On Politics

1. Politics is a disease inflicted on the stupid by the opportunistic.

2. Politically, If you get something you'll probably find you don't want it.

3. Politics undermines the state by making it look like a corrupt circus.

4. A crooked used-care salesman is someone too honest to succeed as a politician.

The State

The state, but its very nature, undermines and eliminates community.

Hollow

No gravitational force is exerted within a hollow sphere: the gravitational field from the matter of the shell cancels itself out.  Everything floats!

Leaders Are Poison

Thomas L. Day, a 31 years old Iraq War Veteran, laments in Penn State, my final loss of faith, the fact that no real leaders exist anymore.  I will have to disagree.  There is nothing lamentable about it.  Leaders are poison.  At best, they represent an unnecessary weakness as they allow the mass of humanity to escape their own culpability.  Leaders enable passivity.  In cases of mass movements, leaders may be eliminated and/or co-opted. At worst, a leader is nothing but the scum that floats to the top of a cesspool.  (Penn State is certainly a most disgusting example.)

For any real change to occur, people need to take responsibility for their own lives.  I have recently come across the term "Leader-Full," where everyone is a leader (See Here.)  I admit that I kind of like the term and the theory behind it as it fits nicely with Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) Theory, which involves a decentralization in human affairs as people shift toward primary loyalties as the nation-state decays.  It is also compatible with open source theory as well.  As the nation-state withers, people do not need to swear fealty to little dictators like tribal chieftains, warlords, organized crime bosses etc.  Hierarchies are not necessary.  People can do things for themselves and not for the benefit of a parasitic elite--that is real freedom.  It's hard work, but it seems at least some of the younger generation gets it.

Too Many Males

I've been saying for years that the one child policy of China and male-centric societies like India, combined with selective abortions of females, would result in severe social consequences in the 21st century.  I grew up in a rural town with a lopsided male/female ratio and I've seen the results.  It isn't pretty, but at least I could move a hundred miles to the nearest city.

From The unstable future of a world full of men:

As the global population hits seven billion, experts are warning that skewed gender ratios could fuel the emergence of volatile “bachelor nations” driven by an aggressive competition for brides.

The precise consequences of what French population expert Christophe Guilmoto calls the “alarming demographic masculinisation” of countries such as India and China as the result of sex-selective abortion remain unclear.

But many demographers believe the resulting shortage of adult women over the next 50 years will have as deep and pervasive an impact as climate change.

Ugly.

The Nation State is Irrelevant

When something ceases to have meaning, it becomes irrelevant.  The decline of the nation state is no exception.  (See my earlier posts regarding fourth generation warfare, or 4GW, for more details.)  It has made the national government irrelevant.  Hence, the reason for the Occupy Wall Street movement having no focus on Washington D.C.  (The "other" Washington as it is called here in Washington State.)  The youth understand, even if it is not articulated, that appeals to the government are meaningless.  Leaders are no better than pimps. The lack of a leadership and hence a cohesive message from Occupy Wall is partly due to this reality.  It's hard to know where you're going when the only view is the wreckage from behind.  They know what doesn't work, but yet have not figured out what does.  It all boils down to the final realization that Voting is Worthless.  Obama's betrayal of his youthful followers, who are feeling like Chumps about now, was the final straw.

Regardless of their political slant, including those who do support OWS, most of the older generations just don't seem to get it.  Examples are Here and Here.  (Of course, there are some like John Robb who truly get it.  See also Here.)  They chastise and cajole the OWS participants for not putting pressure on their elected representatives and to vote.  (As if those crooks had anything to offer.  Indeed, even being in the same room is enough to make one feel tainted.)  Some even want OWS participants to run for public office, which is the equivalent of suggesting one become a whore.  All of these things are "so twentieth century,"  and the youth know it.  An entirely new social order is needed, and it is not government socialism or libertarian quackery.  People have to take responsibility for their lives at the local level.  The nation state will do nothing.  OWS, if it has to have meaning, is about forming new primary loyalties.

Also, in case you are interested, my site dedicated to propaganda art is featuring OWS-related art at this time.  Some of it is quite good.  See Here.

Propaganda of the Deed

PROPAGANDA OF THE DEEDS AND DON’TS is an interesting post regarding early anarchists attempts at "Propaganda of the Deed," and its implications for anarchism. It also compares and contrasts anarchist terrorism and AL-Qaida. It some regards this comparison is valid, but for others the difference is stark. For instance, anarchists were mainly atheistic, therefore their ideology and self-sacrifices were directed (in many cases naively) for a better world on Earth. They also did not believe in ruling others, unlike those seeking to establish an Islamic Caliphate. Islamic terrorists have earthly aims, but their inspiration is religious and therefore not entirely of this world.  Religion also has far more staying power than ideology, which is more like a flavor of the month in comparison.  Also, strangely enough but obvious when one considers the historical epoch, the anarchists believed in more concrete organizing. therefore they were easier to break.  As a result, I believe that militant Islam will outlast its anarchist counterpart in terms of half-life.  If anarchy (meaning the absence of rulers) ever comes about it will be due to the disintegration of the nation state, and not something brought about by any flavor of anarchism as an ideology.  If Al-Qaida's aims become reality (which I hope not to be the case) it will be due to armed struggle and nothing else.  4GW is not just ideological terrorism.

The Stumble Toward Totalitarianism Continues

The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves:

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

Fortunately, even as it stumbles toward outright totalitarianism, the government continues to destroy its legitimacy.  Baring an outright revolution, which can probably never happen due to the fact that the population is fundamentally divided, its authority will just erode over time as its actions become ever more paranoid.  However, even through the age where classic totalitarianism is over (as governments cannot control information and even their own borders as was once the case), they can still do a lot of damage to those caught in the middle.

Even as they fade way, the mediocre are still dangerous.  It's also not surprising that these judges would rule that such actions of the government are perfectly legal.  As pointed out by the dissenting judge:

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month's decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people's. The court's ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

Judge Kozinski is a leading conservative, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, but in his dissent he came across as a raging liberal. "There's been much talk about diversity on the bench, but there's one kind of diversity that doesn't exist," he wrote. "No truly poor people are appointed as federal judges, or as state judges for that matter." The judges in the majority, he charged, were guilty of "cultural elitism."

At least some people in authority understand the score.  (Although the final result will be far different than Orwell's 1984.)  There may not be a revolution, but in this age Things are much more likely to just Fall Apart.  When (sooner or later) this occurs, those understanding the situation may be able to weather the storm.  The rest won't.

Stalemate

i. Decentralization is not well grasped by centralized institutions.
ii. Centralization is not well appreciated by decentralized organizations.
iii. Hence, centralized and decentralized power structures are less of a mutual threat than would otherwise be the case.
iv.  Result: stalemate.

Hezbollah, Radical but Rational

In Hezbollah, Radical but Rational Stratfor analyzes the group's capability and motivation for conducting a terrorist attack in the U.S.:

Hezbollah’s global commercial network transports and sells counterfeit consumer goods and electronics and pirated movies, music and software. In West Africa, the network also deals in “blood diamonds” from places like Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and fences illegally bunkered oil from the Niger Delta. Cells in Asia procure and ship much of the counterfeit material sold elsewhere; nodes in North America deal in smuggled cigarettes, baby formula and counterfeit designer goods, among other things. In the United States, Hezbollah also has been involved in smuggling pseudoephedrine and selling counterfeit Viagra, and it has had a significant role in the production and worldwide propagation of counterfeit currencies. Hezbollah also has a long-standing and well-known presence in the tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, where it earns tens of millions of dollars annually from legal and illegal commercial activities, according to U.S. government estimates.

The Hezbollah business empire also extends into the drug trade. The Bekaa Valley, Lebanon’s central agricultural heartland, is controlled by Hezbollah and serves as a major center for growing poppies and cannabis and for producing heroin from raw materials arriving from places like Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia. Indeed, Hezbollah controls a commanding percentage of the estimated $1 billion drug trade flowing out of the Bekaa. Much of the hashish and heroin emanating from there eventually arrives in Europe, where Hezbollah members also are involved in smuggling, car theft and the distribution of counterfeit goods and currency. Hezbollah operatives in the Western Hemisphere work with Latin American drug cartels to traffic cocaine into the lucrative markets of Europe, and there have been reports of Hezbollah members dealing drugs in the United States.

[...]

Hezbollah has a group of operatives capable of undertaking terrorist missions that is larger and better-trained than any group al Qaeda has ever had. Hezbollah (and its Iranian patrons) have also established a solid foothold in the Americas, and they have demonstrated a capability to use their global logistics network to move operatives and conduct attacks should they so choose. This is what U.S. government officials fear, and what the Iranians want them to fear. The threat posed by Hezbollah’s militant apparatus has always been a serious one, and Hezbollah has long had a significant presence inside the United States. The threat it poses today is not some new, growing phenomenon, as some reports in the press would suggest.

But despite Hezbollah’s transnational terrorism capabilities, it has not chosen to exercise them outside of its home region for many years now. This is due in large part to the way Hezbollah has matured as an organization. It is no longer the new, shadowy organization it was in 1983 but a large global organization with an address. Its assets and personnel can be identified and seized or attacked. Hezbollah understands that a serious terrorist attack or series of attacks on U.S. soil could result in the type of American reaction that followed the 9/11 attack and that the organization would likely end up on the receiving end of the type of campaign that the United States launched against al Qaeda (and Lebanon is far easier to strike than Afghanistan). In the past, Hezbollah (and its Iranian patrons) have worked hard to sow ambiguity and hide responsibility for terrorist attacks, but as Hezbollah matured as an organization, such subterfuge became more difficult.

There is also international public opinion to consider. Hezbollah is a political organization seeking political legitimacy, and it is one thing for it to be seen as a victim of Israeli aggression when standing up to Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and quite another to be seen killing innocent civilians on the other side of the globe.

Hezbollah also sees the United States (and the rest of the Western Hemisphere) as a wonderful place to make money through its array of legal and illegal enterprises. If it angered the United States, its business interests in the Western Hemisphere would be severely impacted. Hezbollah could conduct attacks in the United States, but it would pay a terrible price for doing so, and it does not appear that it is willing to pay that price. The Hezbollah leadership may be radical, but it is not irrational. Many of the senior Hezbollah leaders have matured since the group was founded and have become influential politicians and wealthy businessmen. This older cadre tends to be more moderate than some of the younger firebrands in the organization.

So, while Hezbollah has the capability to attack U.S. interests, it does not currently possess the intent to do so. Its terrorist attacks in Lebanon in the 1980s, like the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks and the two attacks against the U.S. Embassy, were intended to drive U.S. influence out of Lebanon, and the attacks largely succeeded. An attack by Hezbollah inside the United States today would result in the return of U.S. attention to, and perhaps even a presence in, Lebanon, something that is clearly not in Hezbollah’s interests.

Then why the recurring rumors of impending Hezbollah terrorist attacks? For several years now, every time there has been talk of a possible attack on Iran there has been a corresponding threat by Iran that it will use its proxy groups in response to such an attack. Iran has also been busy pushing intelligence reports to anybody who will listen, including STRATFOR, that it will activate its militant proxy groups if attacked and, to back up that threat, will periodically send IRGC-QF, MOIS or Hezbollah operatives out to conduct not-so-subtle surveillance of potential targets. (They clearly want to be seen undertaking such activity.)

In many ways, the Hezbollah threat is being played up in order to provide the type of deterrent that mutually assured destruction did during the Cold War. The threats of unleashing Hezbollah terrorist attacks and closing the Strait of Hormuz are the most potent deterrents Iran has to being attacked. Since Iran does not yet possess a nuclear arsenal, these threats are the closest thing it has to a “real nuclear option.” As such, they are threats that Iran will make good on only as a last resort.

So it would appear that the threat of a terrorist attack by Hezbollah is
mostly propaganda, by both the U.S. and Iran (provided the U.S. stays out of Lebanon), than any real wish to do so by the group's leadership.  They could do so, but it would not be worth the price.  Like other international drug dealers, like MS-13 and other 4GW entities, they simply have too much to lose if they chose to stray off the path of their profitable business ventures.

Winning Hearts and Minds?

The video came to my attention a few years back. It is a US gunship attack video from Afghanistan in 2002 or so. In this type of war, where non-state forces fight state forces, sometimes referred to as 4th Generation Warfare (4GW), it's been said that the moral component of war is the most vital to win. Is so, then this is not the way to do so.

Download Video. (Includes an extra minute at the beginning that was cut to keep the blogger upload below 100 Mb.)

America's Defense Meltdown

Advance Preview of America's Defense Meltdown available now. Produced by the military reform movement. Includes chapters by William S. Lind and other associated with DNI.

I can never resist a work that is sure to be hated.