Paintball
[Israel decided to deal with terrorist attacks on schools by allowing teachers and volunteer guards to carry concealed weapons, a decision that ended the deadly attacks.]
"Of course, the politically correct hand-wringers want nothing to do with this. Sadly, being helpless themselves, sheep tend to instinctively fear anything with canine teeth. Many of them cannot distinguish between the wolf and the sheepdog, and thus fear them both equally."
-- Massad Ayoob
David Engbers - Paintball - practical lessons about practical shooting. [smith2004]
War is hell; being an educated student of history, I thought I already knew this, but after a dose of real pain, fear, doubt, and confusion I was even more opposed to war (I have lot more respect for vetrans now).
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Regular practice at the shooting range is good, but if you *really* want to be prepared, paintball is the only way (for civilians) to get experienced for combat.
John Ross - Women, Teasing, Tests, One-itis, and Hope, or Ross in Range Stands in for Dear Abby - some good advice for the single male on finding and catching the girl of your dreams. I am learning this very late about my wife. She has gotten used to me giving in to her, so now it's difficult to stand my ground, but I'm learning, and hopefully, slowly teaching her.
Edgar J. Steele - In Defense of Racism: Part 2 - Intellectual Myths - Can't speak for the accuracy of Mr. Steele's claims, but he makes sense to me.
It is a myth that superior intellect makes one person better than another. Dispelling this myth is key to dispelling the next.
It is a myth that there are no intellectual differences between the races.
Recognizing the existence of these myths is key to understanding and dealing with the true differences between races which affect us all.
Bob Murphy at anti-state.com - Limited Liability Corporations in a Free Society* - on the absurdity of considering a corporation to be legally identical to an individual. [anti-state]
Eric Raymond - The Myth of Man The Killer - notwithstanding the myth to the contrary, humans are not natural killers. The solution to the wars and genocides of the twentieth century? Question authority. Disobey. [eric]
Individual human beings, outside of a tiny minority of sociopaths and psychopaths, are simply not natural killers. Why, then, is the belief in innate human viciousness so pervasive in our culture? And what is this belief costing us?
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War is the great exception, the great legitimizer of murder, the one arena in which ordinary humans routinely become killers. The special prevalence of the killer-ape myth in our time doubtless owes something to the horror and visibility of 20th-century war.
Campaigns of genocide and repressions such as the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's engineered famines, the Ankha massacres in Cambodia, and ``ethnic cleansing'' in Yugoslavia loom even larger in the popular mind than war as support for the myth of man the killer. But they should not; such atrocities are invariably conceived and planned by selected, tiny minorities far fewer than .5% of the population.
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Over most of human evolutionary history, the multiplier effect of docility was limited by the small size (250 or less, usually much less) of human social units. But when a single alpha male or cooperating group of alpha males could command the aggressive bachelor males of a large city or entire nation, the rules changed. Warfare and genocide became possible.
Actually, neither war nor genocide needs more than a comparative handful of murderers -- not much larger a cohort than the half-percent to percent that commits lethal violence in peacetime. Both, however, require the obedience of a large supporting population. Factories must work overtime. Ammunition trucks must be driven where the bullets are needed. People must agree not to see, not to hear, not to notice certain things. Orders must be obeyed.
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In sum, the myth of man the killer degrades and ultimately disempowers the individual, and unhelpfully deflects attention from the social mechanisms and social instincts that actually underlie virtually all violence. If we are all innately killers, no one is responsible; the sporadic violence of crime and terrorism and the more systematic violence of governments (whether in "state" or "pre-state" societies, and in wartime or otherwise) is as inevitable as sex.
On the other hand, if we recognize that most violence (and all large-scale violence) arises from obedience, and especially from the commission of aggressive violence by bachelor males at the command of alpha male pack leaders, then we can begin to ask more fruitful questions. Like: what can we do, culturally, to disrupt this causal chain?
Cryptome - Jim Bell Sues US et al for RICO and Anti-Trust - a monster lawsuit against the agents of the state who allegedly railroaded Jim Bell (of Assassination Politics fame) into prison. [cryptome]
