A Revolution in the Middle East & Israel’s Mission: Syria or Bust

Israel’s war against Hezbollah is nearly three weeks old at the time I write this and, much to the surprise of just about everyone, it has not been going well at all for Israel. Israel has made multiple very serious mistakes and errors in judgment.

One mistake is Israel’s belief that the selective use of their air-power would inflame Lebanon along ethnic lines of division and thus create a ground-swell of opposition against Hezbollah. This has proven to be completely flawed, and indeed the opposite has happened. Lebanon has united around self-defense against blatant Israeli attack. This is a startling indicator of just how weak Israel’s vaunted intelligence system actually is at gauging the true character of people and events on the ground.

Perhaps the most obvious error is the underestimation of Hezbollah’s stamina, tenacity, and fighting capacity because all have exceeded expectations even against the best Israel has to sent against them. By effectively resisting the invincible juggernaut of the Israeli military the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, has gone from obscurity to superhero status throughout the world, literally overnight. He embodies the exact opposite of everything that Arab state leaders represent today and that the people living in those states detest, namely a timidity towards Israel, selling out to the United Sates and a general penchant for domestic oppression and corruption. Hezbollah has already been credited with forcing Israel to leave Lebanon after its lengthy occupation, and now Hezbollah is doing the unthinkable and winning against Israel again! All this with a core group of fighters estimated at only 700 and a maximum reserve of 10,000 citizen soldiers!

No wonder Israel is acting increasingly desperate and confused, they have dug such a deep hole for themselves at this point that the political and military leadership is under immense pressure to bring home a tangible military victory to show the Israeli public and justify their military adventurism. After nearly three weeks of intense aerial bombardment, artillery, and ground invasions, some even carried out by Israel’s elite Special Forces such as the Golani Brigade, it is dawning on Israel that Hezbollah cannot be defeated through military means. Nothing Israel has thrown at Hezbollah has worked. Hezbollah’s rockets launched into Israel continue at the same pace as the start of the conflict, no victory there. The inability to see the obvious before starting the war is another indicator of Israel's stunning arrogance, hubris even, not to mention predictability.

Nor was this a sudden reaction on the part of a surprised Israel:

"Of all of Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, told the San Francisco Chronicle (7/21/05). "By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board." The Chronicle reported that a "senior Israeli army officer" has been giving PowerPoint presentations for more than a year to "U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks" outlining the coming war with Lebanon, explaining that a combination of air and ground forces would target Hezbollah and "transportation and communication arteries." From: Down the Memory Hole - Israeli contribution to conflict is forgotten by leading papers, FAIR, July 28, 2006.

An Unexpected Revolution

Just look at a map of the region and you’ll see that Israel is a small country surrounded by much larger ones. Israel has relied on fear created through terror tactics and intimidation through military superiority to keep their opponents cowed and at bay. Israel’s greatest error is Zionism founded on theft and lies instead of honesty and negotiation. With subterfuge as their foundation Israel has been forced to wage an unending campaign of war, through multiple means, against everyone else on the planet to keep what they have taken. Israel believes that there is no reason to negotiate for only a portion of the land they covet when they can steal all of it.

"Let the Israeli forces come on the ground and you will see how we sacrifice our lives and butcher them. They have snatched everything from us, and now they do not even want us to stay alive," said Shadi Ibrahim, one of the refugees.
"This is not a question of Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah. Neither is it a question of [Hamas leader] Khaled Mishal or Sheikh Osama [bin Laden] or [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah. This is a question of do or die. And whoever leads the battle, we will be with them." - A group of Palestinian refugees in Tyre.

The unassuming, sober, and startling honest Hassan Nasrallah has blown to bits the myth of Israel’s invincibility while unifying resistance against Israel. That is why the entire Middle East order has fundamentally shifted in a profound way, but not the way that George W. Bush and Condi Rice want!

Nasrallah is clearly a very serious problem for Israel, but it’s already too late to do anything about him directly. Even if Israel managed to assassinate Nasrallah tomorrow he has already demonstrated the possibility of victory against Israel through solidarity, tenacity and robust organization.

At this point Syria is an increasingly tempting option that the Israeli commanders have to be considering in order to bring home some kind of war trophy to show their people. Syria, unlike Hezbollah, is a target rich environment and a poorly defended one at that. Now is a perfect opportunity for Israel to attack Syria because they are already in a hot-war posture and a pretext for attack, legitimate or not, has already been established by stating that Hezbollah is being supplied by Syria. By expanding the conflict into Syria now, most likely through a large scale aerial bombardment campaign, Israel can militarily negate a neighbor they have wanted to attack for years while enjoying unconditional support from Washington D.C.

It would almost be stupid for Israel not to move on Syria except for the fact that they do have SCUD missiles. Israel would have to find and knock out the SCUD’s before they are launched (not easy), or hope that the improved Patriot missiles, provided courtesy of the American taxpayer, can shoot them down.

Israel has already activated thousands of reservists while at the same time stating that they do not plan to conduct a large-scale ground incursion into Lebanon. So what are the reservists for?

Israel’s leaders have basically two choices; they can de-escalate and call it victory but risk the wrath of their angry, fearful and revenge-driven public. Or, Israel can escalate this conflict and hope to bring home a bloody trophy. Given Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's military inexperience, a perceived weakness, it seems much more likely that he will push for an expansion rather than to fall back and let opportunity for glory pass him by. Ariel Sharon would do no less. 31.07.06 & 03.08.06

Part II

Yesterday I asked the question, 'what are the reserve troops for'? Today Israel answered it for me: they are to be used as part of a full-blown ground invasion of Lebanon.

So a full invasion of Lebanon appears to be Israel’s plan now, but this will incur major costs. Israel is not a country with a large labor pool to draw soldiers from and the reserve forces that are activated for military service are people that will not be doing their civilian jobs. The Israeli economy is already taking a major hit as a consequence of Hezbollah’s rockets forcing the population into bunkers and out of the office or factory. Further, it involves political costs. A ground invasion cannot be desirable or popular in Israel because it means repeating Israel’s infamous invasion and lengthy occupation of Lebanon; how is it supposed to work this time when it didn’t last time?

In a tactical sense Hezbollah now has Israel where they want them to be: on their own terrain and on the ground where they can be directly attacked. But how long can Hezbollah sustain resistance against a massive Israeli assault? Will Israel be able to extract a clear victory from the smoldering ruins of Lebanon, or will it descend into another bloody occupation mission? How will Israel foist their invasion off onto another group, especially after recently bombing a known UN post, killing four unarmed UN observers?

Since these questions will be difficult for Israel to address given the limited range of options available, Syria remains a convenient second stage, after eliminating the perceived military threat from Hezbollah, that will serve as a distraction and a means of achieving a clear military victory, however temporary. 01.08.06

A potential revolutionary situation exists in any country where the government consistently fails in its obligation to ensure at least a minimally decent standard of life for the great majority of its citizens. If there exists even the nucleus of a revolutionary party able to supply doctrine and organization, only one ingredient is needed: the instrument for violent revolutionary action. ...

 

Guerrilla war is not dependent for success on the efficient operation of complex mechanical devices, highly organized logistical systems, or the accuracy of electronic computers. It can be conducted in any terrain, in any climate, in any weather; in swamps, in mountains, in farmed fields. Its basic element is man, and man is more complex than any of his machines. He is endowed with intelligence, emotions, and will. Guerrilla warfare is therefore suffused with, and reflects, man’s admirable qualities as well as his less pleasant ones. While it is not always humane, it is human, which is more than can be said for the strategy of extinction. – Samuel B. Griffith, from his introduction to On Guerrilla Warfare by Mao Tse-Tung

Part I: Money Makes the World Go 'Round / Stop the World I Want to Get Off

Some speculate that large corporations will take over in the aftermath of a collapse in the economic or political authority of government. Some even go so far as to speculate that an intentional plan is in operation to bankrupt the United States federal government in order to obliterate the legal and regulator opposition to unlimited corporate actions, and then to allow for private companies to move in and buy up public assets that the government is forced to sell off and privatize in order to raise cash to pay down massive debts.

Living is cheaper when you steal from others

This is more than simply a leftwing conspiracy theory but in fact is merely a logical extension of the present system of American financial imperialism, a system that has already been used throughout Central and South America with great effectiveness. Very large private banks in conjunction with the IMF, World Bank and sectors of the federal government have conspired under the disingenuous guise of ‘development aid’ for decades to lend billions of dollars to impoverished countries, usually in quantities much greater than they can ever repay, and always with onerous restrictions. This massive debt burden serves as a mechanism to siphon the capital out of the target country and directly into the heart of the global financial system back in New York. When the capital in the target country runs dry, the debt still remains of course by design, and the government is forced to sell off public assets to private enterprise in order to raise enough cash to meet the minimum debt service obligations to the creditors back in New York and Washington DC, again by design. Of course the locals don’t have any more capital with which to buy up the public assets but the investment banks in the United States do have the capital, now, so they buy up the public assets and turn them into a business for profit that is then siphoned out of the target country, further impoverishing the very unfortunate indigenous inhabitants. Water is a classic, contemporary example of this process in action. Clean water is a commodity that everyone needs and should logically remain as a public asset operated for the public good but when it is privatized, almost always by the use of economic force, it becomes perverted to act as a machine that can take cash out of the pockets of everyone, even the very poor.

Assuming that this practice of economic exploitation will eventually turn on itself  misunderstands the nature of the financial empire that has been constructed, but it can’t be entirely discounted either. In some ways this view is supported by the language and commentary of ultra-conservatives in the American political dialogue such as Grover Norquist who once said “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Statements such as these make it sound like they want to obliterate government entirely but actually what they really want is a government that is so weak it cannot enforce any law or restriction that impedes the actions of business. So in other words the government can have an EPA to try and protect the natural environment but it can only make suggestions, never fine or take polluting industries to court.

Privatizing Profit, Collectivizing Pain

What few realize, perhaps because it is so obvious, is that businesses exist and perpetuate precisely because of the structure and order, the laws and regulations that are created and enforced equally by government. This assumption of the rise of large corporations in the wake of declining government is an understandable, but misleading and simplistic, extrapolation of current trends into the future. Capitalist enterprises thrive upon stability in a fair and regulated environment; the laissez faire free-market is myth. For example, what kind of capitalism do you see in a country where regulations are weak or non-existent? Take Nigeria for instance, a country earning billions of dollars from selling its oil to multinational corporations like Shell and ExxonMobil. Is it a friendly and steady environment to business, or is it a nightmare of shifting government demands and regulations, roving militias, and the perpetual drain of bribes and protection payments?

In actuality, a federal default, or even a destabilization of the world markets will have a negative effect upon everyone floating on that sea of money, even the supertankers will get rocked by the waves of the storm just as the little boats will go under. Look at General Motors, easily one of the largest companies in the world and indeed it is so large that if it were to hit hard times, bailing it out is as unthinkable as its collapse. Yet GM, like many other multi-national corporations, is anything but a paradigm of pecuniary health. Even though GM earns $33.5 billion in gross profit each year, it is still operating at a significant loss while dragging an incredible debt load of nearly 284 billion Dollars! [1] If a behemoth like GM is struggling in a healthy market, what do you think will happen when the business environment starts to get a little bumpy? Further, since nearly all the corporate assets of American businesses are denominated in Dollars, any turmoil in the value or soundness of that currency will affect every business just as it will reverberate around the global financial system. This is why Osama bin Laden, a former businessman himself, chose to strike the World Trade Center towers, he asked himself: where do global finance, Jews, and American imperial power all overlap? WTC in New York City. For Al Qaeda, the WTC attacks were primarily symbolic because they had no follow on assault to sustain their financial warfare campaign against the American empire. Then George W. Bush and his administration came to the rescue and launched a wildly expensive war first on Afghanistan and then on Iraq when they ran out of targets. The American economy recovered from Al Qaeda’s WTC attacks but not so easily, if at all, from the financial impact of Bush’s self-defeating 'war on terrorism'.

The managers and planners of the American financial Empire, people like the soon to be retired Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, are aware of the negative consequences that a serious dollar disorder will create. These planners have bailed-out banks, business and even governments in the past whenever it became necessary to forestall a collapse or catastrophic breakdown in the machinery of global Dollar finance. Back room deals, frantic phone calls and billions of Dollars have been involved. Sometimes the problem was quick and simple to fix, other times disaster was avoided by the narrowest of margins, even by only a matter of minutes as in the 1987 Wall Street stock market meltdown. But over the past three decades a trend has clearly emerged. Interest rates fall to spur the market into growth, bubbles build up as hot-money flows into speculative and dubious investments, inflation increases and eventually some crisis will occur that bursts the bubble and recession ensues. During a recession interest rates are lowered, businesses slowly digest their debt, consolidation occurs, and investors absorb the consequences of their mistakes. Low interest rates begin to stimulate investment, confidence picks up and speculation ensues, bubbles begin to form and in we’re right back to the start again. But as this cycle is occurring the money supply continues to expand. This is why each cycle becomes more severe, because the scale is significantly increased each time since every bail-out and multi-billion dollar federal rescue package is paid for by printing money, deficit spending, hence the continual and rapid increase in M3 [read: A Vicious Cycle].

More money in the economy typically means more inflation since the quantity of goods to purchase remains relatively stable but the amount of cash to buy them with increases disproportionably. It would seem that one way to counterbalance this inflation is to increase the quantity of goods, and I think this is one reason why we have such a consumer-oriented clutter culture that measures progress by the quantity of products available for purchase – it is counter-inflationary. The trick necessary to make this process work is that the cost of producing these goods has to steadily decline in order to be able to produce a larger quantity because the true cost of production doesn’t really change regardless of the number of Dollar bills in circulation. Productivity can be improved through several methods but cutting labor costs is the most common because that is the largest single expense for a business. Lowering labor expenses can be achieved by technological advancements or by off-shoring labor to low-wage countries such as China or India. In many cases it is cheaper to move the entire factory to a low-wage, low-regulation destination, such as Mexico. One of the primary reasons that the poorly regulated developing world is so appealing and cheap for corporate business is that the negative externalities of any given industrial process are not being accounted for in the production cost. Goods production is especially cheap because all the production profits are privatized while the pain and environmental devastation is nationalized, meaning that the people and the government are forced to clean up and attempt to rectify the damage and not the actual producer of the pollution.

This economic order is clearly unsustainable from an environmental standpoint because it creates its own incentive to pollute while extracting natural resources without regard for future consequences. But take any other pillar of stability you can think of and you’ll find that the Dollar monopoly system is entirely unsustainable there too. It's not economically sustainable because it robs the local people of capital needed for self-development while creating vast imbalances between those with capital and those without. Further, this system of global financial exploitation creates massive distortions and financial disturbances, acting like a spark in a dead forest that initiates a catastrophic chain-reaction such as from Mexico in 1994 or Thailand in 1997. This system is not politically sustainable because it systematically undermines and erodes the capacity of government to care for the well being of its own people and to manage and regulate capital and resources. It's not socially sustainable because the funding, by accident or intent, undercuts all of the internal development and resources needed to maintain living standards, such as education, sanitation and healthcare.

Besides being dangerously unsustainable this worldwide financial juggernaut is inherently inflationary because it has no substantive reference point, such as gold, but rather it is composed of fiat currency that can be printed in any quantity at any time merely based on the whim of the printing authority, in this case the Federal Reserve. Consequently, this system is teetering from one extreme to the other and each swing tends to be more severe than the last, from one bail-out and crisis to the another this is a system badly out of equilibrium. What’s worse - the managers have no viable means of fixing it, they can only rescue it when it nears the point of falling over entirely. Political realities coupled with the severe disequilibria of this financial system have combined to create a monster that can’t be stopped and not only that, every attempt to keep it from falling over and crushing us only makes it bigger and more dangerous.

Eventually when another crisis event occurs, this monster of the Dollar financial system will either tip over so far that no one can save it due to the fantastic scale of it all or because the timing of sequential events will preclude any effort to bail it out again. In the meantime a slow but steadily increasing pace of inflation is eating away at the continued viability of the Dollar Empire. The pace of this decline can be measured by the expansion of debt, the money supply, and the currency exchange rate of Dollars to more stable currencies such as the Euro, but especially to the value of primary commodities such as precious metals.

Erosion of the Exception

At some point, if an intractable crisis does not occur, then the value-erosion of the Dollar will reach the point of unsustainability in the role of the world’s primary currency of choice for international transactions. United States interest rates will have to rise to a level that foreign investors, who are already supporting the American economy to the tune of several billion dollars a month, will accept more Dollars as the return on their investment. As it is now a major increase in interest rates would devastate the domestic American economy given the debt load of everyone from individual to business to government. America will be faced with a difficult choice, either pay foreign creditors in raw commodities such as gold, trees, oil, property rights, or simply print more Dollar bills to pay off the debt that is very conveniently denominated as such. At this point we’ve reached the beginning stages of hyperinflation and the only way to get out of that vicious cycle is to peg the currency to another one that is on solid ground or go to a precious metal standard, like gold. Issuance of new debt will require either substantive collateral to back it up or very high interest rates, neither of which will be helpful for domestic economic growth.

Due to the very high living standards Americans have come to expect over the past several decades the greatest insult will be the sudden and rapid erosion of economic well-being down to a level comparable to the world average or possibly even lower. So as America loses its Empire based on Dollar hegemony it becomes just another country with a much higher cost of living, such as a Canada or an Italy. Oil and gas prices will be the most visible cost increases and will undermine the price advantage of cheap transportation the country has enjoyed for so long. The country will turn inward as the cost effectiveness of global trade evaporates. The individual states will be forced to take over where federal funding has dried up, but in almost every case they currently lack the funding just to fulfill their present obligations to the public. Taxes will go up and every program and service will be cut or eliminated. Many regions of the country will become essentially autonomous, lawless even. Lack of law enforcement will mean that many people, now out of work, will start cutting down trees, over-fishing and basically sucking out natural resources to earn some income. Pollution will rapidly increase and safety standards will plummet as businesses and individuals attempt to cut every corner they can to stay competitive. Politics will become a battlefield as ideological groups of every stripe mobilize to have their solutions and plans implemented. Public disinterest and apathy will evaporate, as practically everyone will be thrown into the turmoil together. Many people with wealth will leave the country for safety elsewhere and those that stay will attempt to retreat behind concrete walled housing complexes with razor wire around the edges and private security guards at the gate. Immigration will plunge as the millions illegally crossing the borders will have second thoughts when they know that employment opportunities aren’t much better in America than at home.

Rural regions will just become poorer but in the cities, where most Americans live, crime rates will skyrocket because many (more) people will be left with no other option to meet basic economic needs. Think about it, if many American cities can barely keep crime under control now, what will they be able to do when unemployment tops 20% and the tax revenue dries up? In short every social division and cultural fissure will split the country apart at the seams, every problem the public has been willing to overlook will turn into a reason for conflict once the money that serves as the excuse for tolerance disappears. Nothing is more ugly than a multi-ethnic, multi-racial polyglot when the money evaporates that temporarily masks hatred and binds every participant together in a diversionary, profit-motivated endeavor. The majority won’t understand what happened to them so they will only become angry and start looking for someone to blame, and people will blame whatever it is they think they are not. They won’t recognize an Empire collapsing around them because they are so oblivious, ignorant and misinformed that they don’t even realize they are part of an Empire.

No one knows for sure how events and the responses will unfold, they could be worse than predicted or they could be less severe, but either way certain trends are clear to see. If you’re young then you have an opportunity to change your world in a substantive way, and if you’re old then you have no excuse since you’ve had time to recognize what’s going on and prepare, or even to fix the problems before they became unsolvable without social turmoil and revolution. 28&30.08.05

Part II: Relative Currency Value

In the near term of less than ten years, the most likely outcome given the course of current events is devaluation in the United States Dollar. Remember that since modern currencies have no intrinsic worth, no substance like gold backing them up, the value of any given currency is based on the collective perception of the financial health of the economy that currency represents. Currently, most consider the Dollar to be overvalued and even Warren Buffet, the world’s second richest man is betting against it. Billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates are also reported to be hedging against a Dollar decline. How much the Dollar is overvalued is the real question, 10, 40, maybe even 100 percent? One estimate claims the Dollar is overpriced by 40% to 50%. [1] So think about it this way: you go to a typical American store to buy a new television and find one you like for $200, imported of course, but you still want to think it over so you wait a week. During that week the Dollar suddenly depreciates by 50%. You go back to the store to buy the TV and find it is now $400, ouch. So you decide not to buy that expensive imported TV and instead search for one that is made entirely in the United States because you know that if it cost $200 before the depreciation, it will still cost $200 afterwards. Unfortunately you won’t be able to find a TV made in the USA because the last company, Zenith, already moved production to Mexico. But don’t worry about it, at this point the ensuing economic turmoil from the devaluation would mean buying a new TV is the least of your concerns.

A major Dollar depreciation, especially one that is very sudden and extreme, would be devastating to the current economic order that has hollowed out industrial production in developed countries and moved it all over the world in order to take advantage of low labor costs and then import the products. This process is only economical as long as the value of the Dollar is higher than the currencies of the developing countries; in other words imports are only cheap as long as the Dollar isn’t. Conversely, instead of keeping the Dollar value high the same effect can be achieved by keeping foreign currencies low. And this is exactly what the IMF, for instance, does through the stringent terms of its loan agreements to developing countries. Lowering the value of an IMF recipient nations currency is done for the stated purpose of boosting export efficiency but in practice what it really does is create very cheap products for American consumers, siphons capital out of the target country, and eventually bankrupts them because they can’t afford to import the primary commodities they need to run everything, like oil and gas. An informative film titled Life and Debt (2001) highlights the financial conundrum facing small developing nations like Jamaica in this case. During the late 1970s and early 80s fuel prices skyrocketed, mostly due to OPEC maneuvers. The oil embargo and high fuel prices hit America hard but it hit small countries, with little capital to begin with, even harder and Jamaica was one of them. An IMF loan was the only way out for Jamaica.

So the other element that makes imports economical is affordable oil prices, because otherwise the transportation costs outweigh the benefits of cheaper offshore production. We can see today that both of these necessary elements, low oil prices and a high Dollar value, are eroding away. Interestingly enough, fuel prices are very nearly at the same level, adjusted for inflation, as they were during the oil crisis 25 years ago. High fuel prices will not only undermine the cost effectiveness of the import/export transportation system and hurricane Katrina knocking out the critical port of New Orleans only makes it worse. High fuel prices will literally topple governments throughout the world as it sucks out massive quantities of their capital due to the low value of their currencies in comparison to the Dollar, in which all oil is traded and denominated in, just as it did to Jamaica. Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest country, is already hanging by a thread and it appears that soon others will follow. 03.09.05

Be the Revolution

What's coming down, what's going up
I see walls coming down and walls going up
Rave on as the empires fall
Corporations crash and kings are made to crawl

The red flag comes down, the left in demise
The blue flag goes up, the right on the rise
A flaming cross and a swastika
There's one way out and the road is on fire

We can fly on wings of thought
Start a revolution to take us higher

Be the revolution - now
Be the revolution - now

What's going down, what's coming up
What's going down here, and what's coming up
There's no such thing as solid ground
This given had been taken, a mass confusion's found

Short lived utopia
This blood of peace forsaken and been replaced by a walled in howl
In which direction there's asylum there
Where there's a man with blindfold and a pair.

Refugees of the transitional
Now that we have nothing, we can begin

To be the revolution - now
Be the revolution - now

Lyrics by David J (David Jay Haskins )

Terrorism is simply a rhetorical term used by a government to describe politically motivated violence it doesn’t sanction.

Defining the Threat

Many members of the American political power system including special interest groups, influential Defense Department civilians, and many right-wing i.e. neo-conservative policy-makers, continue to stress the imminent military threats to the well being of America and the interests of the United States around the globe due to ‘rogue’ states such as North Korea, Syria, Iran and so on. Yet even a cursory examination of the military forces these ‘rogue’ states posses is enough to lead one to quickly conclude that they pose no threat to the mightiest military machine in the world and only a minor danger if provoked. Even the nuclear weapons a few of these ‘rogue’ countries may have, that they may be able to put on crude short range missiles, can still easily be retaliated against with massive numbers of nuclear and conventional weapons in the United Sates’ stockpiles. If the threat of swift retaliation worked to create fifty years of relative peace during the Cold War, why has the situation so radically changed now? Does North Korea need as many nuclear tipped ballistic missiles as the United States in order to coexist?!

Is this new Empire, the sole remaining super-power, really that insecure that they need to continually threaten even minor opponents with harsh retaliation or even preemptive military assault? Or perhaps is it the case that the military threat from ‘rogues’ is merely an excuse rather than a reason? Indeed, a threatening nation in the eyes of the United States’ Executive Branch today is really any country that cannot be controlled or manipulated using the economic, diplomatic and military tools of foreign policy. So for instance, South Korea is a friendly nation because it openly trades with the United States on favorable terms, has a compliant government and allows American military forces to base on their territory. North Korea has none of those qualities and is labeled as an ‘axis of evil’. Indonesia has a corrupt and weak government that is easy to manipulate while China does its own thing to the chagrin of America, consequently Indonesia is a friend while China is an enemy and a threat.

So how about another example, say France. France isn’t an enemy even though the United States doesn’t control them. France is a major trading partner but has a non-compliant government so they are friends when cooperative and enemies when they don’t support American policies, such as Bush’s war on Iraq.

In the same way a ‘terrorist’ is, despite the constantly shifting partisan definition, in practical definition simply anyone who disagrees with government policy to such an extent that they use armed force to resist, so has an ‘enemy’ nation come to be merely any government that fosters opposition to American foreign policy objectives. Now we know why there is so little consistency in the labels of both terrorist and enemy states. This is something to consider when reading the latest news headlines. 17.07.05

One will search in vain for evidence of the superior under standing and abilities of those who have the major influence on policy, apart from protecting their own interests.

The great soul of power extends far beyond states, to every domain of life, from families to international affairs. And throughout, every form of authority and domination bears a severe burden of proof. It is not self-legitimizing. And when it cannot bear the burden, as is commonly the case, it should be dismantled. - Noam Chomsky

Revolution By Remote Control

Popular revolution is driven by a sense of injustice, past and or present, but that motivation is often hijacked by the inflated egos of charismatic leaders and exploited to serve their own personal interests instead of the group they lead or the ideals of their movement. A common tactic used to deflect awareness from this event is to employ an organizational facade of 'democratic' values but as we should all know democracy is even easier to manipulate than a single tyrant - just pack the voting committee with sycophants, or if inaction is the goal send the vote to a large, disparate group and watch the days disappear.

Truth be told, every belief, perhaps even every ideal from Communism to Christianity, they are eventually corrupted beyond what their founders envisioned and intended. Something as simple as love and peace is eventually used to promote and justify war, brutality and the worst of excesses. Even in the short term, a careless revolutionary movement will carry out their own acts of injustice intended to rectify larger social injustices or sponsor conflicts and violence while simultaneously preaching against such acts; after all the end justifies the means, right?

But does it really need to be this way? Could it be that a revolution once it reaches the level of self-parody and even outright hypocrisy, it has already become morally and ideologically self-defeated? Similarly you will find crooked and spiteful people in every group and movement as well as honest ones. Every portentous movement attracts the disingenuous and the egotistical. But this is not so much evidence of the flaws of every past idea set and beliefs as it a screaming testament to the continuity of human nature! Human nature and all of its basal instincts function as a constant that perpetually perverts even the best of intentions.

The question to ask is not the useless rhetoric of 'why does everything fail?' as it is to ask, why do people keep recycling the same flawed notions while expecting a different outcome? Why not just throw out all the beliefs and "master plans" and keep the part(s) that last, like physical constants and human nature?

Thoughts worth consideration, now for some history. Revolutionary groups have traditionally consisted of a tight knit core driven by twin aspirations of creating a new utopian world and rectifying contemporary injustices. Secrecy was the primary method of achieving security for the core group, hence the popularity of social change through secret societies. Communications technology was both a limitation for the revolutionary clique in its geographic scope but also a limitation for the authority forces hunting them down. Ironically some revolutionaries have been forced to re-adopt similar tactics as a means of foiling electronic interception of their plans. Although our third party understanding of al Qaida's organizational structure is murky at best it appears that they rely on old-fashioned verbal and written messages to deliver orders; safe but time consuming.

Today in the industrialized world the typical method is a loose-knit collective driven by a common belief and acted out in dispersed, often random strikes at ideologically acceptable targets. The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) is a leading example of this sort of decentralized organization. Arson is the weapon of choice for its asymmetrical (bang-for-the-buck) effectiveness, often targeting logging equipment, civilian Sport Utility Vehicles or similar symbols of environmental exploitation. Authorities have great difficulty arresting culprits because no official organization exists, merely scattered sympathizers who act out spontaneously in accordance with the beliefs of their movement.

Although the relative safety of the actors in this drama is clear, the strategic effectiveness of the acts is much less apparent. Civilian machinery and equipment is all thoroughly insured and no known ELF act (?) has ever fundamentally impinged upon the financial viability of the victims; indeed in the case of a torched SUV car dealership, they reopened for business the very next day! The actions of ELF or the Animal Liberation Front, a similar radical environmental group who like to release caged animals into the wild, can't be seriously described as resistance, they're purely symbolic and mostly lost on an oblivious public as well.

The lesson is clear: without a solid philosophical base and sizable in situ popular support, the 'revolution' is doomed to be nothing but angry fury, heated rhetoric and a lengthy prison sentence. The western world is not one imminently ready for violent revolution and further the most dynamic societies are the least likely to find popular support because so many legitimate avenues for redress of social injustice still exist, and although the effectiveness of these options is open for vigorous debate, the popular perception remains that law and order are more appealing means of dealing with problems than overthrow of the existing system in favor of an alternative. The public is lazy, they resist change even when they have virtually nothing to lose. This is an ironclad rule, the alternative must not just be 'as good as' the present one, but superior in the minds of the public before the desire exists to switch.

This desire to change the system has already been made in many parts of the developing world where legal justice is weak or corrupt and where brutal authority perpetuates blatant social injustices. Despite the desire of some biased pundits to label suicide killings a modern phenomenon, historical comparisons do exist. Any group pushed to the limits and unwilling or unable to find an alternative is a candidate for suicide attacks. World War Two Japan featured the devastating aerial assault of 'kamikaze' dive bombers, for instance.

Palestinians protesting a brutal Israeli occupation and Chechens fighting against a bloody Russian invasion both resort to suicide attacks of civilian and military targets. But does it work? Suicide attacks are certainly very difficult to defend against, they can be undeniably destructive, so if the goal is destruction of the enemy then the answer is yes, they do work. Further, a macabre logic is at work here too for Palestinians outnumber Israelis and if one bomber can take out say, a dozen of the enemy, the eventual winner is purely mathematically determined.

A destabilized western Asia is clearly the opposite extreme in radicalism from the comfy suburbs of North America or Europe but the lesson is universally applicable, for in practice no tactic can be ruled out. When struggling for political and social change, the situation determines the character of the action.

Revolution is a much larger, deeper endeavor than simply blowing things up; revolution is at least as much about planting 'seeds' as is about planting bombs. The roots of a revolution are usually found in acceptable mediums of expressing ideas and emotion, specifically art, music and literature. Although most art, just like entertainment, is fluff and junk this shouldn't detract from the power of cogent symbolism. Distilling down the key ideas and sentiment of the era and conveying it in a attractive package is where art meets revolution.

So what is the difference between an artist and a revolutionary? Artists that achieve historical status are those that intuitively detect the views and sentiment of their time then distill it and convey it in their art to the public. Artists do not lead, they symbolize; artists mix and form symbols and then package and communicate them through their artwork. These artists don't necessarily have a vision, often they don't even know what they are heading towards.

After the symbols are injected into the public and become known, then come the leaders and the actors. Revolutionaries are like engineers, they build and destroy using new symbols and ideas.

Nihilism is being symbolized and spoken of today, soon it will be acted upon. But this is also why so much confusion and debate surrounds nihilism now, it's in a formative, artistic stage. Formerly sacrosanct values and notions are being questioned. Faith in society, government, media and Church are rapidly being eroded, for those unafraid to look have found all three 'unshakable' pillars have rotten cores. But even as the Holy has been shown to be hollow and the sacred values rot in the streets, the proper response no longer resides in academic discourse but has become one of critical personal and collective safety. So even as the outcome becomes inescapable, predominately only the youth can connect with nihilism because they aren't (yet) locked into a lifetime of conformity and burdened with a sense of ownership in a doomed enterprise so they can question the taboos of adulthood and reach independent conclusions. Investment in the authority system of today offers a very dubious promise of future salvation. 03.09.03

No revolutionary group will last long unless they possess an internally consistent and cohesive set of ideas and world-view driving their actions, unpunctuated by hypocrisy to the greatest extent possible. This is why religious radicals tend to outlast leftists (for instance) in revolutionary zeal and stamina because they have constructed a world-view that is immune to criticism (and reality); it's not about which group is more right than the other but about perspective.

Drama

I see the protestors and the activists; they are actors on the stage. Acting out from a sense of injustice and anger from a disconnect between ideals and reality, between words and rhetoric against realpolitik and human nature. Told that democracy is a virtue but then denied it in practice.
Told that greed is bad but then see it constantly being rewarded in the ranks of the corporate CEO or lottery winner. What price we pay for constructing to decay...

The Death of the City, or
Why Community Improvement is Doomed to Failure

Wirth hypothesized that size created a large number of possible interactions. As a result, we are led to assume that most interpersonal contacts in the city are impersonal and secondary and that there are few close interrelationships. On the one hand, the individual has more freedom and less personal and emotional control from others; on the other hand, unsatisfying transitory contacts lead to a lack of meaningful interaction and consequently to feelings of alienation. Density reinforces the effect of size, for it results in differentiation and in specialization with respect to economic activities, residential location, and workplaces. As the complexity of society is thus increased, people are compartmentalized into specialized roles that predominate in particular subareas of the city. The result is the segregation of the city into a mosaic of social and economic worlds that are too numerous and complex for anyone to fully comprehend. Finally, cities are heterogeneous because they are the product of migration of people of diverse origins. They are also socially diverse. This characteristic is compounded by the differentiation and specialization of occupations. This heterogeneity results in no common set of ethical values. Eventually money tends to become the measure of all things, with certain objects, such as a house or automobile, providing external status symbols.

There are, according to Wirth (1938), two main outcomes of increasing size, density, and heterogeneity as society shifts from a rural to an urban state - one sociological, and the other behavioral (Berry, 1981). On the sociological level, urbanization is hypothesized as leading to differentiation, formalization, and alienation. The differentiation effect can be both spatial and aspatial, for economic activities and people become highly specialized in function and role, and both types of specialization can occur in particular locations. The development of numerous formal institutions is largely the result of excessive differentiation and the need for a means of communication. Alienation can be expressed in withdrawal. At the behavioral level, the stresses of urbanism, from such factors as high urban densities or excessive stimulation, result in a variety of "abnormal" behaviors, such as hyperactivity. The hypothesized result is that urbanism leads to greater levels of social disorientation and a faster breakdown of family life compared to rural settings. From: The North American City by Maurice Yeates, pages 331-332, 5th edition 1998, Addison Wesley publishers, italics added.

While this is fundamentally true it doesn't take into account the advantages of urban centers such as the ability to connect and trade in a centralized location. However over the decades industrial capacity has fallen away, residential has moved out and commercial, the last bastion of city health, is on increasingly weak ground. High taxes, rampant and often specious building restrictions, overzealous government meddling and exorbitant real-estate costs all spell serious trouble for long term city viability. Bottom line: few if any want to live in a crowded city when they can move out to the suburbs getting twice the benefits and half the cost. Technology and highways have negated the social and commercial propinquity advantages of the city. Soon the only remaining entities within the central city will be those requiring personal contact such as attorneys, public relations firms and investment companies.

The evisceration of most metropolitan regions for outlying areas especially suburban zones is especially noticeable in North America because those people are both willing and able to embrace geographic alternatives to dense urban zones. Ease of access, through a vast network of roads and highways, mass permeation of automobiles and other personal transportation as well as relatively cheap fuel prices and a dynamic culture make for a highly mobile society.

These examples highlight the fundamental problem with cities which are structured for economically practical reasons and not for reasons of social or mental health. Cities are intended to get people from point A to point B, to work here and live there and buy this and sell that, and although a city could theoretically be designed to improve not decimate social contact and healthy relations, such a thing has never been adequately produced and even if it did, how would it grow? Indeed the more successful one designed such a community, the more problems it would have because migration into it would be phenomenal, quickly swamping the residents and the city would revert to the lowest common denominator like every other failed city. Indeed the irony is that within this sort of a system, success is doomed to failure! 29.07.02

Appearances Can Mislead

People tend to think that if everything seems to be going all right that then generally everything must be OK, in other words that the facade is reflective of the content, the true events. Think of Saigon 1965, street vendors, and commerce bustled along; life in the city appeared as prosperous as ever despite the grenades thrown into cars, the bombing of cafes, political coups and people getting stabbed with poison syringes. We must remember that casual appearances are NOT indicative of the true health of a society or nation. The people will always try to adapt and maintain their traditional lifestyle regardless of the chaos and insanity that surrounds them. 18.09.00

Choice Excerpts from the 24 'Marine gunfight rules'

• Rule number 1: "Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns."

• 2. "Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive."

• 10. "Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty."

• 11. "Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose."

• 21 and 22: "Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one."

Source: Gertz and Scarborough, Washington Times, February 7, 2003.

A Road Map For the 'New Society'

The fluidity of economy and the powers of new technology have legitimized and empowered alternate cultures and countercultures, meaning that no longer is economic well being and culture linked with the nation as a whole but instead is decentralized. Old political boundaries are increasingly meaningless except as convenient vestiges for simplified demarcation of geographic regions. The people within those boundaries are less and less restricted by them. Just think of illegal immigration, trans-national corporations, or long-distance communications such as through the Internet, video conferencing, etc.

A society is essentially the sharing of resources amongst a select group. The conveyance of language, values, ideas, the elements of culture are no longer restricted to physical propinquity or even national boundaries but instead stretch to include anyone, anywhere with shared values and similar goals. Now of course the possible is one thing but being actually viable is another. Actually forming and maintaining a society spread across widely dispersed geographic regions is more problematic since the communications element is well developed but the rest are nascent at best.

One of the most crucial resources to be shared is labor and finance. Cooperatives (Co-Ops) are a good prototype to follow; buying in bulk and distributing amongst the select membership is a common tactic of many retailers. There is no reason this couldn't be restructured to define members as citizens, so instead of merely being able to fog a mirror or fill out an application form it would mean someone with shared values and social goals. Employment, or lack of it, is a major problem facing many people in the 21st century. Steadily declining world and national economies, the fluidity of industrial production and capital coupled with labor redundancies brought on through technological efficiencies and automation and simply too many people, all of it coalesces into a serious employment crisis.

When you start to think of how this will translate into reality it quickly forms a staggering vision of competing groups, fratricidal conflict and partisan viewpoints between societies as well as empowering identities and efficient cooperation within these new societies. This will significantly erode the traditional spoils of war such as real-estate, land, and key commodities (such as water, oil, power). Conflict and competition always serves to heighten the sense of identity and 'us versus them' mentalities within individuals and groups. 21st century practical application of 20th century technological innovations will render many old ways obsolete, culture, morality, society, those are the variables while human nature, and to a lesser extent the need for resources, remain constants.

Sartre was completely correct when he stated that "hell is other people", but in all truth it's a hell that's unavoidable. Likely the best remedy is a compromise. Instead of cooperating with people you don't like and don't have anything in common with, cooperate with the ones you do. The new society defends its own, it employs its own, it educates its own. Indeed the only reason members venture out into the graveyard of 'mainstream' society is to either destroy it or exploit it. It's as Sergei Nechayev once said, "The revolutionary [nihilist] enters into the world of the state, of class and of so-called culture, and lives in it only because he has faith in its speedy and total destruction." That would be the perfect quote if not for the unfortunate use of the word 'faith'. I would hasten to add that this is most likely the result of flawed translation, but I digress. Also it should be noted that huge differences exist between urban industrialized states and the less developed rural ones. But since most of us live in the first category the tactics must fit the situation. This factor more than anything else really dictates degrees of separation and integration between the old and new societies. In other words the new society need not worry about making its own clothing or food or similar mundane necessities when they can be so easily acquired through existing outlets.

* * *

American's are infatuated with large quantities, be it a barrel of 'gummi worms' or a gas-guzzling SUV. Buying in bulk generally promotes waste and gluttony under the guise of a false cost efficiency for the consumer. But while the typical shopper is receiving a dubious deal, the commercial enterprise is taking it to the bank in bulk size. Expanding purchases up to the point that size allows totally new price dynamics, just as the U$ military can create entire new industries and contractors from its purchasing decisions so does Wal-Mart remake the rules of the game even as it plays it. There is really no reason this could not be carried over into a group of people. Indeed just as Martha Stewart turns her name and reputation into a public company traded on Wall Street so could a group do the same - market its collective skills and potential in total.

Just for a moment stop and think about this concept; this alone could radically alter human development. If 'shares' in a 'corporation' meant a portion of the collective profits from an independent society this would undercut the lowest common denominator and instead create a system where the best get the most and the worst get the least. Instead of switching nationalities or citizenships one could simply stay where they are and switch 'companies' meaning joining into a new, better society returning a healthier profit to that person more appropriate to their skills and abilities.

The point is not that you or I would necessarily want to do this just that it's a possibility and whatever is possible will somewhere, sometime be enacted. As great as the potential for industrious and creative individuals is today, even more potential exists for a group of such people in the near future. 26.06.02

Rebel Conformity

People are drawn into the revolution thinking they're on the cusp of something new and unique, yet that's mostly myth. They're actually seeking the same popularity every other social human naturally seeks but through the only means left open to them. Indeed this is an oft misunderstood phenomenon for the most revolutionary are both the ones with the least to lose and (more importantly) the ones that don't fit into the establishments mold of conformity. Which is why Trojan horse revolution, or indeed any revolution, is so successful amongst the dissatisfied and why social engineering dissatisfaction (example: through unrealistic expectations) is remarkably successful at generating forces of change. And as long as those forces are tightly controlled as within the bounds of consumerism, authorities have little to fear and much to gain by releasing accumulating popular aggression.

The converts to the revolution are actually being driven by circumstances and long-developed forces beyond the narrow chronological frame they can see and understand. And the revolutionary leader doesn't really create new ideas, they just name, label, package and distribute incoherent popular sentiment in a coherent form thereby making it appealing. If they're organized, lucid and of fluid expression they generate a movement. The truly remarkable aspect of our information age is how the duration from incubation to acceptance of revolutionary ideas is compressed. From Marx to Lenin took almost 100 years, today it can be done in likely a quarter of that time; hopefully it's not just rehashed Marxism, that's just an example. Lenin had decent oratory and organization skills but really wasn't that sharp on substance - he was a manipulator not a creator. Marx was the reverse a creator but a poor manipulator. The time can be cut in half with the advent of one equally adept at both. 04.11.01

Real Revolutions

I see no reason to acquiesce to suicidal visions of futility and misanthropic hatred because in the final analysis we're not doomed to repeat the cycles of history except by choice. For the first time we have the knowledge and technology to do things completely different. The future is what we make it to be and still the values we've used in the past to build that future are flawed and the manic avoidance of pain and suffering is one of them. It's imperative to build with values that have strategic tenability not merely nearsighted hedonism. Example the greatest revolution in human history is not information or computing it's birth control because for the first time sexual reproduction has been disentangled from the sex act; this is why the Catholic Church rejects contraceptives. The monumental significance of this change is just now being realized while at the same time the second phase has already begun rendering the male sex biologically redundant through reproductive science. Genuine revolution is not where public perceptions place it. 29.07.01

The most ignored and understated elements of concern today are actually the most strategically significant. The most dangerous weapon of the 21st century is not nuclear weapons, it's not even germs and disease its demographics. From Kosovo to southern Texas those who look will see that the ultimate tool of conquest is not technological, it's not even economic, it's birth rate! Culture, ethnicity and race, these are the flags being flown on the concealed battlefields of today and tomorrow. 10.11.01

Che Guevara is all over posters and the T-shirts on activists making noise and smashing store windows for all the officially allowed causes, yet oddly enough most of those people aren't Cuban.
Yeah you're real original. Here's a tip kids, find a more appropriate hero you can commercialize, the dude looks like Dr. Zaus in a beret! I mean come on this is the 21st century here. Where's the Che for today?!

Sex & Redress

Example: a man gets injured on the job leaving him in chronic pain; he is subsequently fired and given an insurance severance that pays but a portion of his astronomical medical bills. With nothing else to do but sit at home and stew in the juices of injustice and anger he eventually 'flips out' and goes back to work one last time to shoot up the place; (based on a true story, sadly more common than ever). Yet the typical woman that experience the same tragic chain of events does not shoot anyone. To generalize for the purposes of elucidation it seems that women view the person(s) while men see the event(s), men see the details and women see the social interactions.

Thus a very fundamental divide between the behaviour of the sexes is the need for direct action especially when they feel wronged that is displayed in the male. Much of this is likely cultural inculcation but I would posit not all of it. Yet causes are not the concern here but actions are. Women turn the damage inward, often blaming themselves for external problems. Men blame the world often focusing on false external forces instead of real internal deficiencies. Women are much more likely to utilize proxy aggression, employing other people or institutions to redress wrongdoing while men are more likely to act on their own often rashly even when premeditated. Men internalize their emotion and women externalize it.

But regardless if either sex can be convinced of the focus of their anger and frustration they will leap at the chance to vent, but men quicker than women. Collective desperation for focus of anger, a need for a palpable, preferably singular entity. Of course complex problems have multiple fault lines yet simple minds consistently fail to comprehend that instead focusing on extremely nearsighted, close and tangible symbols. Thus reactions to rectify perceived wrong-doings are regulated by hatred and fear. Hatred for enemies and fear of authorities. 23.04.01

Although wars will likely never be too expensive financially to wage it is of interest to note the escalating real-term costs of conventional warfare. From 1700 to the Napoleonic wars, around 1800, the cost of war increased at least five times ... to the point today that superpowers go bankrupt just attempting to maintain war prepared forces. It should come as no surprise the increase in low-intensity, guerilla conflicts around the globe for it fulfills an economic need as well as a tactical one.

Falling For It

It seems like most of what musician Marilyn Manson has in the way of a message, his lyrics et al are not controversial. It's more the image, the medium in which the message is delivered that raises the ire of conservatives and moral majorities alike. I guess how you say it is more important than what you're saying, at least in the court of public opinion. But you know in life the ones with the greatest potential to cause trouble aren't the nuts and the crooks they're the ones that know how to play image to their advantage making everyone believes they're lunatics when they actually know what they're doing the whole time. People never see it coming when they get hit from these types. Remember, all the public understands is image. Marilyn Manson is a master manipulator of image to his advantage, making the public think he's fringe wacko when his intent and methodology is more programmed than a computer. By subtly getting the audience to break small rules like the use of the word 'nigger' this pushes them to the social edge thereby allowing them to break bigger rules later on. Increasing the outcast distance and making it tougher to revert. Similar he clearly delineates himself from rest through words and looks. Good and bad are black and white, They are bad, we are good, they are failures we are powerful and strong. Furthermore that shock appeal is like a blue light in K-mart, the people are attracted to it like flies to shit because in our insulated and predictable digital world the desire for ever new and exciting, that emotional charge is nothing short of desperation. After the initial attraction and seemingly harmless indifferent participation that mind trap is sprung, the ability to turn back is discovered to be difficult at best while following along to the happy cheerful denouement with the group becomes a foregone conclusion. The masses are so easily manipulated primarily because they fail to realize their vulnerabilities through hubris or ignorance until it's too late (if at all). The greatest fear of every savior and rabble rouser alike is public indifference.
Don't become paranoid, just watch your step! 13.03.01

Trojan Horse Revolutions

The problem with all post-modern / contemporary political ideologies is the fact that they have been so successfully co-opted by the same corporate feudal forces they claim to oppose. Feminism, Ecologism, "New" Left, "new" Right or the excuse me while I puke Tony Blair, Bill Clinton third-way centrist (read: opportunistic) whatever. It doesn't matter they all need money and visibility to succeed in our vote-grubbing popularity contest known as 'democracy'. It's fairly obvious that participation in these movements is akin to selling your soul for a promise of payment from the devil.

The green movement and feminism are two shining examples of political Trojan horses, but I think you could also put the modern day trade-unions in the same basket. They are deceptive shams intended to appear anti-establishment and revolutionary while simultaneously being regulated by their avowed enemies. They soak up naive radicals and trouble makers, direct their energies into harmless protest and avoid changing any part of the system which might actually have any strategic significance. You can have an unlimited number of these radical groups with radical agendas running around the democratic country, the big-money has nothing to fear from any of them.

Trojan horse politics is the insurance policy of the status quo. These ideologues and their self-important movements are nothing but a pimple on the ass of the establishment because their heads are lost in the clouds, standing on the stilts of their own gargantuan egos, too full of noble ideas and naïveté to realize they're powerless dupes toiling in vain for foregone causes. Think about it, what has happened to green ecology, you know the self-reliance and composting from the 70s? Today it's just another way to market the same old product with a shiny new gimmick. It's all such an easy way to mollify public outrage; recycling, waste management, conservation, its just a way to make everyone feel good about sending their trash to the same old landfill it was going to 30 years ago. Feminism, what the hell good has that done for women? Put them in a dead end job outside the home, the kids in daycare and last time I checked (please correct me if I'm wrong on this one) pornography still consists primarily of naked, degraded socially ideal models working for multi-billion dollar global enterprises. You'd think after waking up from the 60s era that people would figure this out but instead they keep going back to the same places doing the same senseless things. But what else should we expect? 14.06.00

Terrorists can't destroy a healthy state but they can weaken a broken one; it's always the state itself which causes its own demise.

And I saw something else under the sun: In the place of judgment - wickedness was there, in the place of justice - wickedness was there. I thought in my heart, "God will bring to judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time for every deed." Ecclesiastes 3:16-17

It's a revolution in fashion!