[Nettime-bold] Re: Black Unicorn: Reflections on "High Concept, Low Tech,"Martial Law, the new Paper Gauntlet and the changing meaning of 911.

["R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>]

--- begin forwarded text


Status:  U
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 22:24:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <cp@panix.com>
To: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>
Subject: Re: Black Unicorn: Reflections on "High Concept, Low Tech," Martial
 Law, the new Paper Gauntlet and the changing meaning of 911.

Thanks for cc'ing me on the Unicorn screed, Bob. Please feel free to
forward the following text to the same lists from whence the Unicorn came.

As I read Black Unicorn's essay, I kept hoping for some answers or
suggestions lurking at the end. But, this was not to be. Oddly enough,
just as our DC bureaucrats seem incapable of doing anything new (e.g. in
response to clear proof that airport security is a myth, they advocate
more airport security) our old friend Unicorn also seems in a box. In
answer to renewed attacks on crypto, he advocates more crypto.

Personally I think a genuinely new mindset is required--one which Mr.
Unicorn should know well, considering his region of origin. Call it the
"Swiss Mindset." Everyone armed to the teeth, trained and ready to respond
to any trespass with a massive display of force. Obviously this would make
a high-tech, high-risk environment such as an airplane safer, because the
chance of a random selection of 200 passengers mostly wanting to commit a
terrorist act is very small. So long as we can count on terrorists being a
minority (as I think we can), the majority has the power to kick ass, and
this is the greatest possible deterrent.

Now consider the whole nation, in the near future, as a high-tech,
high-risk environment like a very large airplane. The same principle
applies. Sure, some wacky guy can still pull a destructive stunt, but
he knows he'll be caught, because there are so many more of us than there
are of him.

Centralized law enforcement, centralized systems of protection, cannot
work so well to guard against a lone-nut-case terror act, because they are
insufficiently dispersed. We-the-people are going to have to take some
(gasp) responsibility, here. And sooner or later I think it may actually
happen, because after a few more terrorism disasters, even the dumbest and
most trusting members of we-the-people must surely figure out that those
guys in suits, in DC, really do not have a clue and cannot do what they
are promising to do.

This is the answer to the "Bill Joy" techno-alarmist school. Disperse the
power of retaliation, at the same time that we disperse the potential
power to commit sociopathic acts.

There's nothing new, here. As an old Pakistani landlord of mine used to
say, "It only takes one boy pissing in the well, to poison the whole
village." Generally speaking, however, young boys don't dare to piss in
the village well--not because it violates some law, but because they know
that one way or another, the locals will get a pretty shrewd idea who did
it, and the consequences will not be pleasant.

It has to come back to a grass-roots level. Even a totalitarian state
cannot be safe from terrorist acts. The only safety is in the numbers of
our neighbors, if our neighbors would stop watching CNN long enough to
realize that _they_ are the ones who need to "do something," or at least
be ready to do something.

I would like to see mass production and distribution of decontamination
suits and 48-hour gas masks (much like the old "sit under your desks now
kiddies" atom-blast evasion rituals of the 1950s, but more effective). I
would like more people trained in the responsible use of all kinds of
weapons. If we are going to spend public money, let's spend it to empower
the general public. Alas, this is heresy in present-day DC, where no one
even has the nerve to empower airline pilots.

But we only right at the beginning of the problem, here. As its
intractibility becomes clearer, I like to imagine that the solution will
become impossible to ignore, and we will finally see redistribution of
power, instead of redistribution of wealth.

Sure, call me an optimist.

--C

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'


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