| Notes | Book |
The US Government has the world's most formidable stockpile of weapons. They have weapons of mass destruction, weapons of individual destruction, and weapons that will merely make you sick. The have high-tech sensors and an “intelligence” service whose black budget must be far larger than the total budgets of many countries.
And yet on September 11, 2001, the enemies of the US government managed to strike a blow that “changed the world”. They were armed only with a few box cutters. The armament for the 9-11 strike probably cost less than $50.
One might think that these occurrences are unique, but they are not. The Chinese Emperors spent decades building the Great Wall of China, and the wall was penetrated because a corrupt official was bribed to open the gates to the Mongols. Many a castle in the middle ages was breached because someone left a door open on purpose.
Grand fortresses, whether they are built of stones, armament, or high technology are seldom a perfect defense. They suffer from the same flaw as all schemes of central planners; they are vulnerable to a single point of failure. A decentralized defense planned and executed by an armed population can have multiple points of failures and still be effective. Redundancy leads to reliability. Switzerland uses such a defense, and no one has even attempted to invade for hundreds of years. And it's not as if there is nothing to be gained by invading Switzerland. On a per-capita basis, it is one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
If the passengers of the 9-11 airplanes had been armed and willing to fight, the hijackers would have had no chance of success in their schemes. That would have formed a redundant and in-depth defense that could not have been breached. A defense that is distributed throughout the entire population cannot be defeated as we are discovering in heavily armed Iraq. Millions of armed Iraqis are more than a match for the high tech weapons of the West. When an Abrams tank is invading at 40 or 50 miles per hour, it is very hard to stop. But when the “mission accomplished” banner has been waved the tanks are patrolling at low speeds without a designated target, or they are parked. Then they are vulnerable. No army can stand against the US military-industrial complex, but if they choose not to stand, there is very little the US Army can do. It's difficult, tiring, and very expensive to try to kill mosquitoes with a sledgehammer.
The policy of disarmament is a failure. It is the wet dream of any power mad control freak to be the only person on earth with a gun. But if a person like that could destroy every gun but his own, he would likely meet his end from someone using a knife, a hammer, a rock, a rope, or any of a number of tools that can also be used as weapons.
Disarmament is a chimera that creates more problems than it solves. Disarmed populations suffer more depredations from criminals than those that are armed. And that is true for criminals wearing uniforms and/or carrying badges as well as those without the sponsorship of the state.
Limiting nuclear proliferation is an especially damaging myth. The way technology is progressing; weapons will soon be developed that are far more deadly than atomic bombs, and atomic bombs will become smaller and more portable. Nuclear non-proliferation is not a viable long-term strategy. It is just another form of prohibition with the attendant prohibitionist bureaucracy and black market. It creates more criminals inside and outside of government and does not make the world a safer place.
The US Government and their elitist allies in the corporate world spend millions or billions on statist propaganda. Clearly one of the highest priorities of the US ruling elite is to control public opinion both in the USA and around the world. The content of most of the TV shows, movies radio shows has a clearly pro-US government and pro-state bias, and this is no accident.
A few prison guards using only some cheap cameras, which probably cost less than $1,000 dollars, managed to bring about the “Abu Grab-Ass” scandal of 2004 which is probably the worst public relations disaster the US government has suffered since Vietnam.
Here again what appears at first glance to be a uniquely stupid event has actually been quite common throughout history. Statists have often made various kinds of records of their terrorist activities. The Nazis and the Soviet Communists kept a lot of records of state sponsored atrocities, and so did Saddam Hussein. These prison guard photos were released to the public at an awkward time for the state, in one sense, but on the other hand the timing may be perfect. The state derives income and power from terror. Recording some terrible acts and “leaking” the recordings, reminds people what can happen to them if they displease their statist masters.
Also, the minions of the state who are tasked with terrorizing people need to think that what they are doing is not a crime. They need to buy into the theory that kidnapping, torture, and murder are OK if they are approved by the state and called arresting, interrogating, and executing. Keeping records of the violence reinforces that belief. If you can't record it or talk about it, it seems more like the crime that it is.
The statist lives in a fortress of hypocrisy from which he believes he can commit any crime with impunity, while denying that right to others by calling them terrorists and criminals. Irrational moral fortresses built on quagmires of hypocrisy regularly collapse on the heads of those who occupy them, but it can take an amazingly long time, and they can do an astounding amount of damage before the collapse occurs.