The Hunting of the Sark

Jesse Walker | May 7, 2007

This article is about an effort to impose a more modern state on the feudal island of Sark. But the most interesting part is actually old news: how Sark repelled the great invasion of '91:

The constable is one of the few [local officials] who gets a salary. He earned it in 1991, when an unemployed French nuclear physicist, dressed in military fatigues and armed with an automatic rifle and 250 rounds of ammunition, launched a one-man invasion.

"He put these notices up, they were all in French, of course, saying he was going to take over the island," Beaumont recalled.

"Everyone took it as a joke, of course, until the next day somebody saw him walking around with a rifle. Fortunately, the constable just had a lot of plain common sense. He walked up to the chap and said, 'That's an interesting rifle you've got there.' And he asked, 'How does it work?'

"So the chap started to show him, and the rest of the fire brigade pounced on him."

[Via Lew Rockwell.]

Comments

|5.7.07 @ 11:43AM|#

Maybe we should send Hand Blix to try that with Kim Jong-Il.

So, that's a very interesting plutonium generating facility. How does it work?

Well, you put the...

Get him!

|5.7.07 @ 11:49AM|#

Sark plainly needs a SWAT team, and some APCs.

highnumber|5.7.07 @ 11:49AM|#

Maybe they could rename it "Snark" and send joe there.

|5.7.07 @ 11:54AM|#

I'm sure when this happened Reason's Sark bureau quickly fired off an angry editorial about the Big Government's repression of the right to bear arms.

thoreau|5.7.07 @ 11:56AM|#

Did the snarky article about Sark get mentioned on Fark?

VM|5.7.07 @ 12:00PM|#

"Sark plainly needs a SWAT team, and some APCs."

nah - all they need is their version of Bergerac, the detective of the channel island Jersey.

|5.7.07 @ 12:11PM|#

Did the snarky article about Sark get mentioned on Fark?

I dunno - I'm in the dark.
I just posted on a lark.

|5.7.07 @ 12:30PM|#

If you're shooting for laughter, you're missing the mark. In fact, this thread has already jumped the shark.

|5.7.07 @ 12:30PM|#

Did the snarky article about Sark get mentioned on Fark?

I dunno - I'm in the dark.
I just posted on a lark.

I think the comments just jumped the shark.

|5.7.07 @ 12:31PM|#

Bread and butter.

|5.7.07 @ 12:35PM|#

No, he'll support the actions of the citizen militia. The Sarkians obviously aren't schooled to be defenceless sheep like us Americans!

Urkobold®|5.7.07 @ 12:44PM|#

Phillip J. Birmingham,

YOU OWE gaijin A COKE.

|5.7.07 @ 12:44PM|#

Oh, c'mon. A French guy surrenders, and that's news?

King|5.7.07 @ 1:06PM|#

Feudalism--especially when rights are saleable--rocks!

thoreau|5.7.07 @ 1:27PM|#

R C wins the thread.

|5.7.07 @ 1:40PM|#

Classic example of the users overthrowing a would-be master control program.

|5.7.07 @ 1:47PM|#

The header for this should have been "The Great Sark Hunt"

Jesse Walker|5.7.07 @ 1:51PM|#

I thought about that, but Lewis Carroll has seniority over Hunter Thompson.

|5.7.07 @ 3:38PM|#

Ha. Fair enough. Then I would guess they both have superiority over Nickelodeon's "Are You Afraid of the Dark/Sark"

lunchstealer|5.7.07 @ 5:55PM|#

So does this mean that Sarkozy would refer to intentionally crashing your plane into Sark?

|5.8.07 @ 12:52AM|#

Incidently, Sark is part of the Channel Islands, the only part of Britain to be invaded by Germany.

|5.8.07 @ 10:46AM|#

Gaijin can have my coke when he pries it out of my cold, dead hands!

|5.8.07 @ 5:22PM|#

If you're shooting for laughter, you're missing the mark. In fact, this thread has already jumped the shark.

From out of the dark, my laughter does bark.
Birmingham hit this one out of the park.

Hark! We're attacked by the great white snark!
The situation is perilous. Our prospects are stark.
Somebody call Superman! (Hey, where's Clark?)