....yes folks there is more serious consideration for beginning the draft again.... You can read about it here.... I suggest you prepare all the young people.

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici...

First let me ask for your understanding, this is a long, but I feel, important post. I want to introduce you to General Eldrige William Odom , retired Lt. General of the US Army, Director of the NSA, Member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame and political figure who delivered this testimony yesterday: TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret. 2 April 2008 Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success. I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability , not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims. Last ye...

Warning: a strong punch-line preceded, however, by lots of necessary (and sometimes very technical) background, which should be read in the context of already having digested the information in A few facts for those who think we can't have a limited government. . . . I research and teach military history, which is not that often specifically germane to what I post about here. (I'm primarily interested in armies as social organizations, if you're really concerned.) But lately I have been remembering what I taught in the American Military History course (offered primarily for ROTC candidates) in the early to mid-1990s. I explained that at the end of the Cold War (Reagan, Bush 41) the official Pentagon doctrine was that the US Armed Forces should be able to fight (and presumably win) two simultaneous regional conflicts, besides meeting our security commitments in Central Europe. Examples most often given included an outbreak of hostilities on the Korean peninsula, interventi...

If you can spare the time tonight, watch the 2nd part of Frontline series "Bush's War" tonight on PBS (9pm on Ch. 12 WHYY). Or you can watch it online : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/ Part One, aired last night, was a simultaneously riveting and infuriating look at the Bush administration's (e.g. Dick Cheney) and the neo-conservatives' single-minded, utterly-duplicitous, inconceivably-manipulative machinations to plunge this country into the most perilous, costly, fruitless, and entangling foreign misadventure in our history. The bureaucratic-warfare politics and Machiavellian skullduggery laid out by first-hand witnesses from both sides of the issue are a monologue of proof that raw power is far too concentrated in Washington, D.C. and the power in D.C. is far far too concentrated in a unitary chief executive. The temptations of this level of power and the designs of evil men find too easy a nexus....as they did and still continue unabated. ...

This is a short reflection on the nature of social revolution from part of my larger study of the Cultural Revolution in China. I started to undertake that effort to understand it after listening to my friend Ang's constant sorrow and cynicism after having lived through and participated in the Young Pioneers during that period. I wrote an article called "Apocalypse Mao" back in December 2003 on the nature of the Cultural Revolution while I was living near the Chinese border in India. Only parts of it have ever been discussed. I wrote it on Mao's birthday, December 26, and would like to share the central question of statist political violence it raises with you. In order to understand the mechanics of the Cultural Revolution, it is important to understand Mao's conception of the dynamic "new state." This ideal was made up of "workers, peasants and the lower masses of Chinese society, who through their own struggle had risen up to achieve a modern s...

Hyperviolence is an form of intellectual and human deconstruction that comes from the depth and need to be part of a brave new dystopia. It is not at all unique. The grave mistake we make is to think that such hyperviolent behavior by one class of people against another is something new. It is nothing new. The Hellenistic period in the west, and Waring States period in China were full of radically hyperviolent, pure desire driven sycophants. Power, desire and protest and the typical triggers as this picture from Mynmyar shows. Japan of course has a long history of hyperviolence both real and imagined typified by the beautiful destruction in anime where we see Zatoichi the one time Buddhist/ Shintoist hero of Japanese folklore turned into a ruthless killer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g839-k8pf_o China's cultural revolution was the single most hyperviolent and least understood event of the last century. http://www.morningsun.org/index.html The hyperviolence Steve d...

One thing is for sure, a reformation in the Islamic world is much better than the destruction of the Islamic world. This weekend watching from Carlata Gall and the BBC is enlightening about the way that brutality and reality meet to form a new set of rules in the American war on terrorism. It follows that my prediction of a ham handed response to a human problem is the cause of new forms of extremism for the "terrorism industry." It shows less incoherence in the system then you would think at first, and it is not the work of a few bad apples, and it illustrates more systemic problems within our ability to effectively manage people we do not understand or who "some nameless 'we' do not care about" and are managed for us, to quote Adolous Huxley. The film is called the "Taxi to the Dark Side" and has won critical acclaim around the world. It is a sad contrast with my humorous posts and I am posting the whole thing here for your viewing with one quest...

President Bush's recent calls for "Free Trade" with Colombia is the single most destabilizing force in hemispheric affairs in the last 50 years. If you want oil at 300.00 a barrel, Brazil to never work with us again, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela to break further away from us, and Ecuador to stop working with us, and whatever benefit we have from CAFTA to fall through; by all means, working with a drug dealers government is a good idea. If you want peace and prosperity, we have to work peacefully with all the parties involved. See my post below. If it is passed, be sure that Delaware will thank you for More ILLICIT DRUGS on our streets. It does not work for our nations benefit to try to turn Ecuador into a new Gaza strip . It works for Exxon-Mobile. A government of the people does not work to subsidize Exxon's disputes. Let Exxon fight its own fights. Never say I did not tell you so or warn you about this, I love the United States but drown out reason and l...

It was a real pleasure Steve invited me to be part of the blogger mafia. It is a pleasure to get information about some of the things I know about out there to the blogoshpere . It may seem a little depressing to start my first blog on the site with a posting about warfare and geopolitics, but if you take the time to read it you will see that in fact it is not depressing at all, it the technical and social equivalent of 1776. There is a technological revolution going on in both culture and warfare that are highly and I fear will only become more significant in each of our lives as the years go on and I want you to read about them here where freedom of speech and moral conscience are an absolute right. With that let me begin and say welcome to all of you used to reading Steve’s magnificent work! I hope that you enjoy my posts and Tyler's excellent work. Now that the introduction is over, I would like to ask a question. Do you ever wonder about the future of culture and warfare? Well...