Abolish Your Local Police

by William Norman Grigg

Two gangs gathered near a home in California. The man who lived there avoided one, and was severely beaten by the other.

Ronald Weekley, Jr. , a 20-year-old college student from Venice, California, was riding his skateboard on the ?wrong side? of the street in front of his house when he was assaulted by four armed gangsters and severely beaten. The assailants then abducted the victim and accused him of a criminal offense because he was insufficiently docile while being beaten. They also claimed that Weekley had previously been seen on their turf, without permission, after sundown.

The assailants belonged to that privileged caste of social misfits and intellectually stunted functionaries called ?police officers.? According to a friend named Alexis Parker, the police pounced on Weekley after he tried to avoid a confrontation with an unlicensed street gang on the other side of the street.

Weekley had done no harm to anybody by riding his skateboard on the ?wrong? side of the street, but because he didn?t immediately stop with an armed stranger in a government-issued costume demanded it of him, he was taken to the ground in front of his house and beaten nearly to death, while onlookers screamed in terror. Another member of the sanctified fraternity of official violence ran interference for the four who mauled Weekley, ordering spectators to keep their distance while his comrades pummeled the helpless man.

Weekley, who suffered a broken chin bone, a broken nose, and a concussion, was then charged with the non-crime of ?resisting arrest.?

The cretinous bullies who had participated in the thugscrum also claimed that the 20-year-old man had ?outstanding warrants? for ?curfew? violations that he supposedly committed before he turned 18. (A curfew, it should be understood, is a martial law measure.)

?I was screaming because I thought they were going to kill him,? one eyewitness to the atrocity, which took place about a year ago, told a local television station.

This episode offers a splendid opportunity to examine the kinship between the street gang we call the ?police? and their much less dangerous private sector competition. If Weekley had been confronted by the private gangbangers he sought to avoid, and then fought back when they assaulted him, the assailants would not have had the privilege of prosecuting him for resisting. That is the most significant material difference between those contending groups of armed thugs. It?s also worth pointing out that common street gangs don?t have tax-supported employee unions who demand that the public celebrate their acts of unprovoked criminal violence.

Weekley?s predicament brings to mind the passage from the Old Testament describing how ?a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him; ?. [then he] went into his house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him? (Amos 5:19). He had done no harm to anybody, and was trying to avoid a violent confrontation ? and then encountered an even more acute threat before winding up enduring lasting and unjustified injury in his own home.

This incident likewise underscores the wisdom expressed by Edmund Burke in his essay ?A Vindication of Natural Society?:

In a State of Nature, it is true, that a Man of superior Force may beat or rob me; but then it is true, that I am at full Liberty to defend myself, or make Reprisal by Surprise or by Cunning, or by any other way in which I may be superior to him. But in Political Society ... if I attempt to avenge myself, the whole Force of that Society is ready to complete my Ruin.

In any free society worthy of that description, the innate right of an innocent person to resist criminal aggression by government functionaries is recognized, respected, and cherished. While stipulating that politics is a snare and a delusion, I earnestly hope that Americans will agitate for the restoration of legal protection for the right to resist unlawful arrest. Eventually, however, we must demolish the spurious legal protections that allow the continued existence of government ?law enforcement? agencies that claim a monopoly on aggression.

In the decades leading up to the American Founding, Anglo-Saxon common law recognized not only a right to resist unlawful arrest, but also the duty of bystanders to intervene to prevent an abduction by law enforcement officers.

In the in the 1710 case Queen v. Tooley, the Queen?s Bench ruled that every Englishman ?ought to be concerned for Magna Charta and the laws. And if any one against the law imprison a man, he is an offender against Magna Charta.?

An illegal arrest is an act of lawless violence against a helpless person, which ?is a sufficient provocation to all people out of compassion? in any circumstance, observed the court. In fact, a criminal act of that kind carried out by a law enforcement officer is ?a provocation to all the subjects of England.?

This ruling grew out of the attempted arrest of a woman named Anne Dekins by a constable named Samuel Bray. When Bray attempted to arrest Dekins for what we would now call ?disorderly conduct,? she put up loud, insistent resistance. Her cries for help drew the attention of a man named Tooey, who ? in the company of several others ? confronted Bray and demanded that he explain his actions.

Bray produced his official credentials, which failed to impress Tooey and the others. He then called for backup. When the other constable arrived, he drew his sword and engaged in combat with Tooey, who defended himself. The constable, as it turned out, was not the better man. Several other constables arrived, seized, Tooey, and charged him with murder.

The trial court threw out the murder charge, ruling that the warrant was defective. Since the arrest was illegal, the court pointed out, Dekins had a right to resist.

In trying to enforce an invalid warrant, Bray ?did not act as a constable, but a common oppressor,? observed the trial court. Tooley and the other bystanders were properly ?provoked? by the act of aggressive violence against Anne Dekins, and their forceful but measured response ? first demanding that the abductor release the hostage, then exercising defensive force to free her ? was entirely appropriate.

There is no place in a genuinely civilized society for any group of people ? however accoutered, by whatever name they call themselves ? who claim the supposed authority to commit violent aggression. Anybody who countenances such behavior in the name of ?supporting your local police? is an enemy to human liberty and basic decency.

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These police are disgracing a once proud uniform. There are too many of excessive force and killing dogs. I think that I have to says that I no longer respect police. While there may be many good police officers, if they would report excessive force used by some officers they could clean up their police departments. But, since they are not doing that, I no longer have respect for any of them! "While there may be many good police officers,"

sorry, tired of hearing that lie repeated. it's identical to saying
"While there may be many good child rapists".

if you disagree then i ask you to visit this site once a day for a week and see if you still disagree.

people keep talking about obama/etc. as being "tyrants", and he/they are infact drunk on their power;
but the lowest level street cop is also enebriated and stumbling drunk on his power as well, that's why the ones at the top keep doing what they do, they have layers upon layers of bufferzone.

remember, we don't have 1 cop in america today who acts like "andy griffith", not one who walks around with no bullteproof vest and no gun.
EVERY single one of them has a gun on their hip, most have one on their ankle too, plus a "tactical knife" somewhere. all are deadly force weapons.
they constantly go right from "talking" to "LETHAL FORCE" in an instant. 6 cops pulled guns on 3 college females. a cop breaks out the front teeth of a college girl. the list is endless. they keep claiming fear for their safety? they care nothing of our safety, and they point to court cases that prove they aren't required to protect us? they point to court cases that say they are allowed to lie to us, but if we lie to them it's automatic jailtime?

what kind of person would ever seek to join this organization?
what kind of person would remain in this organization?

we have as many good cops as we have good child rapists. infact GOOGLE TED GUNDERSON. bush sr, the cia, the fbi, and several local cops, are infact shown to be child rapists.

bush sr NEVER sued Ted Gunderson for repeatedly publicly saying that - because the lawsuit would force the truth to come out. same reason i don't fear saying it - let that creep subpoena my info and sue me, the truth will come out, that's why he won't. would you if you were a public figure allow anyone to say such terrible things about you if they were false? i wouldn't.

please keep reading, there's a lot we all need to learn.

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The SOPA Wake-Up Call to Abolish Copyright

by Stephan Kinsella

I?ve blogged quite a bit lately about SOPA and PIPA and the recent Internet blackouts and other protests against these bills, which threaten free speech and the open Internet (Mike Masnick et al. at Techdirt have also been great on exposing and analyzing SOPA).

As Jeffrey Tucker noted recently, the protests against SOPA started not with conservatives or even ?libertarians,? but with civil libertarians of the ?left,? as well as Silicon Valley tech types. Of course, some libertarians have been opposed to SOPA (and copyright) from the beginning ? the more-radical and anti-state libertarians, in particular Austro-libertarians and left-libertarians.

Aside from the anti-state libertarians, however, most of the protests against SOPA concede that copyright is good, intellectual property is important and piracy is bad?but then they bemoan that SOPA ?goes too far.?

For example, consider this article in PC Magazine, providing the response of 11 PC Mag staffers asked for their take on SOPA. The response to SOPA was universally negative, but most of them first prefaced their opposition to SOPA by genuflecting to copyright and recognizing that IP piracy ?is, of course, a real problem.? For example:
?Yes, theft of intellectual property is wrong, but it shouldn?t be protected at the cost of free speech and an open Internet??SOPA is a perfect case of a disproportionate reaction to a real problem. Lawless websites full of pirated content are a real problem, but breaking the Internet isn?t the solution??This proposed legislation is akin to having libraries monitored, or even shut down, because there is a chance that a book may contain a piece of plagiarized work??IP is a precious thing. For example, every writer on PC Mag has had their work pirated at one time or another. However, this legislation goes? too far?There is definitely a need for content owners like movie studios and music labels to protect their content from piracy, but the proposed legislation isn?t the answer.?This is the type of response that almost all the SOPA opponents have taken, such as Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, which said that

???rogue foreign sites that pirate American intellectual property or sell counterfeit goods pose significant problems for our economy,? but PIPA and SOPA ?are not the right solution to this problem, because of the collateral damage they would cause to the Internet.??

This type of argument is extremely common. Depressingly common.

And not only do most opponents of SOPA accept the basic legitimacy of copyright, they also accept the RIAA/MPAA propaganda about ?piracy? imposing billions of dollars of ?cost? to the economy every year ? even though there is no evidence of this.

The problem is that copyright obviously infringes free speech and other individual rights. This is no surprise, given its origins as a tool of censorship. As the Supreme Court recognized in its most-recent copyright decision, Golan v. Holder (the case authorizing Congress to re-copyright public domain works), ?Concerning the First Amendment, we recognized that some restriction on expression is the inherent and intended effect of every grant of copyright.?

It is widely recognized that copyright (and even patent) restricts freedom of speech and expression. By assuming that copyright is legitimate ? as the courts do ? and that the First Amendment protects freedom of expression, a balance must always be found between freedom and censorship. And this is the dilemma most people find themselves in when they start with the premise that we must protect intellectual property rights, but we can?t ?go too far? because otherwise we would harm free speech (and the open Internet) ?too much.?

Obviously, there is a conflict between copyright and censorship and government control of ideas on the one hand, and freedom of expression and the open Internet on the other. This is being increasingly recognized. Leo Laporte recognized this in a recent episode of This Week in Tech. You have to choose: the Internet or copyright, he observed (opposed to technocrat Nilay Patel).

In the aftermath of the SOPA battle, we have people finally asking important questions. The Washington Times questions copyright abuse in its opposition to the Golan decision. The Daily Caller questions copyright?s legitimacy. Mark McKenna at Slate, in ?Don?t Stop at SOPA,? asks: ?SOPA and PIPA are (almost) dead. Now can we talk about the law that already exists?? Glyn Moody at Techdirt asks the important question: ?OK, So SOPA and PIPA Are Both on Hold: Where Do We Go From Here??

And what is the answer? Some people are hinting at it, or directly suggesting it: Abolish copyright. As Rick Falkvinge observes in ?It Is Time to Stop Pretending to Endorse the Copyright Monopoly?:

??the copyright industry is actually right that these ridiculous laws are needed to sustain the copyright monopoly. General-purpose networked computers, free and anonymous speech and sustained civil liberties make it impossible to maintain this distribution monopoly of digitizable information. As technical progress can?t be legislated against, basic civil liberties would have to go to maintain the crumbling monopoly. And these are the laws we?re seeing on the table.

?There comes a tipping point when somebody says that this entire system of cultural monopolies is absurd. A tipping point where the part before the ?but? is unceremoniously and collectively dropped, the part that didn?t count, anyway. A tipping point in which everybody just stops pretending to support it. I think it is time to create that point on the history line.?

Falkvinge here recognizes that if you support copyright, you should support SOPA. And conversely, if you oppose SOPA, you should oppose copyright. Copyright is the problem, people.

We are at a moment in history when people who have absorbed the idea of copyright, but who are not ideologically committed to it, have seen that it conflicts with more deeply held values: freedom of expression, commerce, digital life, the Internet. They are seeking a framework, a way to coherently express what they sense is wrong with escalated copyright enforcement. We need to let them know: The problem is copyright itself. If you have copyright, of course you want to enforce it. All the problems we see are merely symptoms of the copyright mentality.

We must press our fleeting advantage to let our halfhearted allies know that their intuitions are right: Censorship and SOPA and state control of private property and SOPA are wrong. And this means copyright, which is the engine behind all these things, is wrong, and must fall, or at least be radically scaled back, not strengthened.

The argument against patent and copyright is not a socialist or liberal one. It is, in fact, rooted in respect for private property rights, capitalism, the free market and competition. A coherent understanding of private property and free markets reveals that copyright is an anti-competitive grant of state power for purpose of censorship or favoritism that can only seek to undermine private property rights and empower the police state ? as we are seeing now.

I remind our anti-SOPA brethren that the battle is far from over. They opposed SOPA and PIPA, but where were they when the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which has led to so much persecution and harm to the Internet, was enacted? Where were they in 2008 when George Bush signed the PRO-IP Act, which was instrumental in the FBI raids in New Zealand on the Megauploads principals, a day after the alleged SOPA blackout protest victories?

And what about the Golan decision, released the day of the SOPA blackouts, authorizing Congress to re-copyright works long in the public domain? What about the one-year federal prison sentence handed down to a man for uploading a copy of the Wolverine movie? What about the British student faced with extradition to the U.S. for having the wrong links on his website?

Where were they when President Obama signed ACTA (unconstitutionally, without Senate ratification), a global Internet treaty even worse in some ways than SOPA? Right now, nations are negotiating in secret the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), an ?agreement that the entertainment industry is betting on to get SOPA-like laws introduced around the globe.?

In other words, the dangers of SOPA are already here. This is because of copyright.

The problem is that all the people opposing SOPA undercut their opposition by acknowledging the importance of copyright and IP by condemning piracy. It is admirable that they are taking the ride side of the chasm caused by their cognitive dissonance, but dissonance it is. If you support copyright, you oppose piracy, and you support the state?s existence and its attempts to enforce these ?property rights.? You cannot have both copyright and Internet freedom/freedom of speech.

The threat here to property rights, to individual rights, to Internet freedom and freedom of speech and expression and the press comes from copyright itself. We must strike at the root. SOPA is just a symptom of the disease. The disease is copyright.

Everyone is trying to treat the symptom ? enforcement efforts like SOPA ? with halfhearted treatments like labeling the response ?disproportionate? or going ?too far.? This is like trying to treat a brain tumor by taking Tylenol ? sorry, acetaminophen ? in response to the headaches caused by the tumor. All opponents of SOPA and censorship, all denizens of the Web and proponents of freedom, must oppose copyright itself (and patent too). Those libertarians and others who oppose SOPA and who are for copyright reform, but who are not for copyright abolition, should realize that a modest, fair, efficient, ?reasonable? or ?sensible? copyright system is completely impossible.

Since the dawn of copyright, its scope, length, penalties and enforcement have only increased, because of the relentless pressure by special interest factions like Disney, the RIAA, the MPAA, and other content providers and entrenched interests. As we can see with the pressure to adopt SOPA, PIPA, PRO-IP, DMCA, Berne, WIPO, TRIPS, COICA, Sonny Bono/Mickey Mouse Copyright Term Extension Act, ACTA, TPP and other measures (see ?The Mountain of IP Legislation?), the Big Content interests are relentless and will not stop pressuring Congress and other legislatures to expand the war on information sharing and the Internet.

Even if we had a less-noxious copyright system ? say, one with 10-year terms and less draconian penalties and enforcement ? it would soon metastasize into what we have now, just as it has done (originally 14 years, now it is over 100). So a modest, ?reasonable? copyright system is really off the table.

The question that SOPA opponents have to ask themselves is would you rather have today?s copyright system, with its draconian terms and penalties and continual pressure to expand and internationalize it, or no copyright at all? Only one of these choices is compatible with opposition to SOPA and to censorship. The only way to stop SOPA-type provisions and to maintain Internet freedom is to get rid of today?s copyright system.

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In fact, it's very simple : If you want to keep 'your' 'intellectual property'
to yourself : DON'T TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT !
The instant you release it, it's out of your control, just like it should be ! As a Dane, I must tell you about a specific case :
Lars Ulrich of Metallica has PUBLICLY admitted to having spent
several million dollars on COCAINE ! : Yet, he calls his fans, who sometimes publish the 'lyrics' of Metallica-songs on the internets, for
'thieves' .. Jesus H Fucking Buddha, Lars ..
YOU should be rotting on a 3. strike and your out' sentence in Cahlifohrniah !!

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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Abolish the Police, Arm the Citizens

The "Sagra Model" of Privatized Security
By William Norman Grigg

[Pictured: No surrender, no retreat: Andrei (l) and Viktor Gorodilov at the bridge.]

?What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? Or, if during the periods of mass arrests ... people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood that they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?" - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

?They are coming to kill us!? exclaimed a young resident of Sagra, Russia as he spied a column of vehicles approaching the tiny village at the feet of the Ural Mountains. Responding to the alarm, several dozen residents mustered near the town entrance, bearing whatever weapons they could find. Some of them grabbed pitchforks, chains, or knives. Three men arrived on the scene with shotguns.

The leader of the approaching convoy was Sergei ?The Gypsy? Lebedev, head of a criminal gang that had tormented Sagra for months. Lebedev's followers swiped anything of value that was left unguarded. Power tools, appliances, and other household property disappeared; homes were vandalized as copper tubing and wiring were ripped out to be sold to scrap metal dealers. An onslaught of shoplifting threatened the survival of the village?s only significant retail store.

Exasperated citizens complained to the police in nearby Yekaterinberg, only to be treated with a mixture of amusement and impatient annoyance. Mounting hostility against Lebedev and his underlings prompted the gangster to withdraw ? but only to gather reinforcements.

Lebedev was no petty cut-purse; his entourage included at least one vory v zakone (?thief in law?) ? that is, a member of a politically protected mafia.

The gang leader?s intent was to seize control of the village as a base of operations for a drug operation, and he clearly enjoyed the covert support of the region?s ?law enforcement? establishment. Thus it was that late in the evening of July 1, Ledbedev assembled a contingent of about 60 armed thugs and mounted a punitive expedition against the village of 130 people.

As the headlights from the 15-vehicle convoy probed the gathering darkness, the men of Sagra formed a human roadblock across the bridge at the entrance to their town. The infernal column came to a halt, while its leader tried to decide how to deal with the unanticipated resistance. Suddenly a voice from behind them exclaimed, ?Grenade!? An object that appeared to meet that description landed in the midst of the raiders, causing several to bolt in panic.

In fact, the weapon was a pine cone that had been hurled by Andrei Gorodilov, who had taken cover beside the road. At that signal, the air erupted in curses and insults hurled by many of the women of the village, who had hidden themselves behind trees.

The resulting diversion was brief, but effective: Andrei?s father, Viktor, let loose a blast from his shotgun. Two other defenders followed suit. The rest, bearing whatever improvised weapons they had found, lit into Lebedev?s hired killers with the unalloyed ferocity of men fighting on their own soil with their backs to their homes.

One of the invaders was killed, several more were wounded, and Lebedev was forced to retreat. At some point in the skirmish, Sagra resident Tatyana Gordeyeva contacted the police, who ? displaying the efficiency and timeliness for which their profession is known ? arrived long after the battle was over, and immediately began to treat the defenders as criminal suspects. Their first priority was not to pursue and arrest Lebedev and his cronies (who were eventually taken into custody), or to collect evidence for their eventual prosecution; instead, they attempted to clamp down a cover-up of the matter. They didn?t succeed.

Within a few days, news of the battle had been propagated throughout Russia, and Sagra quickly became ?a catchword for a spate of violence around the country in which people have banded together to defend themselves in the absence of police protection,? noted the New York Times. An entrepreneur captured the public mood in a commemorative t-shirt with the inscription: ?If the government can?t help people, it doesn?t have the right to forbid them from defending themselves ? Sagra 2011.?

?What?s going on in this country is that the government isn?t protecting anyone,? observed Mr. Gorodilov, who spoke with the invincible authority of personal experience. That assessment was seconded by Konstantin M. Kiselyov of Ykaterinberg?s Institute of Philosophy and Law: ?The police are corrupt or lazy or politicized, and it?s the same all across the country. So people must protect themselves. They can?t count on the government or its structures. That is why the country is turning into one big Sagra.?

The most remarkable reaction to the Battle of Sagra came from Alexander Torshin, the Speaker of the Federation Council (a position roughly analogous to Senate Majority Leader). Invoking the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Torshin announced that he would propose an amendment to the Russian Constitution guaranteeing ?that a Russian citizen has the right under the law to bear arms.?

?We must give our citizens a chance at survival,? Torshin told the Interfax news agency, insisting that widespread private gun ownership doesn?t lead to ?a surge in killings,? but rather ?the reduction in street crimes and the murder rate.?

What makes Torshin?s stance all the more remarkable is the fact that roughly half a year earlier he had expressed support for banning private possession of ?non-lethal? handguns.

It?s possible that this dramatic volte-face was the product of a sincere conversion. It?s likelier that Mr. Torshin knew which way the winds of public outrage are blowing, and aligned his sails accordingly. In any case, Torshin?s proposal is tangible evidence of a growing -- and thoroughly commendable -- Russian contempt for the very institution of government.

Totalitarianism is based on the assumption that human nature can be permanently altered through the systematic application of state terrorism. Lenin described his regime as a ?scientific dictatorship? exercising ?power without limit, resting directly on force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestricted by rules.? Within a generation or two, Lenin believed, his dictatorship would beget a new creature ? homo sovieticus, the selfless, state-focused New Soviet Man. The gulag state would act as an alembic, refining troublesome individualism out of the species, even if this meant pitilessly liquidating millions of specimens regarded as unsuitable for the collectivist future.

Things didn?t quite work out that way. Communism wasn?t a scientific doctrine for the perfection of the human species; it was, in R.J.Rummel?s phrase, a ?plague of power.? After the Hammer and Sickle was furled in 1991, the plague of ideological Communism mutated into form of state gangsterism incapable of reproducing itself beyond Russia?s borders. The Party Nomenklatura abandoned the conceit that they were History?s infallible vanguard, and settled into a very comfortable new role as Russia?s crony capitalist oligarchy.

While Russia?s criminal oligarchy has little use for ideology, they still embrace the idea of ?power without limit, resting directly on force.? Valery D. Zorkin, chairman of Russia?s Constitutional Court, laments that Russia?s contemporary political model is based on ?the fusion of government and criminals,? with the country increasingly ?divided between predators, free in the criminal jungle, and sub-humans, conscious that they are only prey.?

In his November 2010 State of the Nation speech, Russian President Dimitry Medvedev acknowledged that in many parts of the country local governments have entered into a ?direct merger with criminals? at the expense of the rights of law-abiding individuals. While this will surprise nobody who understands that the State is, and has always been, a criminal enterprise, this admission is striking when offered by a 46-year-old political leader who graduated from Leningrad State University.

One acutely horrifying example of the merger described by Medvedev was provided by a November 2010 massacre in Kushchevskaya, a city of 35,000 about 700 miles from Moscow. The city was the site of several major state-controlled collective farms during the Soviet era. After the USSR was dissolved, the local branch of the Nomenklatura created a quasi-private agricultural firm called Arteks Agro, which was controlled by a career Party functionary named Sergei Tsapok.

For the past decade, a criminal clique headed by Tsapok, and that included current and former members of the city government, conducted a reign of terror in Kushchevskaya, plundering and raping as they saw fit and killing anyone who complained in a voice louder than a whisper.

Complaints to the police availed nothing, since their duty was to maintain ?order? ? that is, to enforce the will of the local elite ? rather than to protect the rights of the innocent. At public meetings, terrified and outraged local citizens would barrage municipal leaders with protests about the criminal onslaught, only to be told that ?There are no criminal groups here.?

Last November 4, Tsapok?s gang invaded the home of Server Ametov, murdering him and eleven others, including four young children. The victims were stabbed, strangled, and set on fire. Ametov was a successful farmer, and since about 1998 Tsapok?s gang had been carrying out a modified version of Stalin?s collectivization program by driving small farmers off their land, murdering those (including Ametov?s brother) who resisted.

The ensuing outcry was sufficient to prompt official intervention, leading to Tsapok?s arrest. For millions of Russians, the Kuschevskaya atrocity demonstrated the fatal futility of seeking protection from the enforcement arm of the ruling criminal elite. The Russian disaffection toward government has grown so widespread and intense that the ruling establishment is actually reducing the size and power of its law enforcement apparatus. This a development without precedent in the country once terrorized by the Oprichniki, the Okhrana, and the Cheka.

In Russia, as elsewhere, the role of the police ?is to control situations and to control the people rather than help them,? observes Leonid Kosals, a professor of economics at Moscow?s National Research University. As a result, people ?turn to their neighbors and to relatives and local networks to solve their problems by themselves?. [I]n Russia we have thousands of such cases.?

The trend toward privatization of security in Russia is likely to grow as a result of President Medvedev?s recent initiative to reform the country?s militia ? that is, its police force ? by purging about 200,000 officers from the ranks. Sociologist Mikhail Vinogradov, who estimates that one-third of Russia?s police force is composed of alcoholics and psychopaths, points out that in 1991, the militia was reduced by about thirty percent ? and the result was a sharp reduction in the crime rate.

During the past decade, the crime rate in the United States has declined, terrorism has been all but nonexistent ? and the country has been transformed into a fair approximation of a high-security prison, complete with full-spectrum surveillance of the population and undisguised militarization of ?local? police departments. At the same time, the political elite in charge of the former Soviet Union is addressing a legitimate crime crisis by drawing down the police force and recognizing (however tentatively) the right of citizens to armed self-defense.

For all of its problems, Russia clearly is no longer the land of Lenin. For all of our advantages, it?s just as clear that the United States of America is no longer the Land of the Free.

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