Counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency are the same thing

 This blog made me angry, this is my way too long comment, I hate "experts" They haven't read anything you can't read.


Number one: There is no difference between counter-insurgency and counter-terror. WTF, I feel like i'm taking crazy pills! Lets take out the counter and we end up with insurgency and terror(short for terrorism). 
WHat is the difference between insurgency and terrorism? The definitions of both are exactly the same they just use different words. A terrorist IS an insurgent it just depends on HOW YOU WANT TO LABEL THE ONGOING CONFLICT: a civil war or a few fringe violent radicals who want regime change. An insurgency is just a larger pattern of terrorism. WTF!? is nobody else seeing this? Is it really that hard? How would "insurgency" manifest itself? violent actions against civilians or government? in order to destabilize a regime? OH SHIT! well how would "terrorism" manifest itself? VIOLENT ACTIONS AGAINST CIVILIANS OR GOVERNMENT IN ORDER TO DESTABILIZE A REGIME!

How can you say, end A, but begin A(with a different label). How can you be so naive as to think the two are different and how can you be so naive as to not realize that we are in Afghanistan until we fall, just like Korea, Germany, Japan, Gitmo, Iraq, etc., etc.  YOU ARE ONLY HELPING THE REGIME RE-LABEL AN UNSUSTAINABLE WAR!

Now I would like to address this next point You said: "The U.S. could "win" in Afghanistan where victory is defined as a stable, legitimate central government that can project power within its own borders."

There has NEVER been a central government that can project power to all of Afghanistan. As you claim to have some knowledge of geopolitics you should really really know this. Pakistan through the Taliban could never do it, Russia could never do it, and we will not be able to do it. You should also be aware that when you use neutral words like "project power" what you really mean is that the central government has the ability to regularly enact violence in all geographical areas within those borders. We don't need your pedantic euphemisms to efface the utopian violence you are advocating Mr. COIN expert.
Regaining hard power he says. All you "experts" on hegemony have not historicized your discourse. Let me give you a quick history lesson: Its world war I!!!!! omg a multipolar hegemonic system! Many different "poles" or world powers duking it out over vague concepts of ethnicity and economic bitterness. OMG its world war 2!!!! The vague concepts of ethnicity have become completely entrenched in nationhood and are now conflated with "race" in what will be the final act of a multipolar hegemonic system two winners will emerge. CCCP and USA. Now look! A bi-polar hegemonic system! The concept of race's imbrication with nation has been effaced by the feigned revulsion of the holocaust's eradication of the other(even though the need to fill the psychic ontology of the self through destruction of the other is still part and parcel of modernism), now we are on to ideology! Two different poles of thought police: USSR and United States, labeling their justifications for violence "Communism" and "democracy" respectively. who will win!?!?

There are a lot of ideas about the transition from bipolar to unipolar out there. The only one that matters is the narrative of energy. Without energy the lights go out no more typey typey on computer, no more lithium from bolivia for ipods, no more IPODS!!!!! No more food, no more movement, no more credit, etc. Our current historical trajectory requires immense amounts of energy or else everything crashes. In order to become the unipolar world power the USSR and USA engaged in ideological battles, proxy warfare (for ideology, energy, drugs etc.) but in the end the country that controls energy will be the unipolar hegemon. The USSR suffered internal collapse before any ultimate confrontation could take place: rumors of a travel visa causing the berlin wall to fall. THen glasnost and perestroika causing the fissures of an already troubled society to become apparent. Without the competition from the USSR it was now the USA's turn to dictate the terms of global organization. Actions like Kosovo, the first gulf war(being the iran-iraq war[which was a policy actively supported by washington's agenda:making iran and iraq batter eachother in order to make sure a regional hegemon never appeared]), the other two gulf wars, special forces deployment in Iran, destabilization campaigns in Iran. Were the efforts of the US intelligence community in destabilizing Iran insurgency or terrorism? Do you understand yet?

A stable democracy in afghanistan, point out a stable democracy in this world. Were you paying attention to the midterm elections? we are a divided country. There is no such thing as some utopian stable democracy, everybody has problems, internal contradictions, and unsustainable institutions.

Now here is where your argument goes completely off the wall: you claim war fatigue is the undergirding support for your argument!!!! WAR FATIGUE!! in this day and age? Iran and Iraq aren't even on the fucking list of issues this election, nobody gives a shit, war has become entertainment! We eradicate the other through our remote control bombers(which by the way Iran has started building [I hope you're the first one to get hit by one, for advocating terrorism through remote control aircraft in the first place you ignorant americunt]) to create a "stable"(like you say) ontology of self. There are no stable ontologies of self and no stable democracies, in fact nothing in this world is stable we re-create THE ENTIRE FUCKING THING EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY! Why should we be killing people for your utopian dream! because you re-label the violence?

How will "overextension" manifest itself n00b? lol can't we just....RECRUIT MORE! lol, elect more republicans to cut social spending send more to the military? Well we've BEEN DOING THAT FOR A LONG LONG TIME! Why does this war which is the longest in US history and STILL HAS NOT CAUSED WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT happen all of a sudden now?

China "free riding" lol what is this mancur olson? Are you aware of the joint military drills China and Russia regularly engage in? are you aware of SEATO and various other asian military, economic, and political treaties? Why would the chinese collapse the dollar? It would destroy their growth and the rest of the world's economies. There is no danger of China calling in debts it knows it can't be paid, in the same way there is no danger from a state launched nuclear missile because of mutually assured destruction. Now comes the real reason you want to get out of Afghanistan: TO REDEPLOY ELSESHWERE! To be ready for various other paranoid "red dawn" fantasies.

OH no theres more! we will use the money to PAY INTEREST ON THE DEBTS THAT WILL NEVER BE CALLED IN! rofl, this is so epically absurd.

"Only the B-52 Effect will prevent a resumption of frank civil war along ethnic lines,"

The B-52 effect is terror of what we can drop on them from above right? some kind of....terrorism? right?

"To paraphrase the line from Kaplan's Warrior Politics that changed my mind: At the end of the day, America's power to do good is strongest when American hard power is both abundant and largely held in reserve."

The quote that changed your mind is Kaplan's rehashing of the white man's burden?!!?!? When has the US ever done "Good"? When it happened was it not just serendipity that caused it while the US was pursuing its reified agenda?

We're in afghanistan to stay, if you're gonna advocate the opposite, at least strap on a nutsack and say it like you mean it none of this re-labeling equivocation bullshit.

"32" of Liquid Crystal anodyne" By The Owl

Got a contribution from a friend of mine The Owl, this is what he writes: 

Empty is modern life.  Void of a purpose, we live in physical comfort and security but writhe in mental anguish at the dismal aspect of meaningless existence.  How the fuck, then, do we get by?

Reading Kaczynski's Manifesto, among what amounts to paranoid venom against an innately evil, yet strangely ambiguous, "technology", something of a truth appears.  Modern man, supplied with all the necessities of survival, obtainable with a minimum of effort, must supplement his psyche with "surrogate activities."  These activities are our jobs, aspirations, hobbies and passions.  They are, in the accepted morality of today, all of what constitutes a healthy and useful life.

It is unfortunate, however, that they are all bull shit.  At the root, each an every pursuit not focused on the basic survival or gratification of the basic senses is a pathetic attempt at fulfilling that empty hollow hole we all feel deep inside.

Whether Kaczynski is right to blame technology for these woes is a mute point, since it is obvious that technology and humanity walk hand in hand.  Thus, to denigrate technology is to denigrate homo sapien as well, which, all of us being human --or am I writing for future A?I-- is pointless.

Taking technology, and all its circumstances, as a priori, we see that this vapid, wasteland of purpose is unavoidable and must be dealt with as a force outside our control.

How to deal?  Suicide?  Hedonism?  Some form of blinder that allows us, in the words of Peter Gibbons, to "just come home and think I've been fishing all day or something?"  Or is the ability to deal simply, turn a bilnd eye to what's apparent and plow on ahead, what most of us term "growing up"?

Last weekend, these existential woes had me deep in a shadowy valley.  A highly anticipated day off from work, without school or any other obligation, should have been blessed, but instead I awoke with a terrible feeling of anguish.  I could think of nothing to do, or more to the point, nothing that I wanted to do.

So, at her suggestion, Ellen and I wandered down to the Charles river to watch the regatta.  (By the bye, did you not know that I now live with my girlfirend, ******?)

It was boring.  The boats moved endlessly down the river and it was impossible to know what you were watching.  Who was winning?  Who was racing?  The fluid strokes of the rowers and the boats cutting through the water were aesthetically pleasing, but so were the clouds in the sky and I could have watched them just as easily (which I did).

The most notable aspect was the veritable fair the grew up along the river banks, having nothing to do with skulling or Vespolis and everything to do with Consumption.  Apparently, the Head of the Charles is a great place to stock up on free samples of junk food, shop for overpriced clothing and be more or less cerebrially inundated with commercial ectoplasm.  I had no wish to push through a crowd like an infant pig to the fat teats of the Dunkin Donuts truck handing out free shot glass sized Pumpkin Spice Lattes, so I applied myself to naviating safely through the masses and not sobbing out of pity for the all those present.

This has nothing to do with my overall argument other than to set the scene for my emotional state of mind.  Any other day, any other time, the setting and circumstances are different, but the basic story is the same.  Without a surrogate activity, I am depressed, lost, confused, antisocial and altogether, so pathetically, sane.

Now, the day continued in this blase manner, growing ever more tedious and unendurable.  Naturally, my ill feeling permeated the air around me and infected my significant other (who doesn't share my former sentiments, or at least refuses to acknowledge them) until we were both exhausted with the effort of living effortlessly.

Towards evening, Ellen brought up the current Best Buy sale.  Our apartment was without a television, one white wall in our living space glaringly vacant, the whole room some how incomplete.  We were living in American sin.  She suggested we atone for this sin by buying a TV, and in the process, though this was not stated, only implied, supply ourselves with a purpose.

Consuming - not the food we need, nor the sights, sounds, smells and touches of an active life- but commercial goods, is an extremely effective surrogate activity.  From the moment I agreed to the plan, I felt immensely better.  We looked up bus schedules, purposefully gathered the necessary cards, bags and clothing for the trip, all the while feeling more and more sure of our own agency.  Throughout all of this, I was aware of the fiction, and yet it still affected me positively.  I knew how pathetic, how false and, may I use the word, EVIL this turn of events was, but like scratching your ass in public, once you give in to the craving, even the disapproving glare of a beautiful girl cannot stop you from sphincter spelunking.

We took the trip, the deal went down.  All the way home we guarded our precious new purchase like it was the physical manifestation of that happy feeling.  It really (and this is totally without sarcasm) was a wonderful night.  All because we were able to fill that drafty void of existence with this greedy, self-centered activity.

You could argue that there are many other surrogate activities that are not so base.  But with each example, e.g. jogging, reading philosophy on the internet, volunteering at a hospital, smoking phat-ass blunts etc. you must acknowledge that at the root, these are all desperate attempts to paper over a structural fracture at the cornerstone of our being.

There is no conclusion here, only complaint.  Please respond.

Please do not vote for Mark Kirk tomorrow

For those of you who have not read this blog(thats everyone but me), I have been paying close attention to Mark Kirk since he first became a congressman. I would just like to write down the reasons why I would vote against him even if he was running against Satan.


1. Mark Kirk claimed that he had special classified intelligence that confirmed the fact that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq we just had to trust him(I cannot find this cite online [the Giannoulias website sez its chicago daily herald, 10/27/02; Chicago Daily Herald, 10/8/04] I have not managed to confirm that).
Now kirk claims that Bush lied to him! http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/gop-senate-hopeful-bush-official-lied-iraq/

but please take 10 seconds out of your day and watch this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gupBSG09YpY

I might be crazy here, but I think he got Bush and Saddam mixed up.


2. Mark Kirk claimed to have been in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which is to say he claimed to have killed hajis in the Iraq war in order to make us safe. This article explains how he equivocated out of it, but any intelligent person wouldn't buy his bullshit http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/06/kirk_campaign_mum_on_another_a.html 
This is part of a larger pattern of packing bullshit behind claims of military service: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeFf4JNx3tc

3.Mark Kirk claimed to have been the Navy's "Intelligence officer of the year" a claim which gets broken down by research at this blog: http://ellenofthetenth.blogspot.com/2010/05/details-on-kirks-award-show-kirks.html  Long story short he claimed the navy gave him an award the navy doesn't give. Claimed it was a prestigious award with a similar name even though it wasn't. Claimed that he was intelligence "officer" when in fact it was given to an entire "combat wing". Kirk's role within that combat wing is marginal at best.

4. Now I want to dwell on what we haven't been addressing directly: MARK KIRK IS A SPOOK! Kirk is a spy! He works for the ONI(Office of Naval Intelligence). The intelligence community works to achieve the agenda of wall street, the 1% of the 1%. A spy will never represent what is best for you, a Spy will do whatever it takes to barely stay in office in order to push money to his real constituency. But you may just say: "ONI is the oldest intelligence agency and its within a branch of the armed forces, whats so bad about that?". So I ask you to read this quote: http://cryptome.org/kirk-cia.htm
"To my knowledge, there are only three current Members of Congress who work with the CIA: our chairman, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), the author of this amendment; the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Simmons);and me, who is detailed to the CIA from navy intelligence." So as of 2005 Kirk was "detailed to the CIA". Now is it a little more apparent? Intelligence is an area of the executive in which a shadow government can be created because THERE IS LITTLE OR NO OVERSIGHT. During wartime (not our bullshit wars of choice, but wars like world war II) it may be justifiable to have a robust intelligence community with some independence. But when there is not an existential threat we do not need the lesser evil of a shadow government within the executive to check the greater evil of a total collapse in government. The more we let the foot soldiers of wall street infiltrate the legitimate political apparatuses of the United States the more we will see more militarization in our policy: Imperialism abroad(kirk's efforts to lie in order to get a war with Iraq, then say anything to make people forget/forgive for the lie), repression at home through the expansion of the drug war/prison industrial complex(The only bill Kirk has authored in recent history is a bill to make incarceration/penalties harsher for more potent marijuana[thats right if you have bad marijuana its a lesser sentence than if you have high grade marijuana{this is such a perfect example of a wall street policy}]), and anti-progressive fiscal policies(tax cuts for the rich[because rich people have to eat too!]). Those are the three themes you will find in wall street's agenda. Now I'm going to move to the borders here.

5. Another thing that wall street loves is money laundering. There is a good deal of evidence that vast amounts of money are laundered through US banks, stock markets, and corporations the most famous of which being: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/imf-loans-to-russia-sold-on-sly-alleges-skuratov-1119438.html The massive IMF loan to Russia to stabilize the rouble before the turn of the millennium saw a large portion of its money rerouted through US banks most notably the Bank of New York. As you can imagine this influx of liquid can have very positive effects for an economy, and thusly it is in the interest of wall street to make sure that the United States stays a haven for money laundering. In order to achieve this agenda the banks most be quite independent, there must be very little corporate financial oversight, and there has to be massive amounts of illicit money sloshing around in the economy. This is one reason why the CIA who was providing the Hmong militias in the plain of jars with funding and logistics necessary to keep the barracks open(as a tripwire to communist chinese land invasion of southeast asia) and the poppy fields plowed (exports of opium) ensured that some of it make it to the United States. I'm not going to go to in to the specifics here if you are not familiar with this then check out (professor at University of Wisconsin) Doctor Alfred McCoy's book "politics of Heroin". The reason I bring this up is because a non-fiction book "shadowplay" by Tim Marshall (not to be confused with the novel of the same name)

"He quotes one source, quoting Mark Kirk a US intelligence officer saying that: 'Eventually we opened up a huge operation against Milosevic, both secret and open. We gave KLA both military, technical, officers as directors, logistical support, we smuggled drugs, ran prostitution rackets and murdered civilians, and blamed all this on the Serbs and Milosevic.'"

I had to give you the background because some people would ask: "why would an intelligence officer slang drugs and pimp hoo'ers?": Its the economy stupid. Specifically the most important part of the economy the cash economy. Because if you have cash, you can borrow more!  Credit can't get you more credit, but cash? cash gets you more credit.


6. This one is rumor, but I have to at least mention it after Kirk voted against the DADT repeal. Certain males have claimed to have had relationships with Kirk in the past and recently.

Thats right folks Mark Kirk is a spy, a pimp, a drug dealer, a liar, an anti-gay closeted homosexual, murderer,  and the only legislation hes written is to make pot more illegal. 

Mark Kirk's career may be in intelligence but attempting to brand Bush a liar as the sole source of WMD info when this youtube video is one click away, shows what he thinks of your intelligence. United Statesians may have a short memory, but it cannot possibly be this short! Please do not vote for this man tomorrow.



MARK KIRK IS NOT A MODERATE: "I will lead the effort to repeal" and "we're well on our way to making this guy a one termer"