Skilluminati Research

Wars, on Drugs: Highlights from “Drug Intoxicated Irregular Fighters”

Posted Jun 04, 2008 7 comments

I wanted to share some highly memorable excerpts from Paul Rexton Kan's excellent paper "Drug Intoxicated Irregular Fighters: Complications, Dangers and Responses." You can download a PDF copy here. It's a very readable study of the role drugs play in asymmetric warfare around the world.

The first two quotes are entertaining, but the real brainfood is in the third part.

Really Bad Ideas

"Drugged conscripts have been a danger to their own forces; a soldier stationed near the Russian border with Georgia shot and killed eight of his colleagues (and wounded five others) during a hallucinogenic fit brought on by eating magic mushrooms."

Zombie Insurgency

"Combatant behavior is often influenced by an individual’s state of intoxication. For example, U.S. Marines reportedly had to change their tactics when notified that the insurgents in Fallujah were probably high and thus less likely to be stopped by standard shots to the torso. One Marine stated that “on the second day of the fight, word came down to focus on head shots, that body shots were not good enough,” while another compared it to “‘Night of the Living Dead’, people who should have been dead were still alive.”

Secret History of Vietnam

"During the Korean War, American servicemen stationed in Korea and Japan invented the “speedball,” an injectable mixture of amphetamine and heroin. U.S. troops in Vietnam preferred marijuana, but when subject to a sudden marijuana ban, they turned to heroin. Discipline problems quickly rose; as one commanding officer lamented 2 years after the marijuana crackdown, “If it would get them to give up the hard stuff, I would buy all the marijuana and hashish in the Delta as a present.”

"Drug use was so severe among American troops in the later stages of the Vietnam War that more soldiers were evacuated for drug problems than for battlefield wounds."

"The addiction rate of returning troops has been of constant concern to average citizens as well as elites. In November 1971, New York reported nearly 10,000 heroin-addicted Vietnam veterans which, as discussed in this monograph, was the result of the U.S. military’s clamp down on widespread marijuana use by troops.

Heroin use among Vietnam veterans created societal fears of rising crime and disorder. Time magazine reflected the public mood by reporting that “the specter of weapons-trained, addicted combat veterans joining the deadly struggle for drugs in the streets of America is ominous...the Capone era of the ‘20s may look like a Sunday school picnic by comparison."

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Stepping Out of the 5GW Debate: Peace Out, Thanks Much

Posted May 31, 2008 11 comments

I had a great time doing it, but my interests have moved beyond 5th Generation Warfare and I really have no more to contribute. My vision is too wide and too weird, and I'll be moving my future writing on the subject to another venue, which will be launching soon. What I laid out in Invisible Warfare is something I'm going to let ferment for a few weeks.

It's not fair for me to keep discussing these concepts as "5GW," and it's not smart, either. I can only accomplish 2 things: first, confusing my intended audience with excess terminology, and second, infuriating those who were already covering 5GW years before I started writing about it.

I would like to thank the following authors: Tim Stevens, Bryan Finoki, Mark Safranski, Shane Deichman, Chet Richards, Fabius Maximus, John Robb, Purpleslog, Subadei, Curtis Gale Weeks, tdaxp, Smitten Eagle, Wiggins, and everyone at Coming Anarchy.

MEANWHILE: I'm building a thinking aid called the Invisible Experiment with the goal of "rethinking conflict and remixing concepts." I'm taking single "slices" of concepts and data and using a tag cloud to navigate. Currently less than 100 entries and I'm aiming for 333 before I'll consider this puppy operational.

Up Next

Rather than put the site on hold, I'll be returning Skilluminati to it's roots -- the study of social control. I'm working on a physics approach, considering social conformity as entrainment. I'm hoping that's still interesting and useful to the folks who've been reading. I'm very thankful for all the feedback and brainfood from you folks.

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5GWhat? The Meaning of “Warfare” in 2008

Posted May 22, 2008 14 comments

A number of Skilluminati readers have voiced the concern that calling benevolent 5GW campaigns "warfare" is misleading or outright wrong. As Bruce Scanlon puts it:

WE have a great deal of choice about which scenario we will end up in, and WE have the power, within the scope of our own lives, to make significant contributions to these different scenarios.

I am not saying you can get the whole world to do what you want it to do, but I am saying that you can make your part of the world/find a part of the world a lot more to your liking-- and that you have a lot more power to do this than most people think.

This sizable power for change to me deserves more than to be categorized as “warfare,” 5th generation or not.

Is war merely overt violence? If you subdue your opponent using judo or aikido, is it still a fight? Bands of primates go to war, and I'm hoping humans can do better than the hunt-kill method. (Then again, maybe not: recently Israeli general Yossi Peled said "The only effect I know in warfare is to kill the enemy.") So first, let's take a look at my own cognitive biases...

Aikido Anarchism

My interest in warfare was awakened by the article Neocortical Warfare, which I immediately wrote a Brainsturbator article about. (I go into more depth about my vision for 5GW in a recent Wishtank interview.)

I suspect, but I cannot prove, that human beings can greatly amplify their personal power by aligning their goals and techniques with natural design. By fighting on the side of Life on Earth, we've opted for the most powerful available ally on the planet. Advances in human technology are based on principles decoded from nature, and nature remains vastly more sophisticated and robust than existing human technology.

So although my friendly local wikipedia has a detailed article on the history and theory of war, I find the "spectrum of conflict" and "measures short of war" drivel to be mostly intellectual apologies for the naked exercise of state power. We're all grown-ups, and we all know that power kills people every day. C'est la vie for better or worse, and it's obviously worse. Let's set academia aside and ask some questions instead.

Pointed Questions

Can you wage war without your opponent knowing it? Well, Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfield were both totally shocked by 9-11, weren't they? The concept of planes as weapons was utterly unthinkable, despite the fact they were both repeatedly briefed about exactly that. You can view that as proof of conspiracy, or just another example of how cognitive bias blinds all humans equally.

The concept of the secret war is not new to 5GW, and I refer the reader to earlier and excellent reads from dan tdaxp, dan tdaxp again , and Zenpundit.

Is blogging warfare? According to the Department of Defense, the answer is "Yes." See, us independent media types are engaged in Information Operations (IO), formerly known by the less friendly and ambiguous term "Psychological Warfare." As John Rendon so eloquently put it: "Information is an instrument of national power, just as military, economic and political. Like any weapon or tool, the United States Government needs to use it or cede the 'battlefield' to someone else."

Is activism warfare? According to the White House, absolutely. All you non-violent liberal types are engaged in "Low-Intensity Conflict."

Low intensity conflict a political-military confrontation between contending states or groups below conventional war and above the routine, peaceful competition among states. It frequently involves protracted struggles of competing principles and ideologies. Low-intensity conflict ranges from subversion to the use of the armed forces. It is waged by a combination of means, employing political, economic, informational, and military instruments. Low-intensity conflicts are often localized, generally in the Third World, but contain regional and global security implications

Are domestic law enforcement operations warfare? It's an armed conflict, there's casualties involved, and the parallels between domestic law enforcement and foreign counter-insurgency are striking. Lethal use of force by police is legally justified, but does that nescessarily make it legitimate? (Every non-civilian casualty of war is legally justified, too.)

If You Want My Opinion

Resource shortages are manufactured and wars are not nescessary. However, in 2008 there exists a global power elite -- probably less than 100,000 of them altogether -- who posess far too much power and abuse it at will. As a result, millions of human beings around the world are suffering on a daily basis. Is that something worth fighting against? Would you term that conflict a "war?"

That graffitti basically sums up my outlook for 2008-2012. Every single human community on Earth has expanded exponentially and bumped shoulders on an abruptly crowded planet. Communities need to rethink everything and rebuild for a global future -- anyone trying to force a top-down solution is either willfully evil or catastrophically stupid. This applies from Al Gore to Vladimir Putin to Hugo Chavez to George Bush: you need to stop looking up to your leaders and start looking around to your neighborhoods.

More Pointed Questions

When the peace of Western affluence is made possible by the violent opression of Third World countries, what is the "spectrum of conflict" useful for? The thing to remember about the whole humans species is that it's the whole human species and all the lines we draw beyond that are arbitrary, often misleading and occasionally very useful. When you grow up in a home that's financed by profits from Lockheed Martin, is that peace? Is "peace" the condition that exists within the fortress walls of the gated communities and Green Zones?

Is the city of Chicago at war? Wikipedia has an outstanding map of ongoing conflicts around the world that's worth considering here -- armed conflict with organized crime surely qualifies as warfare, right? As the supporting data notes, "major wars are those that cause at least 1000 battlefield deaths annually," and if you dig around, you might it's kind of hard to find crime reported in human terms.

The usual factoid is the "Homicide Rate" -- how many homicides are reported annually, per 100,000 local residents. This renders death into an abstract index instead of a distinct and specific number of dead human beings. Reporting the numbers honestly is a body count, and body counts are alarming. Homicide Rate is like humidity, which is why you'll find most FBI/DoJ statistics published in that format.

In 1994, the city of New Orleans had 424 reported homicides. Drawing off data from Swivel's "Homicides in the US" spreadsheet, the Drug War in California is claiming more than enough lives every year to qualify as a "major war" -- a year before New Orleans peaked, Cali reported 4,096 homicides. From 1990 to 1994, the total number of US homicides floated between 23,000 and 24,000 annually -- then began a sharp decline. It's been stable at over 16,000 a year since 2001.

Last Word: Smitten Eagle

Smitten Eagle said "I’m not sure I necessarily buy into the 5GW frameworks yet. Trying to nail 4GW Jell-O to the wall is hard enough. 5GW is like nailing said Jell-O while it’s still liquid." His explanation of this is some of the best writing on 5GW I've found so far -- from a comment at Chicago Boyz:

As far as 5GW goes, I don’t think there is even a solid framework to rely on. Some have referred to 5GW as tactically being about changing the enemie’s Observation in the OODA loop to make him think he’s not even in conflict with the enemy. For me, this is too close to the political end of the Policy-War continuum of violence to be considered warfare.

Others have spoken about the role of the Super Empowered Individual (SEI) as a major actor in 5GW. I’m afraid that lone gunmen, in my conception of warfare, do not qualify as “organized violence.” For violence to be “organized,” it requires an Organization. An Organization of One is not an organization. I think there has to be more to organized violence than a single pissed-off dude with lots of cunning.

Finally, for 5GW to actually exist, it needs to have a strong track record of convincingly beating 4GW fighting forces. I’m afraid there really hasn’t been any evidence to support this. (Unless, of course, my denial of 5GW is evidence of it’s success…but if that’s the case, I think we’re getting a bit too close to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to speak anything authoritatively about 5GW, or any xGW for that matter.)

A great example of the circular reasoning and collapsing logic of Invisible War. My next post is what I've been working on this whole time -- a thinkpiece on how to wage war in a Universe that actually runs on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Since that's the Universe we happen to live in.

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Two Cautionary Tales From the Front Lines

Posted May 17, 2008 3 comments

This article is entirely indebted to the ongoing work and original research of Cryptogon. One of the very best sites online, if you're into "being informed."

This article might appear to be mere pessimism. To the reader with a good imagination and better common sense, though, I'm advocating an entirely different angle from the traditional binary trap of Fighting Against Power Elites vs. Fighting For Power Elites.

Humans fight -- let them. (Seriously, trying to stop a fight is dangerous and stupid 99% of the time, unless it's kids who are smaller than you.) The 5th Generation Warfare angle we'll be pursuing at Skilluminati is based on leveraging the existing fault lines, ongoing conflicts and profitable culture wars that we live within today.

I'm not advocating that we should stir up more bullshit -- I'm suggesting that we practice the martial art of invisibly exploiting the bullshit that's already here. To do otherwise is to ignore history -- here's a look at why.

Those Who Would Overthrow Them

Let's bypass Kent State, the fate of the Branch Dividians, disappearances in Chile, Argentina and everywhere else in Latin America, and the assassinations of Archbishop Oscar Romero, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, since none of them were actually advocating the overthrow of the United States government, they just happened to get in the way.

Let's focus on a single event which is much more recent, and far more relevant to the inept would-be "5GW warriors" among us.

This is the story of a federal agent who tried to get three hippies to commit to a plan -- any plan -- to blow something up and break Federal laws. It took her many months of prodding, lots of pushy confrontations, and a lot of her FBI money, but they finally managed to frame their targets. Yep, that's the story in two sentences -- here's a great article that explains it detail if you want more narrative backgroun. I'm going to be exploring the tactical insights here. What amazed me most: how "Full Spectrum Dominance" applies to the surviellance of activists.

On January 10, the four toured the Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville, using fake names and posing as college students for a tour. They were under surveillance the whole time by FBI agents and agents of the U.S. Forest Service.

On the morning of January 13, the FBI was keeping a close eye on a cabin in Dutch Flat, about a half-hour north of Auburn. The government had the cabin and its four occupants--two men and two women--under 24-hour surveillance for nearly a week because the group was suspected of plotting acts of domestic terrorism in the name of the Earth Liberation Front.

The four left the cabin at around 10 a.m. in a 1997 maroon Chevy Lumina and traveled about 30 miles to a Kmart in Auburn. There were agents inside the store, watching them shop.

Hippies are the butt of jokes for a reason, and these kids were basically stumbling around in a minefield. Lesson: Effective 5GW is a process that takes total surveillance for granted. It must be exceedingly subtle and executed in plain sight.

YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING, as I was, how exactly Federal agents justify the dirtywork they do undercover, and there is a precise answer. It's referred to as a Tier 1 Otherwise Illegal Activity when an agent breaks the law in order to catch someone breaking the law. The question of legal rights and entrapment is far too boring and irrelevant to pursue, though, so let's move along.

Since this is a cautionary tale, it's worth remembering the overall rules for how punishment is distributed. Here is how a 4-member cell being set up on a Federal level will fare, on precedent:

Zack Jenson, age 20, spent 6 months in prison, then agreed to testify against McDavid.

Lauren Weiner has an unfortunate last name, but at least it was a wealthy one -- she's been free on bail with her family and also agreed to testify against McDavid. She was also 20 years old.

Eric McDavid was sentenced to 19 years and 7 months. He's 28 and got logically framed up as the dangerous ringleader. (Note to Derrick Jensen fans: shave the beard.)

And as for Anna? The article says she made out alright: "According to testimony from Sacramento-based FBI Special Agent Nasson Walker, she got paid at least $75,000 for her work."

The reader could be forgiven for thinking I'm telling some sort of moral story -- perhaps implying that "Anna" is down with 5GW and one of the cool kids. NAY. "Anna" is just a servant of power -- and those who serve power historically fare no better than those who oppose it. Which is the subject of my next cautionary tale.

Those Who Would Work For Them

Let's just bypass Paul Wellstone, Vincent Foster, the assassinations of JFK, RFK and the strange fates Roberto Calvi and Frank Olson. The past is dead, and the news has given us a even-more interesting example.

Roland Carnaby was a company man -- a veteran of the CIA, although that's a matter of some dispute. The other publicly known facts about Carnaby are not disputed, though, and they're eye-opening. At the age of 52, he was shot in the chest, handcuffed, and left to bleed to death while Houston Police officers watched. The image above is real -- I cribbed it off a Fox News website and it was taken from a news helicopter. My own interpretation of facts is obvious and predictable -- Carnaby either knew too much or threatened the wrong people, both essentially the same problem.

When you serve power, you cannot protect yourself from those who protect you. Of course, when you fight power, you're left with the exact same problem again, and I apologize for making resistance sound futile.

It is, though. Resisting the momentum of your culture is absurd. Who can seriously talk about fighting globalization? You might as well resist the Pacific Ocean.

"All of this other stuff (about Carnaby's mysterious life) is all very interesting, but it is of no consequence when you consider a man is dead and he died handcuffed and nobody tried to stop the bleeding or anything," Brooten said. "You know what you call that? You call that an assassination."

Jett defended the officers at the scene, saying they are not trained to assist people with serious gunshot wounds.

"We would handcuff people and try to get them comfortable, but we're not paramedics, and most officers don't know about giving first aid like that other than CPR, and you don't want to give CPR to a gunshot victim," he said.

Investigators later found three weapons in Carnaby's car, police said. One pistol was under the passenger-side floormat. A second was between the seats. On the back seat floorboard lay a pistol-grip shotgun with a round in the chamber and the safety off.

No Moral to the Stories

This is only food for thought, of course. Things are going to change a lot in the next decade, but archetypes will repeat like always. We will always rationalize our actions, no matter how callous or brutal. I'm sure you think you're a good person, too.

Here in the 21st century, talking about warfare is essential. Our planet is being turned into a slaughterhouse and Control is going to be a lot more elusive for everyone -- especially those in power. We've seen a nearly infinite array of permutations of "kill the enemy" -- 5GW is something new. Harmonize with the enemy, control the enemy, use the enemy.

Next week: my first Dreaming 5GW contribution, working out the details of my own theory, beta version though it may be. Sorry for the long lead-up, and thanks for all the brainfood from everyone commenting, especially Eric Patton who's been a huge help behind the scenes.

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A Dose of Informed Optimism from the Tellus Institute

Posted May 12, 2008 19 comments

I don't want the reader to think I'm a cynic or a violent extremist...or a fucking moron. I realize the claim that 5GW has a role in positive cultural change raises eyebrows, and I'm working on an article explaining this in some depth. Meanwhile, I came across some truly potent brainfood that states it all better than I could.

What follows is an excerpt from the Marjorie Kelly and Paul Raskin essay How Food Riots, Pricey Gas and Home Foreclosures Point to a Better Future -- a highly recommended read. Mostly for this section here:

Transitions announce themselves in the language of crisis. We are in a time of turbulence as old patterns give way and new ones form. The multiple crises today signal a system transformation operating at the scale of the planet. Transformation is distinct from adaptation, which is the normal process of incremental adjustment to new conditions. Transformations are rare moments in history when dominant societal structures cannot cope with emerging developments and change in fundamental ways. With the converging lines of crises we face today, we may be entering a perfect storm of destabilizing stress.

We cannot predict the future. It may be good, bad or ugly, depending on how events unfold and how we respond. But scenarios can help us envision alternate futures, and our organization has -- with the aid of an international group -- crafted four scenarios of possible futures. In a "market forces" scenario, the United States continues with business as usual, other nations converge toward American lifestyles, economic growth remains the sine qua non of development, and environmental strain and cultural polarization intensify. In "policy reform," government seeks ambitious policies to protect the environment and reduce inequity; but with the ethos of consumerism unchecked, the reformist path could be overwhelmed by unsustainable trends. In "fortress world," reform fails and problems cascade into self-amplifying crises as the affluent retreat into protected enclaves amid oceans of misery.

In a "great transition" scenario, mounting crises lead not to breakdown but to breakthrough into a sustainable culture, where we shrink our environmental footprint, not only because we must live lightly and equitably on this small planet, but because quality of life matters more than quantity of stuff. It is a world where global interdependence -- as both a fact of history and a moral imperative -- replaces the heedless pursuit of self-interest as a guiding ethos. Such a resilient, just and livable world order is possible, though not inevitable. We do not offer facile hope. Large-scale social transformation does not come from small-scale woes: A time of troubles lies ahead.

Nevertheless, there is a case for hope. In the turbulence of transition, small actions can have big effects. We stand at a moment of unparalleled creative opportunity that calls for bold leaders and engaged citizens to articulate new visions of a 21st century social order and to mobilize a global movement to bring these visions to reality. Our world today generates more despair and resignation than vision and action. But it would not be the first time that an effervescence of popular political energy arrived unexpectedly to shift the direction of history.

We are beset today not by random bad luck, but by a systemic crisis that could -- on the other side of calamity -- open the way to hopeful transformation. It is up to us.

But remember: random bad luck still happens, at every level of scale. Big "thinkpiece" on Wednesday....where do you guys put the probability between those four events?

My best guess: "fortress world" 40%, "great transition" 40%, "market forces" 15%, policy reform 5%. I obviously have no faith in top-down government solutions, and I'm fundamentally neutral on the moral character of human nature. We do what we do -- hopefully, we do the right thing.

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