Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

You may be surprised by the one I'll have up next week Michael,   It may be an interesting conclusion to something I've been up to.

 Meanwhile, though,  any topics up your sleeve to discuss?  

Yes.  It went quiet and I thought the admins had shut it down.  But sorry, Richard.  Nothing interesting to say about your recent threadstarts.

Afghanistan - Success or Failure?

Remember them.

Afghanistan should never have been attacked.

Gillard is a cretin.

Is it fast becoming academic, this Taser discussion?

The Qld elections and the fed polls indicating that the country is Abbott 2 to 1, surely demonstrates that , against all or any reason, the public wants, or thinks it wants, "Taser heaven".

For all its flaws, Gillard Labor is nor worse than the Abbott Tories. 

 Australians, for all their induced and self induced ignorance surely understand the right's agenda, against the centre's.

They surely know of Cameron's English dystopia and what the Tea Party and Wall St have done to America?  

They want their environment f-cked up beyond repair, science binned and a social repressive theocracy devoid of anything resembling a legal or economic system that also works for them, rather than just the1%,  in place?

Marilyn's despairing "mental pygmy ants" thesis, against all odds, is emerging as a hideous reality; a definitive return to the Middle Ages and no place for Niemollers, let alone refugees, aboriginals or the offshore billions living on $3 day.

The lemmings voting for its implementation here, for Cattle-prod Paradise, must know this also home  for tasers and capsicum spray as well as as arbitrary detention laws and secrecy by irrational fiat.

Langdon claimed it happened this way:

"He reached across, and I am ex-military, so it was like bang-bang-bang-bang.  I didn't have time to think."

He then attempted to conceal what he had done and get out of the country.  That was supposed to have discredited his case but I think most Westerners in that situation, in a foreign country of that kind, would do much the same.

The human reaction time is a fifth of a second but a human can perform a simple action 20 times a second.  Human movement is faster than human reaction time.

When Langdon noticed that Karim had "reached across" for his weapon, Karim would in fact have reached across a fifth of a second earlier.  If Karim had lifted his weapon and fired in another sixth of a second, Langdon would not have known that he had done that until at least 33 milliseconds after the bullets had hit his body.

If indeed Karim reached for his weapon in that situation, that is, supposing the words of Langdon quoted above are the truth, then, because he was ex-military it would have been bang-bang-bang-bang in a trained automatic reaction that would not have involved any thought and certainly would have happened far quicker than the speed of thought.

I'd just like to add this to what I just wrote.  That should not be interpreted as applying to sporting shooters.  None of that applies to sporting shooters.  That is a totally different situation, in which it is essential to assume that the angry man holding the shotgun came to shoot duck and would never for a moment make a connection between the fact that he was engaged in an argument and the fact that he was holding a loaded firearm.  In that situation the safety catch will be on and he will probably put the gun down to wave his arms in the air, but if he doesn't it makes no difference.

The sporting shooter learns very early that he must never, never point a firearm at another person, even if he knows that it's unloaded.  That is the very first rule in firearms training.  He is not a kid with a cap gun and must never play games with firearms.

But in the other situation, the non-sporting one, police, and military, a further clause is added.  The person learns very early that he must never, never, point a firearm at another person... unless he intends to kill that person.  That is the very first rule in that situation.

And the other side of that same coin is that if he sees someone pointing a firearm at him or acting as though about to, he knows that that person intends to kill him, and reacts accordingly.

That is why you must never do it.

The problem is that we have inane fantasies about human reaction time and suppose that many considerations should be weighed by a person who sees another holding a firearm and confronting him while displaying forms of conduct expected in an enemy.  In reality the person thus confronted has to react instantly and automatically.

The answer is not Tasers, but to make sure everyone knows that, and will never, never, never engage in such confronttational behaviour unless, as must be assumed, he does intend to kill or maim the policeman.  It is essential to educate everyone in that regard.

The situation is very stark in the military situation.  Soldiers are trained to kill.  That is what, and all, they are for.

And they are trained and experienced in reacting to surprise situations in just that manner.  It is essential to shoot first, not ask questions first.

That is why the conviction of Robert Langdon, an ex-army security operative, for the murder of an Afghan ex-army security operative and associate, was an abuse, a miscarriage of justice.  Landon claimed self-defence, it was a dispute between armed men tained to kill as an automatic reaction, and Langdon killed in such an automatic reaction.  I remember that he said in effect that he had been trained to react in that way, that he was Army and that's what you do, or some such words.

In any such case the killer's defence of self-defence has to be accepted.  It was not accepted in Langdon's case,  He made that defence but it was rejected.  That is a scandal that nobody seems to care about.  The Australian governent seems to have been concerned with more congenial matters.

The latest news about Langdon that I can find on the Web is that the death by hanging penalty that had been imposed on him was commuted to 20 years imprisonment in consideration of his having paid $100,000 to the dead man's family.  But as commentators immediately pointed out, 20 years imprisonment of a sick man in an Afghan prison was just another death penalty.

After that, everyone lost interest.  But this is a man unjustly convicted and paying a terrible price.

One has to wryly laugh though when that dimwit O'Farrell stands with the cops who just murdered a healthy 21 year old student with taser fire and says "they are a fine non-lethal weapon".