The State-Security Charade

[theearthisround]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer91.html

More than three years after 9/11, I visited the Wall Street area of New York City to discover police officers with machine-guns patrolling the streets in front of the stock exchange. Other than their menacing presence, everything else seemed peaceful. Why this show of force in that area when other parts of Manhattan – much less the streets of Los Angeles with which I am more familiar – were devoid of such well-armed agents? Standing just a few blocks from the World Trade Center site, they looked more like props one would find at a historic recreation such as Gettysburg or Valley Forge, or the spear-bearing sopranos in Wagner’s Die Walküre, rather than integral parts of the functioning economic system in which they were located.