqi deaths had been exaggerated. The behavior of the Iraqi security forces had been mischaracterized in some instances. And I guess that is to say nothing of the apparently inaccurate and harmful reports of U.S. military conduct in connection with a bus filled with passengers in Iraq.

Interestingly, all of the exaggerations seem to be on one side. It isn't as though there simply have been a series of random errors on both sides of issues. On the contrary, the steady stream of errors all seem to be of a nature to inflame the situation and to give heart to the terrorists and to discourage those who hope for success in Iraq.

And then I notice today that there's been a public opinion poll reporting that the readers of these exaggerations believe Iraq is in a civil war -- a majority do, which I suppose is little wonder that the reports we've seen have had that effect on the American people. [...]

Q Mr. Secretary, I'd like to clear up exactly what you're saying here. Are you saying that this poll and that what you call the rush toward declaring civil war in Iraq, is that the result of intentional misreporting of the situation there?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I can't go into people's minds. All I'm doing is reporting on what we've seen. General Casey pointed out to this group here that he believes -- his data shows that the numbers of mosque attacks and the nature of the attacks and the severity of the attacks have been considerably exaggerated and that the number of civilian Iraqis that have been killed or wounded has been exaggerated.

And -- now, why someone or whoever did this, I have no way to judge. I'm not going to judge them. It's just a fact that he is saying that, and I believe he's correct.

Q But you said, Sir, that -- I believe that the reporting was virtually one-sided. Does that mean --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, the interesting thing about it is they all seem to be of a kind. All the things that have later been corrected or need to be corrected or that he believes were exaggerated all seem to be on one side of the equation. We don't see the similar thing on the other side, which you normally would get in some kind of a random spread, one would think.

Q Well, do you believe that the media's been duped by the situation or doesn't understand it or what?

SEC. RUMSFELD: All I'm doing is reporting. I'm just reporting the facts. (Laughter.) The facts are as I've stated them.

Q Mr. Secretary?

SEC. RUMSFELD: You'll have to draw your own conclusions about it.

Simultaneous bombs exploded in a crowded temple in one of the country’s holiest cities. One of the entire religion’s holiest cities, no less. In a country where rival ethnic and religious groups have frequently clashed for years, the bombing raises the prospect of reprisal sectarian violence. It is holding together for the most part, but nobody knows what could happen next.

Hey, wait a second, this isn’t Iraq? And it isn’t the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra? I’ll give you one guess, but only if you don’t look at the post’s category tags. That’s right. India.

Known as the largest democracy in the world, India may not be as liberal as its Western counterparts, but it flies in the face of all structural theories of democratization. GDP per capita is incredibly low, much lower than the threshold of about $6000 for maintaining a democracy under modernization theory. It is also composed of competing religious groups — Hindus and Muslims — with Hindus comprising the vast majority. There are also different ethnic groups, with the Sikh minority being the target of mob violence for years. Heck, there’s even an enormous conflict with Pakistan over that little disputed territory of Kashmir.

Judging by the past 60 years of independence, India has been on the constant brink of civil war. Hindus and Muslims killing each other, local officials sponsoring the mass killing of the Sikhs, the possibility of nuclear annihilation. The bombing of the Hindu temple in Varanasi is just the latest in a series of conflicts. Yet in reality, the country is a functioning democracy that has held together through it all and is now growing into a powerful and more stable nation.

One day, the same will happen for Iraq. It could be 60 years from now before the Shia and Sunnis draw back on their past experience of co-existence, and before the Kurds decide that living within some arbitrarily drawn country called “Iraq” isn’t so bad. But waiting for history to move in this direction is too long to wait. Men like Gandhi did not wait. They acted. What is happening in Iraq now is action toward building a peaceful and democratic country ahead of schedule so that one day the entire region can draw from its lessons.

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Why do I put aside Israel and its own immediate neighborhood? Because Israel and any problems related to it, in spite of what you might read or hear in the world media, is not the central issue, and has never been the central issue in the upheaval in the region. Yes, there is a 100 year-old Israeli-Arab conflict, but it is not where the main show is. The millions who died in the Iran-Iraq war had nothing to do with Israel. The mass murder happening right now in Sudan, where the Arab Moslem regime is massacring its black Christian citizens, has nothing to do with Israel. The frequent reports from Algeria about the murders of hundreds of civilian in one village or another by other Algerians have nothing to do with Israel. Saddam Hussein did not invade Kuwait, endangered Saudi Arabia and butchered his own people because of Israel. Egypt did not use poison gas against Yemen in the 60's because of Israel. Assad the Father did not kill tens of thousands of his own citizens in one week in El Hamma in Syria because of Israel. The Taliban control of Afghanistan and the civil war there had nothing to do with Israel. The Libyan blowing up of the Pan-Am flight had nothing to do with Israel, and I could go on and on and on.

The root of the trouble is that this entire Moslem region is totally dysfunctional, by any standard of the word, and would have been so even if Israel would have joined the Arab league and an independent Palestine would have existed for 100 years. The 22 member countries of the Arab league, from Mauritania to the Gulf States, have a total population of 300 millions, larger than the US and almost as large as the EU before its expansion. They have a land area larger than either the US or all of Europe. These 22 countries, with all their oil and natural resources, have a combined GDP smaller than that of Netherlands plus Belgium and equal to half of the GDP of California alone. Within this meager GDP, the gaps between rich and poor are beyond belief and too many of the rich made their money not by succeeding in business, but by being corrupt rulers. The social status of women is far below what it was in the Western World 150 years ago. Human rights are below any reasonable standard, in spite of the grotesque fact that Libya was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights commission. According to a report prepared by a committee of Arab intellectuals and published under the auspices of the U.N., the number of books translated by the entire Arab world is much smaller than what little Greece alone translates. The total number of scientific publications of 300 million Arabs is less than that of 6 million Israelis. Birth rates in the region are very high, increasing the poverty, the social gaps and the cultural decline. And all of this is happening in a region, which only 30 years ago, was believed to be the next wealthy part of the world, and in a Moslem area, which developed, at some point in history, one of the most advanced cultures in the world. [...]

What is behind the suicide murders? Money, power and cold-blooded murderous incitement, nothing else. It has nothing to do with true fanatic religious beliefs. No Moslem preacher has ever blown himself up. No son of an Arab politician or religious leader has ever blown himself. No relative of anyone influential has done it. Wouldn't you expect some of the religious leaders to do it themselves, or to talk their sons into doing it, if this is truly a supreme act of religious fervor? Aren't they interested in the benefits of going to Heaven? Instead, they send outcast women, naive children, retarded people and young incited hotheads. They promise them the delights, mostly sexual, of the next world, and pay their families handsomely after the supreme act is performed and enough innocent people are dead.

Suicide murders also have nothing to do with poverty and despair. The poorest region in the world, by far, is Africa. It never happens there. There are numerous desperate people in the world, in different cultures, countries and continents. Desperation does not provide anyone with explosives, reconnaissance and transportation. There was certainly more despair in Saddam's Iraq then in Paul Bremmer's Iraq, and no one exploded himself. A suicide murder is simply a horrible, vicious weapon of cruel, inhuman, cynical, well-funded terrorists, with no regard to human life, including the life of their fellow countrymen, but with very high regard to their own affluent well-being and their hunger for power. [...]

The second ingredient is words, more precisely lies. Words can be lethal. They kill people. It is often said that politicians, diplomats and perhaps also lawyers and business people must sometimes lie, as part of their professional life. But the norms of politics and diplomacy are childish, in comparison with the level of incitement and total absolute deliberate fabrications, which have reached new heights in the region we are talking about. An incredible number of people in the Arab world believe that September 11 never happened, or was an American provocation or, even better, a Jewish plot. [...]

But words also work in other ways, more subtle. A demonstration in Berlin, carrying banners supporting Saddam's regime and featuring three-year old babies dressed as suicide murderers, is defined by the press and by political leaders as a "peace demonstration". You may support or oppose the Iraq war, but to refer to fans of Saddam, Arafat or Bin Laden as peace activists is a bit too much. A woman walks into an Israeli restaurant in mid-day, eats, observes families with old people and children eating their lunch in the adjacent tables and pays the bill. She then blows herself up, killing 20 people, including many children, with heads and arms rolling around in the restaurant. She is called "martyr" by several Arab leaders and "activist" by the European press. Dignitaries condemn the act but visit her bereaved family and the money flows.

There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media. These words are much more dangerous than many people realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities. It was Joseph Goebbels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors. [...]

Do you raid a mosque, which serves as a terrorist ammunition storage? Do you return fire, if you are attacked from a hospital? Do you storm a church taken over by terrorists who took the priests hostages? Do you search every ambulance after a few suicide murderers use ambulances to reach their targets? Do you strip every woman because one pretended to be pregnant and carried a suicide bomb on her belly? Do you shoot back at someone trying to kill you, standing deliberately behind a group of children? Do you raid terrorist headquarters, hidden in a mental hospital? Do you shoot an arch-murderer who deliberately moves from one location to another, always surrounded by children? All of these happen daily in Iraq and in the Palestinian areas. What do you do? Well, you do not want to face the dilemma. But it cannot be avoided.

Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that someone would openly stay in a well-known address in Teheran, hosted by the Iranian Government and financed by it, executing one atrocity after another in Spain or in France, killing hundreds of innocent people, accepting responsibility for the crimes, promising in public TV interviews to do more of the same, while the Government of Iran issues public condemnations of his acts but continues to host him, invite him to official functions and treat him as a great dignitary. I leave it to you as homework to figure out what Spain or France would have done, in such a situation.

The problem is that the civilized world is still having illusions about the rule of law in a totally lawless environment. It is trying to play ice hockey by sending a ballerina ice-skater into the rink or to knock out a heavyweight boxer by a chess player. In the same way that no country has a law against cannibals eating its prime minister, because such an act is unthinkable, international law does not address killers shooting from hospitals, mosques and ambulances, while being protected by their Government or society. International law does not know how to handle someone who sends children to throw stones, stands behind them and shoots with immunity and cannot be arrested because he is sheltered by a Government.

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SRINAGAR, India, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Police in Indian Kashmir fired teargas on Tuesday to disperse hundreds of Muslims protesting the magazine publication of a picture of a playing card showing an image of Mecca, police and witnesses said. They said at least 10 protesters were detained.

More than 400 Muslim youths gathered near Lal Chowk, in the heart of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, shouting "La Ilaha Illallah" (there is no god but Allah) ... down with India Today."

In its latest issue, the weekly published pictures of playing cards, one showing an image of Mecca. The protesters are angry because gambling is forbidden by Islam. Youths pelted police with stones and set fire to copies of the magazine, witnesses said.

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I quite like the idea "you can either work for the state and live of other people's money or you can vote, but not both". Not a chance that would happen any time soon but it is a damn fine idea nevertheless. In truth I suspect many people would be happy to make that choice as voting is hardly some blessed sacrament. If so many people do not really care about liberty, are they really so attached to voting? I wonder.

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Two years ago, a 23-year-old Paris disc jockey called Sebastien Selam was heading off to work from his parents' apartment when he was jumped in the parking garage by his Muslim neighbor Adel. Selam's throat was slit twice, to the point of near-decapitation; his face was ripped off with a fork; and his eyes were gouged out. Adel climbed the stairs of the apartment house dripping blood and yelling, "I have killed my Jew. I will go to heaven."

Is that an gripping story? You'd think so. Particularly when, in the same city, on the same night, a Jewish woman was brutally murdered in the presence of her daughter by another Muslim. You've got the making of a mini-trend there, and the media love trends.

Yet no major French newspaper carried the story.

after months of expressing deep concern, grave concern, deep concern over the graves and deep grave concern over whether the graves were deep enough, Kofi Annan managed to persuade the UN to set up a committee to look into what's going on in Darfur. They've just reported back that it's not genocide.

That's great news, isn't it? For as yet another Annan-appointed UN committee boldly declared in December: "Genocide anywhere is a threat to the security of all and should never be tolerated." So thank goodness this isn't genocide. Instead, it's just 70,000 corpses who all happen to be from the same ethnic group – which means the UN can go on tolerating it until everyone's dead

At a charity event on behalf of children, some 20 Muslim youths tried to prevent the Jewish singer, Shirel, from appearing on stage, shouting curses such as "We'll exterminate all of you soon". The incident lasted for about 20 minutes, after which Shirel appeared despite everything. Mme. Bernadette Chirac, wife of the President of France, was present at the event, and beyond telling the singer backstage that "This is most unfortunate", did nothing to denounce the incident.

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# "Does the truth only come from the top of a holy man's spire?"
# "From three paces back, covered head to toe, like the rules that the man says and written just for show."
# "You can stand up, lay down, or follow. What will it be? Will it all be the same tomorrow?"
# "We don't take it lightly when you threatening women. How you have so much hate and you fake your religion?"
# "If you're that religious and not for trendy clothes, then what you doing even watching videos?"

The singer, who was born in Norway but moved to the UK after her act alienated her from the Muslim community, has been forced to cancel performances and hire a team of bodyguards after inciting anger from British Muslims as well.

"I can't walk around without bodyguards. I would be lying if I said abuse from religious fanatics did not upset or scare me," the 28-year-old, dubbed as the 'Muslim Madonna' was quoted by Contactmusic, as saying.

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"Rather than try and censure me ... they should make a clear statement that they subscribe to all of these views - that they are loyal to Australia, they respect the rights and liberties of others, they believe in democratic government and they believe that all Australians should live unequivocally under the one law made by the Australian parliament - and endorse these values and recommend them to their followers," Mr Costello told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

"Pledge themselves unequivocally to these values first of all, and then call on their followers to pledge themselves unequivocally to these values.

"This is what I would invite them to do, rather than to criticise me because all Australians should in my view subscribe to these values."

it amazes me that the sane muslim responses are as yet so tame and few..
it's as if the sane ones haven't yet cottoned onto the fact that if they
continue to let their not-so-sane brethren escalate, they themselves will be
given no quarter alone with their nutty 'friends'. they don't seem to grok
the extent of the danger staring them in the face. if the sane muslims should
once let this situation go over the brink, i would expect muslim populations
to be systematically wiped out across the western world.

this apparent unawareness amongst the sane muslims worries me far more than
the spineless behaviour of the pols and fossil media, although the two are
obviously interrelated.

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Yes, I cheered for a moment at the deaths of so many infidels... until I remembered how much business we do in New York! My country has a huge per capita income, but it's honestly not the most solid in the world. Implications of us involved in terrorism could knock us over the edge, and, if you took a poll of our citizens, you'd see a near majority consider economic stability more important than mass murder. As much as I want you all to die, we have our own housing bubble to worry about over here. Do any of you understand that? Sometimes I think I'd have to use a pipe bomb to get through your thick skulls.

And honestly, how many of you knew your ports weren't owned by Americans before all this? I swear, if any of you raise your hands, I'll cut them off. None of you knew anything about the ports until the talking heads and harlots jumped on this issue, and suddenly all of you are like, "Oh no! The Arabs are going to run our ports and they want to kill us all!" Hell yes, we want to kill you all, but it's not like we could fit that in our business plan. Have any of you looked at our business plan? Of course not. Holy Allah, I so want to strangle you all!

All I want you stupid infidels to understand is that this deal is all business. All thing being equal, I would stab you all repeatedly and then behead you, but that is not a money making venture.

At least one of the ports where DP World is set to operate, Baltimore, has been dogged by security shortcomings for years. A Baltimore Sun investigation in June 2005 revealed that the port's fiber-optic alarm system on the perimeter fence malfunctioned and was usually switched off, and that port police were so understaffed that their patrol boats often dry-docked because there was no one to operate them. The newspaper also found that a pair of "video cameras" guarding the entrance to one important marine terminal were actually blocks of wood on poles.

Last summer, a tour of the port, the nation's eighth largest, revealed gaps in perimeter fences, unattended gates, surveillances systems that didn't work and insufficient police patrols on land and sea.

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Having thought on the recent case of David Irving, I can now state that I have very little problem with the judgement of the Austrian court. I have very little problem with the jailing of this ‘poor old man’, boo hoo, for deliberately lying about clear historical facts.

I have little problem because David Irving’s lies are obviously confusing vulnerable, uneducated people.

And that I am fully convinced he knows full well he is lying, and that he is lying with the direct purpose of confusing and swindling the intellectually weak.

This case has absolutely nothing to do with ‘free speech’. It is about public lying.

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February 22, 2006: An American magazine, "Imaging Notes", recently published satellite photos, taken by commercial satellites, showing heretofore secret Chinese military installations. Of most interest were the coastal tunnels for Chinese submarines to operate from. Such tunnels were long rumored, and their existence denied by the Chinese. But there they are. An excellent way for subs to avoid air attack.

The companies that provide commercial satellite photos will usually abide by requests from nations to not distribute photos of certain areas, or not provide high resolution photos of some areas. But as more operators are out there selling their photos, competitive pressures have made it possible to get just about whatever you want. It's a whole new world, and anyone can get a detailed satellite view of it.

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And there remains the question of Denmark: a small democracy, which resisted Hitler bravely and protected its Jews as well as itself. Denmark is a fellow member of NATO and a country that sends its soldiers to help in the defense and reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan. And what is its reward from Washington? Not a word of solidarity, but instead some creepy words of apology to those who have attacked its freedom, its trade, its citizens, and its embassies. For shame. Surely here is a case that can be taken up by those who worry that America is too casual and arrogant with its allies. I feel terrible that I have taken so long to get around to this, but I wonder if anyone might feel like joining me in gathering outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, in a quiet and composed manner, to affirm some elementary friendship. Those who like the idea might contact me at christopher.hitchens@yahoo.com, and those who live in other cities with Danish consulates might wish to initiate a stand for decency on their own account.

Update, Feb. 22: Thank you all who've written. Please be outside the Embassy of Denmark, 3200 Whitehaven Street (off Massachusetts Avenue) between noon and 1 p.m. this Friday, Feb. 24. Quietness and calm are the necessities, plus cheerful conversation. Danish flags are good, or posters reading "Stand By Denmark" and any variation on this theme (such as "Buy Carlsberg/ Havarti/ Lego") The response has been astonishing and I know that the Danes are appreciative. But they are an embassy and thus do not of course endorse or comment on any demonstration. Let us hope, however, to set a precedent for other cities and countries. Please pass on this message to friends and colleagues.

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A German pothead was cuffed after reporting his dealer to cops for supplying seven ounces of "completely unenjoyable" weed.

Darmstadt resident Hans-Juergen Bendt, 52, complained of the "fraud" after the retailer refused to refund him the £270 he'd shelled out for "absolutely mediocre quality" toke. The police decided to ignore the serious allegation against the dealer and charge Bendt instead with buying and possession of drugs.

The other major legitimate application of law is the control of intrusion. The costs to society in allowing casual murder clearly waste considerable resources, as every member of that society must spend great effort constantly checking to see whether a potential murderer is attempting to sneak up and do them in. There is a second serious objection to murder, people don’t like it and it is inclined to cause social disruption, as in societies where the vendetta is common.

The anarchist imperative is

your freedom ends when you step on my toes.

Toleration is not just some add-on for especially nice guys, it is a basis for comfortable and effective society. There is no magical fundamentalist answer to ethical questions. But there are solid pragmatic reasons for living according to certain general principles. I am proposing that these principles are essentially the two listed here:

tragedy of the commons avoidance and non-intrusion.

Any laws that do not clearly meet these principles are damaging to peace and progress. Only laws founded in negotiation and tolerance are likely to forward a peaceful community. With ever-growing weaponry, it would be well to remove unneeded sources of friction if we hope to survive and live happily ever after.

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The planned execution of convicted rapist and murderer Michael Morales has been halted after two court-appointed doctors refused to participate, the BBC reports.

The anaesthesiologists were scheduled to be present at the termination at the behest of a US federal judge who agreed with defence arguments that the cocktail of lethal chemicals used might cause extreme pain if the initial dose of barbiturates proved inadequate. Accordingly, the judge ordered two doctors to attend and intervene, "in the event that Morales woke up or appeared to be in pain".

However, the two doctors declared any such intervention "medically unethical", adding: "As a result, we have withdrawn from participation in this current process... What is being asked of us is ethically unacceptable."

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Anton Faur is a migrant pickpocket. When he recently showed up for work in Venice, his hopes were high: Every year, around 12 million tourists throng and jostle through the city's narrow streets. This time, though, the target-rich environment didn't bear fruit. In just five days, the 17-year-old Romanian was arrested twice. "Venice is beautiful, but not for work," he complained as police booked him.

But it wasn't the police who caught him. Faur was nabbed both times by a civilian antipickpocket patrol called Cittadini Non Distratti, or Undistracted Citizens. Members, who call themselves "Citizens," walk around Venice looking for pickpockets. As thievery spikes during Carnival, when tipsy tourists mob the streets, the group increases patrols. The Cittadini Non Distratti look for a number of giveaways. Most pickpockets are men, they travel in small division-of-labor teams behind tourists, they stop when tourists stop, and their eyes concentrate on vulnerable pockets and bags—not gondolas and pretty buildings. The presence of a teenager is another clue (minors risk lighter punishment). Sudden distractions are an even bigger tip-off: directions sought by a map-wielding questioner, food spilled on a tourist by an apologetic stranger, a heated argument that diverts attention. [...]

Plainclothes cops like to think they blend right in. Artful dodgers think otherwise. "You can tell right away who's undercover," says a 28-year-old female pickpocket from Bosnia who requested anonymity. (Her hint: Look for the men in jeans, blue T-shirts, running shoes, and fanny packs roaming about with cell phones and indiscreet eyes.) Guessing if a passerby might intervene is next to impossible. After a recent wallet-snatch, a bystander seized her and held on until the uniforms showed up. She went to jail.

The city has refused Cittadini Non Distratti's requests for official recognition and logistical support. "It's do-it-yourself justice; it's a negative gunslinger culture," says Giuseppe Caccia, until recently Venice's deputy mayor for social affairs. That remark belies what is likely a greater concern: embarrassment. City Hall officials privately acknowledge that the para-police group is bad PR, leading some to think that the city can't adequately protect Venice's lifeblood—its tourists.

Rome Police Chief Aldo Zanetti says this "participative security" is increasingly common in Italy, and this new culture seems to be working. According to numbers in a 2005 Interior Ministry report, pickpocketing and purse-snatching have declined nationwide every year since 1997. The authors attribute part of this success to "reciprocal collaboration among the citizenry, law enforcement and institutions."

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George Phillips of Meridian, Mississippi was going up to bed, when his wife told him that he'd left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He phoned the police, who asked "Is someone in your house?" and he said "no". Then they said that all patrols were busy, and that he should simply lock his door and an officer would be along when available. George said, "Okay," hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police again.

"Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people in my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now cause I've just shot them all." Then he hung up.

Within five minutes three police cars, an Armed Response unit, and an ambulance showed up at the Phillips residence and caught the burglars red-handed. One of the Policemen said to George: "I thought you said that you'd shot them!" George said, "I thought you said there was nobody available!"

The British police are showing they will not defend the society.
So why pay them? Where is their legitimacy?

The British government makes excuses. Why pay them?

A weak government with no respect for law, or even for the enforcing of law, allows a vacuum of power to form.

The British government is starting to use a pretence of law to undermine the law.

People call publicly for murder, and the police protect them.
People call publicly for murder and the government makes illegitimate ‘laws’ to enforce the demands of the murderers.
A person defends themselves against the violent, and the police charge them with violence.

Britain no longer has legitimate government or legitimate law.

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