This comment was censored June, 2019 by Daily Kos

philiplisagor

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Wednesday June 03, 2020 · 9:17 AM PDT

2020/06/03 · 09:17

Admin note:

User banned for reposting the same conspiracy theory story from 6/18/2019

philiplisagor

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Saturday June 15, 2019 · 8:32 PM PDT

2019/06/15 · 20:32

Nation State Stuff: Obsolete twins, war and the nation state.

A nation state (or nation-state) is a state in which the great majority shares the same culture and is conscious of it. The nation state is an ideal in which cultural boundaries match up with political ones.[1] According to one definition, "a nation state is a sovereign state of which most of its subjects are united also by factors which defined a nation such as language or common descent."[2] It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group.

Today we live in a world of globalism in world economy, instantaneous world wide accessible communications, quick transportation and overly expensive militarism to protect the nation state borders rendering war non-economical. This is a time of the ending of the nation state system which developed between 1400 and 1800 and centered on the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 at least as Western (European) civilization is concerned. This begs the question--what will replace the nations state?

Some replacements are noted to include: multinational corporations many of which are financially sounder than the nations they are headquartered in (think tech giants Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft among others), cultural groups (LGBTQ, world wide sports federations, religious groups), ethnic and religious groups. Not to mention tribalism in its local and transnational manifestations. And let's not forget the resurgence of tribal nationalism which is struggling to maintain the status quo of the nation state remade as a nationalistic fascist state to counter the march forward of globalization. In the USA today we have hyper-polarization of the polity, the development of the peasant class as the middle class shrinks, the emergence of right wing Christian evangelicals as a political entity, various succession movements such as the Liberty State and the State of Jefferson, the developing power of the left coast (CA, OR, WA and NV) and the east coast NY, NJ, CONN and MA.

War is obsolete as is the Nation State.

Commission on Truth and Reconciliation

philiplisagor

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Saturday June 15, 2019 · 9:51 AM PDT

2019/06/15 · 09:51

Commission on Truth and Reconciliation: Politics, like love, has foreplay, the act, afterplay, and the next day. Regarding the current political situation, granted we’ve all been screwed, what will the next day entail? Well, getting the country united again, or at least less polarized, is often discussed as a goal. To get there we need to look at what and how Nelson Mandela achieved this in South Africa. Like Mandela, out next president needs to establish a Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. The main manipulators and profiteers of the tRupocracy, for example, Mitch McConnel, Lindsay Graham, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram, William Barr, Jeff Sessions-- to name a few, will be given the opportunity to apologize to the commission and to explain how they are rehabilitating themselves and work with the new administration or they can choose not to participate in which case the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation will send them to trial and if convicted they will be sentenced in accord with Federal guidelines for fraud, lying and obstruction of justice. Which 2020 Dem Candidates are going to support the formation of the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation?

Military dishonored by Pinhead Commander-in-Chief

philiplisagor

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Sunday May 19, 2019 · 1:08 PM PDT

2019/05/19 · 13:08

Our pinhead commander-in-chief dishonors the millions of American soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen by pardoning convicted war criminals. These allies of our shlubby pinhead president violated the rules of warfare and the rules of engagement and are only more thugs in the long line of pinhead relationships. The true heroes are the service members who in the face of danger and adversity followed the rules of warfare and engagement. A pardon for tRump’s convicted criminals discounts the comportment of the rest of the US military, who deserve better leadership than they are receiving.

Intellectual Dishonesty by General Petraeus

philiplisagor

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Monday December 05, 2016 · 3:08 PM PST

2016/12/05 · 15:08

Hearts & Minds in the Land of the Blind
The current lack of coherent US foreign policy is nothing new. During the Iraq War, it eventuated in the development of the policy of counterinsurgency warfare as proposed by Gen. David Petraeus. The Sicilian saying, “In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king,” played out with Petraeus capturing military and civilian leaders who were desperate for a blue print for increasingly frustrating wars, putting him on a pedestal as a “celebrity general.” A close reading of the David Petraeus-John Nagl writings in The US Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual develops a roadmap for endless war based upon information operations -- propaganda -- and a closer reading of their references actually takes us to David Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare, which serves as the basis for Petraeus-Nagl thinking. Unfortunately, Galula’s masterful and beautifully written manual is based upon a response to Communism, particularly of the Chinese Communist ”threat” of the middle part of the last century. The extrapolation of Galula to modern day Islamic terrorists is a sleight-of-hand act of intellectual dishonesty by Petraeus, who must know better from his academic training at Princeton. However, we were operating in the “land of the blind.”
   The Petraeus counterinsurgency fiasco reinforces the value and importance of returning to Clausewitz today. If the Department of State is incapable of developing a foreign policy, the Department of Defense will fill the void. And this is just what happened. The war makers became the policymakers, and it has not been pretty. John Nagl also wrote Eating Soup with a Knife, named after TE Lawrence’s appraisal of the futility of traditional forces against his guerrilla Arab troops. Ironically, while stationed in Tikrit, Iraq, a translator helped me eat as the locals did—a bowl of lentils mixed with a bowl of rice. Here was a soup I could have eaten with chop sticks.
   If Sun Tzu were to tweet today, he’d say, “Know thyself, know thy enemy—fight a hundred battles, win a hundred victories.” Sun would be disappointed in America’s efforts. The lack of knowledge of the Islamic world is well known. Certainly the general surprise by the US government and military about the rise of ISIS raises any eyes that were still closed. The lack of knowledge has confined the US to a reactionary role. A principle of US military power has been “audacity” and without knowledge of the enemy, this attribute becomes non-existent on the modern battlefield.
   The tiny Guide for US service members in Iraq from WW-2 had more pertinent information about the culture and tribalism in Iraq than modern military guides. And there remains the comment to Emma Sky, a British anthropologist assigned to Gen. Raymond Odierno, by the General along the lines of “gosh, we didn’t know anything about the people or the culture we were involved with.” Of course Gen. Odierno was the Chief of Staff of the US Army. His colleagues occupy all the high offices in the US military. No failure goes unrewarded. We have an entire general staff of leaders who have lost two wars and were clueless on the way to defeat.    Then-CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid referred to the military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan as “a long war.” This was not a popular phrase with President George W Bush, and shortly thereon, we had a new CENTCOM Commander. General Abizaid, of Arab background, was our last best wartime leader, combining war fighting with knowledge of the enemy and the culture we were involved in. So much for Sun Tzu’s exhortation to, “know the enemy.”

The Middle East Today

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Saturday August 23, 2014 · 9:32 AM PDT

2014/08/23 · 09:32

Nothing new, the US is without a defined national interest other than oil and weapons deals in the region which dictates that there is no effective foreign policy. Our nation is left in a position of being asked to react to event after event. And these are all events that we can neither control nor understand.

Regarding ISIL or ISIS, this indigenous movement doesn't directly affect the US even if we had a defined national interest. The best tactical approach to this would be to allow the nations directly involved work it out. This would include Turkey which has one of the largest armies in the world and is an effective force with a well established command and control. Also, Saudi Arabia (when not financing terrorist groups in exchange for no insurgency on their home soil) has a tremendous arsenal of US weapons including a large and capable air force. Where has this fighting force been? Also, Kuwait has a capable air force. If the local powers don't want to fight this war, there is no way the US should expend one dollar or life over there.

The best strategic approach would be to go to immediate independence from Mid-East oil. The US today is producing more and more oil, even if we are using fracking to do it. The President should immediately move to remove the US from the world energy market, requiring all US oil to be used in the US and to purchase other energy sources from Canada and Mexico. This will require sacrifice on the part of the US citizenry, may require US subsidies in the immediate reactionary period , but ultimately, freeing ourselves of any use of Mid-East oil will achieve two important goals: first we will be able to begin to formulate a foreign policy not purchased by middle east dollars and second, the wrench this will throw into the middle east economies will serve to put a brake on their ongoing civil wars. Certainly as we are disengaged from middle east oil, the weapons trade to those nations will wind down.

Only as we tamp down our behavior of violence throughout the world will we be able to get a grip on the rampant domestic violence. They go hand in hand. We must demilitarize the US culture which has become over run by the miliitary-industrial complex as predicted by President Eisenhower.

If you want to support an organization supporting this positive changes, look no further than the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL.org). They have their ducks in order. If you want to read more on the history of the failure of US current foreign policy, look to Patrick Cockburn's new book: The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising.

Impeach John Roberts

philiplisagor

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Sunday August 18, 2013 · 7:53 AM PDT

2013/08/18 · 07:53

http://petitions.moveon.org/...

Impeach John Roberts, Chief Justice US Supreme Court for allowing his Conservative leanings to direct an assault on the process of free elections and against the freedoms guaranteed in the US Constitution as demonstrated by:
1. Allowing large corporation money to buy and dominate national elections in the Citizen United case
2. When the corporations were unable to buy the elections, he allowed the disenfranchisement of voters by destroying the Voter's Rights Act of 1965
3. By developing a 5-4 polarized Court along political grounds and destroying American trust in the Supreme Court.
4. By stacking the secret surveillance court against protection of Americans privacy.

Romney job creation as businessman

philiplisagor

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Wednesday January 11, 2012 · 1:43 PM PST

2012/01/11 · 13:43

Given that Mill Romney eliminated jobs as part of business plan with Bain Capital. But he claims that this if offset by the jobs he created with Staples, Sports Authority and Domino Pizza. Are these the kind of jobs we want created, more big box distributor that pay low wages and eliminate the small businesses that they compete with or more food chain franchises selling pizza (what happened to Herman Cain's Godfather Pizza?) and driving small restaurant owners out of business. Either way you put lipstick on this pig, Mitt Romney is no friend of American Business.

60's Redux

philiplisagor

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Friday November 18, 2011 · 4:58 PM PST

2011/11/18 · 16:58

During the early and nonviolent phase of the 'Arab Spring' Gene Sharp of The Albert Einstein Institution was often referred to as having much influence of the tactics and strategies of the protestors. In particular attention was directed to two documents; the two page listing of 198 ways of nonviolent protest and the 100 page booklet entitled From Dictatorship to Democracy/A Conceptual Framework for Liberation, both are available free from the Institution website.

If you are confused about the Occupy Wall Street campaign, look at these two documents and you will understand what is occurring in terms of building this movement.

It is interesting that in the protests of the 60's, nonviolent protest (political defiance, not pacificism) was employed over and over. The system invariably responded with violence showered upon nonviolent demonstrators with the predictable response of rapidly growing the size of the demonstrations.

The photo of the small elderly lady in Seattle with the facial stigmata of the chemical attack she has been subjected to along with the spectacle of Mayor Bloomberg joining the ranks of destroyers of books (the removal and destruction of the Zuccotti Park library) would indicate that the system didn't learn from the 60's, is unfamiliar with Mr. Sharp's writings, and is scared to death of people willing to leave their cubicles and computers and do what Mario Savio (Berkeley Free Speech Movement) did when he called for citizens to throw their bodies on the gears of the system.

The system is not able to absorb the growing nonviolent demonstrations without a violent response.

COIN Doctrine, Part 2

philiplisagor

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Wednesday September 21, 2011 · 1:29 PM PDT

2011/09/21 · 13:29

Follow Up to Counter Insurgency Warfare Redux/ This incorporates the recent shuffle between the military and the CIA and possible issues with this arrangement.

philiplisagor

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Thursday March 10, 2011 · 10:01 AM PST

2011/03/10 · 10:01

It's difficult to get interested in exerting US Military Power in Libya (the Mideast) when we have neither a foreign policy there or anything resembling an intelligence operation (who are the rebels in each of these countries etc?) so our current policy is absolutely correct. Stay on the sidelines.

However, if there should be a no fly zone, why not use the Kuwaiti and the Saudi Arabia Air Forces. Each of these countries has a large air force with no discernible mission other than to bleed money back into the US through the industrial-military complex. Put their air forces to work. And there is also the Pakistani Air Force, they could work with the Kuwaitis and the Saudis (what am I smoking?). And finally, for the humanitarian aid, how about the various Red Crescent Societies? Where are they? Where were they in the Pakistan flood? We have other needs for US dollars and there are these good alternatives so let's let this dance go on without us.

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Critique of Counter Insurgency Warfare Theory-Redux

philiplisagor

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Monday August 16, 2010 · 9:16 AM PDT

2010/08/16 · 09:16

Everyone talks about the difference between counter terrorism approach and counter insurgency approach to problems in Afghanistan, mostly based upon the myths produced in Iraq with the application of the US Army and USMC new Field Manual of Counter Insurgency Warfare (COIN Manual). The number of people who have read this manual is exceedingly small in relation to the number of people who quote it. Here is some information about counter insurgency warfare.

A major part of counter insurgency warfare is the use of Information Operations (IO), aka propaganda. We are now seeing the use of IO by the military directed toward the US population as presented on this past Meet the Press to drum up support for COIN.

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