More Movies
Recently saw Renaissance in both French and English. Excellent eye candy and technical execution, but I wasn’t impressed with the story line. Also saw Little Miss Sunshine which was hilarious in a subtle way- I enjoy comedians playing more mature roles.
Taliban Struggles With Flattening
As demonstrated in both the text of the new codex as well as the interview with Mullah Sabir, the Afghani war is internally decentralizing. The codex devotes several of its 26 points to reinforcing the power of the district commander.
But in terms of organizational structure the Taliban looks to be coming across some growing pains associated with gradual flattening:
The focus [of the meeting] was on military strategy and internal behavioral questions.
A notably large number of rules are concerned with disciplinary matters within the Taliban organisation as the group’s swift expansion of power has apparently resulted in a certain coarsening of behaviour.
And the Taliban looks to be struggling with this development to some degree, as demonstrated by the “police state” type behavior taking place to maintain cohesiveness:
The Taliban military chief Mullah Dadullah has proven himself especially bloodthirsty; he has been known to behead prisoners with his own hand and, like Zarqawi, the recently killed al-Qaida leader in Iraq, has had executions filmed and then broadcast on the Internet.
But, as demonstrated by its attitude towards district leaders as opposed to centralized leaders, the Taliban is on course to eventually fragment on governmental platform – one decentralized by necessity and funded by black globalization.
On PMCs
Chirol asks about the future of Private Military Contractors.
I’ve actually been working on a paper on this topic, detailing one possible trajectory PMCs may evolve along. The paper will not be done for some time but this is the crux of my argument:
PMCs have traditionally offered services designed to meet the basic needs of the bottom most planks of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. But with the advent of 4GW they have a newfound interest in providing stability operations, which focus on the bottom two planks to a greater degree and travel further up the pyramid to more esoteric planks.
With the market in states set to explode as a result of the the nation state’s ability to provide even basic security services deteriorating, PMCs are positioning themselves to present alternatives to the standard state structure of today.
How this could play out:
Think primary loyalty driven individuals and groups ( Vermont’s 8% for example) reallocating their tax dollars to PMCs who will provide government platform services (with greater ROI) independent of territory – shooters to prevent the declining nation state’s forces from exerting their will, healthcare, transportation etc etc
Robb’s outlined this world before, I just say PMCs will seek to capitalize on their core competancy – which is having a competitive edge over the nation state due to their ability to bypass traditional state stumbling blocks such as entrenched bureaucracies, prolonged IT development cycles, and complex acquisition processes- and serve as a form of proto-market state.
Lind On Boomerangs
I agree with Lind when he says we will be facing the same threats we face abroad at home soon:
It will not be long before we see police squad cars getting hit with IEDs and other techniques employed by Iraqi insurgents, right here in the streets of American cities.
I don’t when he says the primary means for open source knowledge to move across the globe will be soldiers returning home to border line TAZs:
After they return to the U.S. and leave the military, they will take what they learned in Iraq back to the inner cities, to the ethnic groups, gangs, and other alternate loyalties they left when they joined the service. There, they will put their new knowledge to work, in wars with each other and wars against the American state.
Of course, this will occur to some degree, but will not be a major proponent of open source terrorism.
The Fountain and Babel
Saw Babel and the Fountain in the last week or so. Quick takes:
Babel did what it wanted to: provide a vignette of the ramifications of the global inability to communicate but in doing so inherently failed to move the story forward. Came off as a stillborn good idea.
Loved The Fountain, visually stunning cinematography coupled with great acting and an epic storyline equates to a good time. And I got a kick out of watching chemical reactions instead of CGI.