Most analysis of drone technology from libertarian futurists these days is pretty pessimistic. They’re generally treated as part of a larger techno-fascist scenario, like the U.S. global hegemony (enforced by orbital lasers and remote-controlled UN teletroopers) depicted in Ken Macleod’s Fall Revolution novels.
That’s an understandable temptation. After all, drones (combined with mobile operations like the assassination of bin Laden in May 2011) seem to have given the United States an unprecedented ability to take out the leadership and many of the rank-and-file of networked resistance movements like al Qaeda, far more cheaply than the old model of counter-insurgency warfare.
Extrapolating from this, it’s not hard to imagine the United States government, as a full-blown techno-fascist regime fighting to stave off the collapse of corporate power in a few years, using drones and remote-controlled soldiers to shut down web servers in Iceland that host Wikileaks or Mega, kill M15 and Syntagma organizers on the Continent (and Occupy organizers in Oakland), take out garage factories producing knockoffs of GE’s patented goods, etc., or just flat-out assassinate political dissidents based on wiretaps from Ft. Meade.
Even John Robb, my favorite writer on networked resistance and asymmetric warfare, seems to take a dark view of the long-term effect of drones. The main advantage of his resilient communities, as he sees them, is that they’re too small, decentralized and hardened to present high-profile targets to states in their death throes.
But that’s far too pessimistic an assessment, in my opinion. The apparent spectacular successes of drone warfare in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen are actually just early adopter advantages accruing to the first powerful states to put drones to use. This says absolutely nothing about the overall effect of drone technology as we move down the cost curve — any more than we could have predicted the institutional effects of cybernetics and the Internet based on the enormous vacuum tube mainframe computers of the late 1940s.
It’s a fair guess that increasingly sophisticated, autonomous hunter-killer drones will be governed by an exponential rate of cost reduction comparable to that described in Moore’s Law. In a few years time, we can expect remote-controlled or autonomous armed drones available as open-source, off-the-shelf technology that networked resistance movements can churn out with cheap tabletop CNC machines in their own garage factories.
When that happens, and the “World’s Sole Remaining Superpower” loses its early-adopter advantage, drone technology will work to the advantage of the side with the most decentralized, distributed organizational infrastructure, and the most widely dispersed and hardened end-points. And it will disproportionately hurt the side with the most centralized, hierarchical form of organization and the most concentrated target profile. Anyone want to venture a guess as to which respective sides fit those descriptions?
Imagine, if you will, a world in which drones are cheap and widely available. Then stop and think about the target profile of the Empire and the corporate interests it serves. Imagine how easy it would be to get targeting information on the homes, churches and country clubs of the senior management and directors of the aerospace companies that make American drones. The Boardrooms and C-Suites themselves. The factories. The whole South Asian chain of command, from CINC CENTCOM down to battalion and flight headquarters. The logistical tail of the drones, including the control centers at every airbase from which drones are staged. Begin to get the picture?
Even as it is, the current American advantage in drones is just an outlier in the general trend toward cheap area-denial technologies (carrier-killing Sunburn missiles, mines, etc.). In fact the panic in U.S. ruling circles is so extreme that the latest U.S. Defense Guidance document was centered on the need to prevent the United States losing its regional power projection capabilities to such technologies — the 21st century equivalent of the most powerful army in the world being defeated by a guerrilla army using punji sticks and a bicycle-borne logistical tail.
In every conceivable way — agility, resilience, feedback/reaction loop — the emerging networked successor society runs circles around the old hierarchical corporate and state dinosaurs it’s replacing. As I’ve said many times, the twentieth century was the age of the large, hierarchical institution. By the end of the 21st, there won’t be enough left of them to bury.
“Bring on the Drones!” on C4SS Media.
Translations for this article:
- Italian, Tirate Fuori i Droni!
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, Bring on the drones!, Before It’s News, 02/12/13
- Kevin Carson, Technology from libertarian futurists: Bring on the Drones!, Baltic Review, 02/06/13
- Kevin Carson, Bring on the drones!, Deming, New Mexico Headlight, 02/10/13
"Imagine, if you will, a world in which drones are cheap and widely available"
No need to imagine, you can buy your own surveillance drone for $300 http://www.parrotshopping.com/us/p_parrot_listing…
On the other hand the idea of the armed civilian drone might provide a(nother) pretext for trying to outlaw decentralized manufacturing. I wonder if they'll try?
My recent post Design in the Service of Empire
Or for an alternative, see http://www.bitcraze.se/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WBUVYZkODI
Well, they've tried to outlaw drugs and file-sharing, so…
I'm not so sure the proliferation of armed drones is something cheer on. Religious fanatics targeting abortion clinics, hick town deputies attacking them damn hippie organic farms because they might be growin' dope, racists of all races lashing out, political hacks pulling false flag ops, all sorts of opportunities to get killed while the elite relaxes in their luxury bunkers. Not to mention all kinds of excuses to crackdown and lockdown and conduct surveillance.
I'd guess the elite would not be affected too much by cheap and plentiful drones. After all, they have daisy cutters, bunker busters and shit we don't even know about yet – like invisible hi-tech anti-drone drones or space lasers that will fry a DIY drone from the other side of the ozone layer.
I'm somewhat with Tom. If you're right that DIY combat drones are coming, then just about everyone is in trouble. (Actually, one guy did come awfully close to building his own autonomous short-range cruise missile a few years ago, if you didn't know, so you might even be right.)
I fear caricaturing you, Kevin, if I say that your optimism rests upon some goodness inherent to decentralised, networked organisations. Occupy and the best of the American revolutionaries were, and whatever resists the next round of global tyranny certainly will be, but so are spree shooters, abortion clinic bombers and al-Queda. So count me as a bit pessimistic about the consequences of anyone being able to anonymously kill anyone else anywhere in the world.
On the other hand, it'd make Twitter fights a lot more interesting.
I think he is more praising the sheer effectiveness of decentralized networks. It means any effective resistence to a bad one will come from a good one. Know what I mean?
"the 21st century equivalent of the most powerful army in the world being defeated by a guerrilla army using punji sticks…." Yeah, except the people who used punji sticks didn't go out of their nation looking for a place to plant them. With the US FedGov it's looking for trouble by making it. You "want" rebellion? Keep accusing people of being unpatriotic or "terrorists" and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. But, then again, I believe that's what they really want anyways.
The White Letter from The White House smells not quite like a White Rose
by michael hall
First obama murdered children inside of foreign nations
the people shopped at walmart to show their displeasure
then obama murdered children in countries we were not war with
so flags & troops were honored at every sports game in the land
Some lawyers screamed foul as did the few with conscience like Chomsky, Hedges & Blum
but their voices were drowned out by the silence of the bored & apathetic the meekly submissive
still the good loyal citizens did scream for more guns as their constitutional right
& american idol worship tonight is supposed to be a killer so guess which takes priority?
Then obama & the exalted mighty military murdered an unarmed american across the pond
so what did the people then do you ask?
they swallowed a blue pill sunk their head deeper into the rabbit hole and breathed patriotically
hush hush now little children its all a transparent secret nothing to see here just move along
While a american teenager with his cousin out looking for his murdered father
stopped along a dirt road in the middle of a vast desert depressed praying for his dad
in the middle of a cookout sitting around the fire alone these two american kids
without warning silence was broken by terrorism & they were subsequently droned to smithereens
Ah but some fires did light up more intensely this time
so obama & his bunch of hooligans had to reluctantly crawl out of their dark dungeon
they argued with legal thickets of sharpened stakes, moats, pickets, shielded by secrets & lies atop turrets no one could reach
through a tapestry of intricate semantics innuendos & bizarre definitions they claimed they were upholding the constitution oxymoronically tagging this odium as wise and ethical
Claiming the research was so sensitive & so secret that it could not be revealed
our heroes would then be exposed to violence & that would be quite unamerican
if that happened whistleblowers then would be scapegoated & we know what happens to them
do you really think that renditions & retaliatory vengeance are deeds of the past?
Cattle mooed
sheep bleated
the superbowl was a commercial success & beyonce lip-synced flawlessly again
& the flags, ah, the flags flew so high & piously, almost above it all, but did i see, a stain or was it smoke?
The White Letter from The White House smells not quite like a White Rose
by michael hall
First obama murdered children inside of foreign nations
the people shopped at walmart to show their displeasure
then obama murdered children in countries we were not war with
so flags & troops were honored at every sports game in the land
Some lawyers screamed foul as did the few with conscience like Chomsky, Hedges & Blum
but their voices were drowned out by the silence of the bored & apathetic the meekly submissive
still the good loyal citizens did scream for more guns as their constitutional right
& american idol worship tonight is supposed to be a killer so guess which takes priority?
Then obama & the exalted mighty military murdered an unarmed american across the pond
so what did the people then do you ask?
they swallowed a blue pill sunk their head deeper into the rabbit hole and breathed patriotically
hush hush now little children its all a transparent secret nothing to see here just move along
While a american teenager with his cousin out looking for his murdered father
stopped along a dirt road in the middle of a vast desert depressed praying for his dad
in the middle of a cookout sitting around the fire alone these two american kids
without warning silence was broken by terrorism & they were subsequently droned to smithereens
Ah but some fires did light up more intensely this time
so obama & his bunch of hooligans had to reluctantly crawl out of their dark dungeon
they argued with legal thickets of sharpened stakes, moats, pickets, shielded by secrets & lies atop turrets no one could reach
through a tapestry of intricate semantics innuendos & bizarre definitions they claimed they were upholding the constitution oxymoronically tagging this odium as wise and ethical
Claiming the research was so sensitive & so secret that it could not be revealed
our heroes would then be exposed to violence & that would be quite unamerican
if that happened whistleblowers then would be scapegoated & we know what happens to them
do you really think that renditions & retaliatory vengeance are deeds of the past?
Cattle mooed
sheep bleated
the superbowl was a commercial success & beyonce lip-synced flawlessly again
& the flags, ah, the flags flew so high & piously, almost above it all, but did i see, a stain or was it smoke?
Dulce Et Decorum Est III & A Taste of Armageddon
(or the empire has no clothes but a disposition matrix)
by michael hall
In due homage to Horace, Owen and Mikhail i humbly nod
for how sweet & glorious it must be to kill or die for God & country by pompous duty with dishonor
so c'mon kiddies, any up for good jingo sport?
who’s hungry & poor, who wants to play the hubris 'anything for profit' killing game?
As effusively embedded newspapers rah rah their pied pier patriotism with journalistic integrity & objectivity ha ha!
as a new battle lies just around the corner & armed forces day just weeks away hooray!
rally loyal citizens to whitewash warm innocuous blood off disgraced musket & sullied polluted flag
strike up the marching parade manifested by destiny down main street usa hey hey!
Awaken & open thine eyes chauvinistic folk, come & see your overseas deeds of nefarious brutality
given that your liable for this appalling tax-paid violence you've exported to hamlets & villages on human beings
assaulting families who've never did you any harm in lands you've never heard of, nor care less for
so step on up, one & all, for everyone here is accountable & responsible for this odious debacle
Take a trip to the overflowing morgues filled with small smashed bodies, once were toddlers full of laughter & life
deeply inhale the rancid stench of scorched flesh crispy burnt to a black bubbly mass by phosphorus
gaze into doll dead eyes frozen forever by shock & awe renditioned via your God blessed terror raining down
from atop a cold gurney a stiff finger of a tiny hand amidst a pile of mangled flesh is pointing at you war supporters
Watch as grief-stricken fathers zombie-wander in shattered silence
sifting through ragged debris & devastating destruction searching for lost sons & missing daughters
discovering ripped wet mangled body parts strewn out as pieces of a human jig-saw puzzle
taking home the ear, the hand, the foot to be quietly buried while 6000 miles away 'heroes' giggle & dub this 'bugsplat'
Harken to the heart-piercing shrieks as soul-torn asunder mothers wail like howling wild animals
as they find their loves buried, broken & bloody in the rubble of your glorious works
then if you can, please explain to the unresponsive moaning neonatal orphan
why your armed forces just murdered his parents…by accident, then wave a condolence payment in his face
Celebrate as your special op-forces silently & quickly dig our bullets from civilian bodies
to cover their tracks from being at the wrong address…again
declare as a holiday murdered women at a bridal shower or when 4 kids are droned to smithereens while tending sheep
rejoice in exported evil exploits as great american victories for which your war crimes always are
Trust flim-flam, the PR propaganda spin from your MSM complicit mouthpiece
praise your taxes which finances anglo-terrorism through illegal & immoral aggressive violence
raise your false flag ever higher to cover the rising pile where the butchered lie
however dear good christian citizens, do not trust that any civic rag could ever soar over the sick slaying of the innocent
Consider Fallujha surrounded & caged, then the cowering cringing unarmed civilian inhabitants
shot, burned & barbequed like slaughtered sitting ducks in a ‘free-fire zone’ shooting gallery
ponder upon your sanctimonious attack at a school in Bajour where 69 children are massacred by joystick
this is Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, My Lai, Haditha, & other mass-media contorted & distorted great triumphs
which to no doubt in my mind, the next war crime called a ‘battle’ will be anointed too, of course, ta! ta!
The Slaughter of the Children Drones On & On & On & On
When the drones are slaughtering innocent children in your name
do you bother to get concerned even when on your knees on Sunday?
or do you just stick your head in the sand blindly support the troops & just not think about whose to blame
if you care i have list of their names and ages i could give you from the depths of an odious jingo game
Do your wonder if your joystick violence is really doing any good
or do you get the feeling that something is very wrong & your getting spun & fooled
how can you support exported terrorism when your sworn to defend against it
how can you donate freedom &democracy when its getting stolen from under you by E/O
Every bullet bought is a loaf of bread stolen from the belly of the hungry
& your self-praising charity checkbook fad doesn't seem to dent the starvation
if you spent 2.2 million everyday since Jesus was born
you would have spent what your nation purchased on the military just last year
Do you wonder why your schools don't have books & pencils
why your bridges are crumbling down & the roads are potholed like Swiss cheese
while your politicians live in mansions with 5-star chefs lapping at life-long luxury
then again today they announced another bone-cut to the needy, homeless and disabled
How could anyone with a shred of conscience bow before a flag without bending over with nausea
knowing underneath it the killing of the innocent is a weekly act in nations we are not at war with
that after a hit. the gang fires off another drone when medics & rescuers come to the scene of destruction
we've forgotten what we stand for by the very deeds we toe-tag and their is no rationalization
Now we know by special executive decree memo called a 'white paper'
the Nobel Peace prize holder president has the power to murder americans beyond the law
it is solely up to the president when it comes to life and death and it is all a hush-hush secret
change we can be deceived has shown the articulate sheep to be but a child-eating wolf
Anyone who murders children by drone and then jokes about it is a sociopath
a leader who becomes a serial killer justifies by secret edicts he wont share with his employers is a despot
expansion and consolidation of extreme power will one day target you and yours
For what goes on abroad in your name will backblow as it comes around to get you tomorrow
Just south of key west at Guantanamo every law, principle and value you hold dear is smashed
across the pond the most nefarious crimes are done in your name with your support
and yet at home you bury your head deep in the sand far from the massive contradiction
your heart bleeds for Newton yet when your troops do the exact same thing you raise a flag & a stiff arm
For what profits an empire when they can envelop the world and dominate it
yet in the process they loose their values, principles and in so doing their very soul
still atonement must be rectified somewhere at some time
and this is the dream that i dream someday will be;
For all the innocent children who've been the victim of the american military machine
i would gladly see each and everyone of them walk by in front of every war supporter and soldier
to deeply gaze into the eyes and say with conviction, question and horror;
Why did you murder me?
Another libertarian fantasy piece about the all powerful decentralized fourth generation cells of "resistance" fighters. I'm reminded of the movie Hackers and all of the blather about how wonderful the internet would be as a empowering force for freedom, when what it has really done, among other things, is make the panopticon that much more practicable.
1. The state is not in its death throes people.
2. They will always have better drones and counterdrone technology than you
3. Networks, however decentralized, still require leadership (or at least somewhat intelligent people capable of organizing and directing/planning action); such people are actually fairly easy to identify, especially given their overwhelming propensity to run their mouths in various fora, particularly online, where their insipid speech provocations are logged, tagged, and filed away for indefinite reference/data mining
4. Thus, any reasonably smart and well funded organization (like, I don't know, the people who do counter-intelligence/counter-insurgency, or even better, the contracting companies that do these things) could pick out, prioritize, target, and dispose of any such people who presented non-marginal threats, easily, over and over
A few other points. Though it is hard to generalize about a fragmented and amorphous group like al-Qaeda, whatever they are, THEY ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS. Glorifying people like that as "resistance" fighters and implying you or others share some common purpose with them is
Lunacy
It also marks you as actually being
on the other side
Just as they say you are.
This has a way of discrediting you and making your enemies seem as though they are right about you, since they are, in fact right about you. If you wonder why people dismiss libertarians and the various anarchist fringe types as traitors, listen to yourselves some time. You will do nothing with talk like this but:
1. Drive away outsiders (which would be the 99.9% of the world that does not currently agree with you)
2. Convince those people that reprisals against you are justified, whenever the people who matter get around to making such reprisals, assuming they decide that those of you who can't be co-opted are enough of a nuisance to bother with at all
This article echoes my long-held view on why imperialism – resource acquisition by force – has a very limited shelf-life: the moment the technological advantage of the empire is undermined, the imperial enterprise is doomed. (The example of the English trying to outright-colonise New Zealand is the best case in point – the dominant global power of the era was brought to a draw by a bunch of 'savages' who understood asymmetric warfare AND who armed themselves with English battle-tech).
During the 'colonial' period, governments would underwrite the capture of resources by politically-connected firms (e.g., the Dutch East India Company): the cronies obtained resource-extraction rights (the right to the flow of profits), while the tax base in the home country funded the expedition itself. In short, it was part conquest, part transfer scheme.
This scheme enriched a tiny sliver of the aggressor nation (its political class and their cronies), but only indirectly benefited the masses (to the extent it benefited them at all). The first 200 years of English imperialism had no tangible benefits for the English commoner: only after the Industrial Revolution caused a massive rise in labour productivity, did the English labourer achieve a level of purchasing power commensurate with that enjoyed by labour after the Great Plague.
This is why I have never bought into the silly notion that the US genocide in Iraq was to 'get hold of cheap Iraqi oil'. That's nonsense: one of the foreseeable consequences was to drive up the GLOBAL price of oil, which had the happy concomitant (for Cheney and his ilk) of driving up the value of the holdings of politically-connected US and European oil companies. Because one thing is abundantly clear about modern imperialism: unless you're invading a country where the people have nothing more advanced than pointy sticks… your invasion is doomed to be costly (and therefore unpopular in your home jurisdiction) and probably a failure if its aims are resource acquisition. The ability of 'invadee' populations to take advantage of the ability to 'leapfrog' techologically and tactically, makes the resource-acquisition objective almost risible.
However if the aims are NOT resource acquisition, all bets are off. But even then, if you face a hostile local populace, you're doomed.
The French in the Maghreb and Indochina; the US in VietNam, Iraq, Afghanistan; the British in Africa (especially in Kenya) – once the locals decided "OK, that's it. Let's have a crack at getting these Eurotrash off our land" and mobilised, the colonisers looked for the exits (after waging campaigns of terror, torture and massacre that would be illegal under their own laws).
And so it will be with drones and gene-tech and nanotech: once they become ubiquitous, the first-mover will have to deal with the consequences of pissing off a bajillion people who have developed equality of arms. They will be unable to hold what they have taken (they will have their minions fight like dogs to try to forestall the inevitable), but the end of the story is really easy to write:
We win.
Folks with your worldview took the same view of the likelihood of the end of Church hegemony.
They took the line that the torture and execution of the likes of Tyndall and Bruno (and the threats of same to Galileo and others) was justified, and that any argumentation against the Church was justifiably the objective of slaughter which included innocents (like that at Beziers – the infamous "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.").
And of course the majority of the population – who were and are too exhausted after their standard job of giving half of what they make to Massah – simply accepted what the 'authorities' told them. The earth is flat, and at the centre of the universe; goblins and demons stalk the land after dark; negroes who escape slavery have a mental condition (drapetomania).
People like you stood in the way of the abolition of chattel slavery, the equal treatment of women in political life, and every other major social advance in history.
People like you cheered when Wycliff was disinterred and burned, and when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incinerated.
People who are so cowardly that they will kiss the whip of the overlord, while knowing full well that they are being exploited.
You're of the same ilk as the Jews who volunteered to serve as "kapo" in the camps. A born and bred serf.
Anyone who even uses the word 'traitor' to describe opposition to the political system is himself a traitor – to his entire species.
Oh, and another thing: the State may not be in its 'death throes', but it is so far off its intertemporal budget constraint (defined as the proportion of the serfs' incomes it can steal while maintaining the necessary level of support to retain legitimacy) that it is at the "loot the treasury" stage (the period when the political parasite class engages in outright theft, sequestering assets in order to better weather an impending economic debacle).
Imagine how the world would be if everyone was a craven weak coward like you: South Africa would still be an apartheid state; the US would still be a collection of English colonies (arguably England would still be under Roman rule); Yeshuah ben Yusuf would not have agitated against the Roman occupation of Judea and so Christianity would not exist (OK, so there is SOME upside).
Moses would not have agitated in Pharoah's presence… and on and on it goes.
Anybody who is too gutless to have a crack simply because the odds seem disadvantageous, is not worth listening to.
Also, you vastly overestimate the capabilities of the State: if the State was so good at attracting the best and brightest, how come the USSR didn't win the fucking Cold War? The intelligence alphabet soup and the military are made up of people who have so few options that they will accept a job that pays less than $50k AFTER 5 YEARS. (NSA/CIA/DIA rookies start at about GS5 on $43k, but they don't start straight out of college… and ALL the bright ones leave after 2 years).
And not for nothin' – the CIA failed to predict every single event of global geopolitical importance since its foundation. EVERY ONE.
So you keep kissing Massah's whip, guy: I will continue to bet that the LESS government there is (and concomitantly the more voluntary interaction), the better off we will be. I'm not a scared fellow who relies on .gov to protect me from the hooded claw.
That's one thing I've always loved about libertarians and anarchists:
How they leap to conclusions with such abandon. The freethinkers, who all think the same exact thoughts, and are ready to burn anyone at the stake who doesn't.
You don't know me at all, hombre, you only know what I said here. so you should probably read that more carefully before putting me in some monster box and trying to set it on fire.
I don't recall having suggested that people like you should be persecuted, more predicting that it would happen, while pointing out that you were making it easier to justify with your conduct.
People like me, people like me, blah blah blah.
I guess the people like me are the people who see the world as it is, while trying to talk other people (like you) down from the imaginary towers they've climbed with their imaginary rifles. The people like them you are pretending to shoot at are real, and they aren't the forgiving types.
Your reply is a perfect illustration of why I broke, permanently, with libertarians and anarchists after spending years making their kind of arguments.
You know, my main points were quite simple here (though I rather doubt you really read them that closely):
1. You are fooling yourselves while simultaneously painting targets on each others backs
2. Lionizing groups like al-Qaeda is counterproductive, stupid, and actual treason; note, I didn't say "opposition to the political system" is treason.
Further. I don't believe that opposition to the state/government/political system under whose jurisdiction you live is treason, in itself. Treason is taking the side of the enemies of your people (exulting in their victories, for example); I'm not going to bother with your tiresome Jew/Kapo example, though that would be one illustration… how about a Jew, in Israel, describing Hezbollah as the "resistance" and romanticizing them, and their Islamist allies, while calling for the destruction of the Israeli (racist/apartheid/evil/whatever) state.
I'd call that treason. (And that doesn't mean I think the Palestinians don't have legitimate grievances, or even that I'm on Israel's side. I'm not a Jew. See, loyalties, which go to the heart of words like "treason" are particular, not universal; you're not a traitor for taking a given side, in itself, you're a traitor for being on the side of the enemy.)
An American or westerner who gives aid/comfort to al Qaeda in its war against Americans is a traitor. Americans who marched around in 1969 with Viet Cong flags chanting, "Ho Chi Minh is gonna win" were traitors.
I say that and I would have been against the Vietnam war, as I was against Gulf War II and the occupation of Afghanistan.
I only bothered to comment at all here because I've noticed libertarians and anarchists getting shriller lately in their denunciations, not just of American foreign policy, but of the military, the soldiers themselves, all of it, just as they did in the late sixties (when they were spitting on veterans and calling them baby killers).
These things may make you warm and superior inside, morally, but
They also make you hated. Not by the State (they tend to be rather useful to the State, in fact), but by the people in the world whose "liberty" and "rights" and all of that you claim to be so interested in protecting.
Well, you are too scared to write under your own name. No way around that.
I assure you, anybody who cares what you think can easily discover whoever you really are.
So you keep calling me coward, and I'm the one attacking the orthodoxy, in public, while you hurl insults behind a mask and a pseudonym. By the way, I'd like to see you call me coward to my face. I don't actually rely on government to protect me at all, far from it. I think I could teach you something about being careful whom you insult.
I don't worship the State or the United States or the USSR or the UN or really any Government, NGO, or corporation you could throw out, and nothing in my post remotely suggested that I did. But I do think the expression
Small boy waves red cape before angry bull
is a good one to keep in mind.
If you're going to play this game for real you have to learn how to respect your enemy enough to take him seriously. It's not all just striking moral poses and denouncing heretics.
But I'm tired of you people and your pomposity and your sermonizing, your reduction
of history to a made for cable morality play between the oppressors and the oppressed.
Climb down off your cross. Nobody cares.
Writing as a life long anti-imperialist (for wholly different reasons than yours), all I can say is
Caesar did just fine in Gaul.
The insurgents do not always win.
The Roman, the British, the French, the Russian empires were around for centuries, many centuries. The Chinese empire is still there, as a matter of fact, as its been for millennia.
The British won the Boer war, against natural guerrillas, who were highly motivated, and fighting in their own land. As did the Americans in the Philippines.
I don't recall the Chechens doing too well against Stalin, either, for that matter.
The European empires collapsed as the direct consequence of the European civil war (1914-45), not because the natives achieved "equality of firepower." Europe was too bankrupted and exhausted to maintain the burden of its empires, any of whose economic justifications had long since passed. The Romans really brought themselves down too, they didn't fall to colonial insurgents or some Sparacist revolt.
This kind of talk, about the Empire, and how Empires or States or whatever are always Doomed because the oppressors will inevitably fall to the oppressed, it's all very black turtleneck, post-Marxist, I suppose it would work in a reading at Busboys and Poets. But it's not real. There is no magical dialectic force of History leading to inevitable Victory, for anybody.
When you're so hopped up on your moral superiority and the righteousness of your cause and the evil of your opponents and the inevitability of your victory, that's usually when
You lose.
Because you are sloppy and stupid and not paying attention to the actual enemy in front of you.
Really? Caesar did just fine in Gaul? That must be why they speak Latin in France. That must be why Rome had to pay Brennus the equivalent of BILLIONS in gold (in today's money), when he sacked the place in the 390s BC – declaring "Vae Victis, bitchez!".
The British won the Boer Wars? (there were two fo them). Really? So the South African apartheid regime didn't feature names like Smuts, de Koch, van der Merwe, and Botha? The Afrikaaners wound up running the bloody country less than a generation after the Second Boer War (Smuts may have been a British Field Marshal in WWI, but he was a Boer… fought FOR the Boers).
Win the major set pieces, but wind up handing power the the insurgent leadership… by that logic, the US "won" VietNam.
What happened to the attempt of Rome to expand into Germana? Their three finest legions, butchered at Teutoberger Wald, that's what.
What happened when Crassus tried to have a Mesopotamian adventure? 20,000 legionnaires, butchered by Parthian light cavalry, that's what.
That some or other empire "existed for centuries" is so wholly beside the point that it's almost not worth responding to – but I'm a sucker for punishment, so here goes…
The reason that 'olden days' empires could stick around for a decent length of time (although to be frank, NEVER with the same cast and crew at the top – there were dozens of regime changes that belie the continuity that dilettantes see) was precisely that technology was not easily amenable to replication (and possibly even more so for information technology – tactics and strategic methodas ARE 'military technology' too)): furthermore, the early stages of ANY post-invasion colonial enterprise involve buddying up to the incumbent power structures in the target nation (or trying to), bribing them and infiltrating their bureaucratic machinery. So it is i nthe interests of the parasite classes in the target country to play nice: anti-colonial movements start at the BOTTOM a the serfs of the target country become aware of the parasitic nature of the political class (all political classes are parasitic, but a foreign parasite is one step too far).
From there, a well-structured insurgency is not that difficult to manage: apart from the devastation of Teutoberger Wald, the Romans had all sorts of problems in Gaul, and in Palestine, and in Britain (and it got so bad up north that Hadrian realised he would never take Caledonia, so built a wall)… and of course in Mesopotamia. Bear in mind that all of this happened at the HEIGHT of Rome's power – 50 years either side of 1AD (although arguably its best days were behind it by then – the expansionist period goes back to the mid-250s BC).
Here's the thing: when the Visigoths sacked Rome in about 410AD, they were led by a guy (Alaric) who was trained by the Romans… and thus had experienced the required technolgocial transfer (of military strategy and tactics). That Rome was also pretty much bankrupt – and overstretched – helped his cause, obviously.
I don't have a black turtleneck, and having actually read Marx (and checked the falsified footnotes) I know that it's idiotic hogwash – as bad as or worse than Ayn Rand. The 'left-right' thing is dumber than a bag of hammers, and I'm not anywhere on it: I despise ANYONE who tries to live at the expense of the citizenry, because I know where that inevitably leads: corruption, neglect, entitlement, more corruption, judicial tyranny, war, financial turmoil, economic decline and fade to black. Death squads, censorship… supposedly justified by the public-goods aspects of such things as law and defence.
Hmmm, the Gauls sacked Rome in the 390s BC. Interesting.
Caesar conquered Gaul in 52 BC. By Caesar, I mean the actual man, Julius Caesar, not the Biblical/anarchist/libertarian/Marxist/whatever expression "Caesar." And, like I said, he did just fine there, as did the Romans generally, for several centuries, until they (among other things) foolishly allowed masses of Germanic tribes to settle in the border territories. (You should read his book
The Gallic War http://www.amazon.com/Gallic-War-Commentaries-Com…
Whatever else the man was or did, he could write.) Oh, and French is a Romance language (a language derived from Latin).
I find it amusing that you revel in the idea of the Gauls having sacked Rome many centuries before their ultimate conquest. One of the main points I tend to make is that history is not a morality tale, and it certainly is not some grand liberal/Christian/progressive/Whig drama leading from sin/darkest oppression down through the centuries to absolution/redemption, culminating in salvation (the Kingdom of God on Earth, the "Progressive" paradise of "equality" and "justice" and "abundance.")
No. It tends to ebb and flow, cyclically. Generally, though not invariably, the losers are no better morally (however that is defined) than the victors, they just aren't as effective. Had the Gauls been sufficiently powerful to conquer Rome permanently and colonize Italy (as their cousins did many centuries later), they arguably would have done so, and then I suppose we'd be reading here about the noble Roman resistance fighters struggling to throw off the yoke of Gaulish oppression, or whatever.
The Parthian/Persian would be another example of an empire that, under various groups, persisted down through the centuries as a kind of eastern counter to Rome, one I would argue was far more despotic/arbitrary.
Anyway, there have always been states of various forms, kingdoms, empires; aristocratic republics like Rome and Greek city states like Athens were very rare, and sadly (from my perspective) doomed, largely by their successes, human folly and vice, to degenerate into confusion and various kinds of tyranny. I suppose the closest you could find to (reasonably stable) non-state societies were those places ruled by loose confederations of kinship groups, generally islands, like Iceland, and Ireland; Switzerland could be held out as an example of working decentralization, as could some of the principalities and city states of the old Holy Roman Empire (despite the name), some last decades, some centuries, arguably none last forever (rather like empires if you think about it).
Everything ebbs and flow. But this idea that libertarians/anarchists/Marxists/insert sect are always throwing around, that the "ruling class" is parasitic on the "serfs," its parasitism has a corrupting effect on the rulers and becomes progressively unbearable to the "serfs," they awaken and overthrow the parasites, is simply wrong. Oh that happens, and other things happen too. Structures can become less as well as more oppressive, and persist either way, down through the centuries.
You're all just repeating the old Hegelian dialectic as interpreted by Marxists and their idealogical cousins (libertarians, progressives, anarchists, whomever), and it's false:
There is no magical force of justice (or anything else) animating human history leading to any inevitable outcome.
Examples: By the time the Germans overran the Roman empire, the Gauls and the Britons had been so thoroughly assimilated they had long lost the habit of arms, and were easily conquered. They did not respond to their new condition as "serfs" (a term you overuse; there are many degrees of servitude, not just one "oppressed" class) by organizing effective resistance movements to the new German lords and kings. In fact, they continued to be ruled by the descendants of their conquerors until roughly the present.
You reference the Boer war, and I'll say, well, it's true, as they said then, the Boers lost the war and won the peace, (because they had very clever leadership, and the British cut their own throats in the great catastrophe of World War I). My point was that counter-insurgency methods can work, though they tend to require a high level of brutality. Things can change after that, but such wars can be won.
You say that technology (defined broadly to include organizational concepts, tactics, strategy, etc.) is the great equalizer now (in the old days it wasn't disseminated/available to the conquered, unlike now), so now everything is different, all we have to do is wait and the oppressors will throw off their chains, the expropriators will be expropriated, the new Day will arrive, with presumably the state having withered away and all of the former "serfs" united in harmonious rapture.
I say:
1. Not necessarily. Technology empowers some kinds of "resistance," and it makes "resistance" easier to counter in other ways. I think leadership tends to be more important over time then technology, per se.
2. An aside: when was it ever established that the systems put in place by the "resistance"/"revolutionaries" are necessarily better (in the sense of being less murderous and oppressive) than the systems they displace? It's a serious question. The French, Soviet and Chinese Revolutions certainly installed monstrous tyrannies, responsible for countless deaths, the enslavement and murder of millions (with the French serving as model); I'll note, the Chinese Communists are in power to this day. The "serfs" in China do not seem to have realized that all of this technology makes inevitable their victory against their Communist overlords, though the overlords seem to know how to use it (to watch the people effectively while corralling them into factories, more or less, to be worked to death for slave wages, at the behest of globalist corporations).
At the end of the day I only wrote here at all to make the point:
Nothing is inevitable,
followed by the corollary
What follows a successful revolution is often, if not necessarily always, more monstrous and oppressive than what preceded it
It doesn't matter how compelling you think your arguments are (about technology, the nature of the state, the oppressed, oppressors, whatever):
1. This idea that some things (increasing corruption, exploitation, centralization of power), always inevitably follow from other things (like the existence of a state), is wrong; (it's not a linear process, it's not deterministic, such things ebb and flow)
2. Further, as oppression does not inevitably increase, so revolutionary responses to oppression do not inevitably arise and necessarily prevail. You may think that they should, or want them too very much, but they don't, and
3. All of those "ideas" and all of that "technology" now flowing so freely through the world, do not necessarily change that, one bit.
(if you'll consult the record, say history beyond wikipedia, you'll notice that states tend to fall after periods of liberalization [like France under Louis XVI and Russia under Nicolas II], not during periods of maximum oppression [like Russia under Stalin]; which tells you, among other things, that oppression can lead to liberalization, that oppression does not necessarily lead to successful revolt, and that liberalization can, often to the great misery of everyone)
Generally it is people who talk like you (filled with zeal, moral ardor, righteousness for the cause), who are the greatest dangers to human life, society, and happiness, not the people who are supposedly perpetrating all of that exploitation and oppression. Witness (Oliver Cromwell, the Bolsheviks, the Jacobins, John Brown, the Maoists, etc. etc.) down through the ages. Such people are so sure that they are right, they don't care how many have to be slaughtered for their just cause to triumph. "Doing good, ain't got no end," as they say.
It's too late — there is no getting rid of drones.
The only option now is to get rid of the institution that would use them for oppression.
LOL! My friend, they do speak Latin in France: it's called "French" (one of the several "Romance" [i.e. LATIN–that's where the "Roman" part of "Romance" comes from] languages spoken in Europe). You might try reading some history before you decide how our world needs to be turned upside-down by warfare, along with Marx's "idiotic hogwash."