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Notes -
Update on the Scottish Dual-Wielding Incident:
The BBC has now published a brief but informative report on the Scottish “dual-wielding” incident, mostly relaying statements from the local police. If you missed the story: a Bulgarian couple, male and female, were approached by local youths in St Ann Lane, Lochee, at about 7:40 pm on Saturday. At some point, an axe made an appearance. The police have issued a statement, and the BBC, in a notably careful choice of words, clarifies: “BBC News understands that officers have found no evidence to substantiate claims being made online the youths were at risk of sexual assault.”
Of course, I have every confidence that some corners of the internet, including select denizens of The Motte, will find this hopelessly unconvincing. If your current epistemic stance is “If she floats, she’s a witch; if she sinks, she’s a witch,” then no combination of facts, logic, or official statements will ever suffice. If your model of the world is that everyone is lying except you and your Telegram group, my ability to shift your priors is probably limited.
Still, let me offer my own semi-informed perspective as someone who is, if not a local, at least more familiar with the Scottish context than your average Redditor. From the beginning, both /r/Scotland and /r/Dundee expressed skepticism toward the popular Twitter narrative. You know the one: a pair of wide-eyed local waifs accosted by a “brown pervert,” who then had no choice but to brandish medieval weaponry in righteous self-defense. You can practically hear the John Williams score.
Now, Scotland is not short on delinquent youth. The British white underclass is, in fact, legendary for its supply of teenage hooligans. Here in Scotland, the local taxonomic label is “ned.” While “non-educated delinquent” is probably a post hoc invention, the behavioral phenotype is easily identified. There is a rich ecosystem of teenagers hanging around bus stops, acting tough, and performing questionable antics. One of their favorite tactics, if challenged, is to shout “pedophile” at the nearest authority figure, thus flipping the script from “annoying brat” to “potential victim.” This tends to work, at least until they age out of the game and (statistically) either get jobs or fall prey to Dundee’s prodigious drug scene.
On the question of weaponry, it bears repeating that it is illegal in Scotland to carry anything that even vaguely resembles a weapon for self-defense. For the Americans in the audience, this is not Texas. Not only is it illegal, it is also, in local context, not normal to walk around with an axe. While I actually find this arrangement not to my libertarian sensibilities, that's neither here nor there. My own priors, which seem to match those of most actual Scots I’ve spoken to, lean toward a more mundane explanation. The girl went out carrying because she wanted to impress her boyfriend, or at least to raise her standing among her peers. She might have been looking for trouble, or simply wanted to show off, and twelve is not too young to have social status games on your mind. Puberty isn’t the only thing that comes early in these parts.
I can only reiterate that an axe is not normal to carry, even if one feels threatened. A pocket knife? I can understand, sure. But this is about as 'extra' as taking a hand-grenade to a seedy pub when you're worried about being roofied.
As for the “migrant crime” angle, I want to point out that Scotland is not England, and certainly not Rotherham. The “migrant problem” is much less pronounced here. Outside Edinburgh or Glasgow, brown skin is still a curiosity, more likely to prompt a friendly question than suspicion. Most of the time, it’s just an excuse for conversation. Scotland has its own problems, but racialized sexual predation is not at the top of the list.
I would like to believe that this clarification settles things, but I am also not naïve. If your epistemic filter is tuned to maximum paranoia, then the absence of evidence is merely further evidence of a cover-up. For everyone else, the police statement, local skepticism, and sociological context should nudge your priors at least a little.
Of course, if you prefer your axes in the hands of twelve-year-olds fighting imaginary Bulgarian sex pests, I suppose nothing I write will convince you otherwise.
The situation is clear, only @ArjinFerman has asked the right question: "Why am I seeing this video, did Dumana upload it?"
Right.
The scenario where Dumana is the good guy is if he didn't upload the video, if it were the police or third-party via release from the police. It seems the order is the video went viral, then the girl was charged, and he calls himself a "digital creator" so we know his motive. An adult man who "legally" migrated to the UK to live in council housing, who posts videos of tween girls for internet clout, is factually and essentially in the wrong. Factually, again, he was recording tweens for clout; essentially, because he was exploiting for gain the most vulnerable members of the population of his exceedingly gracious host. His responses in the article offer further insight.
No empathy, no expression of concern for greater order, innocence via appeal to authority rather than "Her behavior concerned me so I made the video in case I had to show the police." Repeated "I didn't touch her, I didn't hurt her," right, what did you say to her? That wasn't in the video. Convenient.
What bears repeating more is a 12 year old girl can do literally nothing to physically defend herself from a healthy man unless she has a gun.
The weapons are extra, they tell you she doesn't know what she's doing. The hatchet's a joke, she's not even getting through a t-shirt with that. The knife would pose a problem if it were small, but it was a kitchen knife and it's the UK so it's a rounded tip, right? If he gave her a free shot, if he let her wind up and stab his bare abdomen with both hands, she still only might break skin. It tells you she doesn't know what she's doing, whether she's a "ned-to-be" she doesn't know violence at that moment.
It could be she was trying to impress somebody, but even if you're right, that is an incredible reach. She correctly viewed Dumana as a creep, she "brandished" the weapons as a threat, and the most reasonable explanation for why she had the weapons is because this was not the first time a man has creeped on her and her sister. The appropriate response would be to have a talk, maybe check out her home life, see if her mom has a scuzzy boyfriend, but that they've charged her is grossly wrong--unless, I guess, charges don't carry the same weight there, and it's just the bureaucratic of "We have to do this for the paperwork to check out her home life." A 12 year old girl doesn't ever carry a knife because her government failed to tell her she can't.
You're overstating the case.
It's true that a 12-year-old girl dual-wielding a hatchet and a knife is someone I or most men could easily overcome unarmed without a high chance of wounds, but this isn't because the weapons can't break skin (it's not that hard to break skin; I once accidentally stabbed myself with a table fork and hit bone). It's because in both cases I could catch the swing; a hatchet has a haft that's safe to grab and a knife isn't long enough to counteract my reach and speed advantage (so I could grab her arm before the knife reached my torso). If you gave her a sword (and I weren't wearing hand protection) it'd be quite a bit dicier, because they're much, much harder to catch bare-handed; I'm not saying she'd win but the potential for wounds is high enough to still be a massive deterrent (particularly when taking into account that in this hypothetical I'm a criminal who instigated the fight, which means that if I go to hospital and they ask "why was this guy in a swordfight?" there's a chance of winding up in jail).
And let's not even get into bows. Yes, I've met Anthony Kelly, but I'm not Anthony Kelly, and even he isn't 100% reliable at that trick (note that his world records were against somebody only half-drawing a simple bow, so that's basically tween-girl levels, and even then he didn't catch all of them).
Good points, but I'm not sure you'll have better luck going around the UK with a sword or a longbow (the worm has sure turned on those laws!) than a gun or a knife?
Might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb, so they say; are you doing your part?
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