Comments on: Off the Books

By: Friday Night Fragments #7 – The Legionnaire

Friday Night Fragments #7 – The Legionnaire — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 23:19:03 +0000

[…] -Nick Land […]

By: The Saint Is Hungry, And Must Be Fed | wasenlightened

The Saint Is Hungry, And Must Be Fed | wasenlightened — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 01:42:20 +0000

[…] Nick Land notes: […]

By: pseudo-chrysostom

pseudo-chrysostom — Sat, 20 Dec 2014 00:50:24 +0000

all i know about human resources i learned from floyd paseman and matthew stewart. when it comes to cost-effectiveness, nothing trumps having more high quality personnel. billions are spent on ‘systems’ (of varying levels of abstraction [be it a gadget, or an institution itself]) to try and ‘automate’ some function or another, and it ultimately proves barely adequate compared with having a guy hang out in the embassy lounge hobnobbing, or similar.

a wide ranging social phenomena with a rather parochial animus (like many other things). its really an expression of insecurity, a projected fear of ‘what if they(*i*) cant do it’, a regulative impulse that cannot be satisfied without regulation, essentially, lack of trust, thee of little faith. and its that very obsession to try and remove all possible error that brings on the black swans.

By: Friday Night Fragments #7 | The Legionnaire

Friday Night Fragments #7 | The Legionnaire — Fri, 19 Dec 2014 20:14:45 +0000

[…] -Nick Land […]

By: bob sykes

bob sykes — Fri, 19 Dec 2014 13:09:25 +0000

If the planned reductions in military budgets actually occur, it will be interesting to see if SOCOM takes a hit along with the Army and Marines.

The new Congress is be very hawkish and might actually opt for increased military appropriations. Were the money will come from is a mystery.

By: Was Enlightened

Was Enlightened — Fri, 19 Dec 2014 05:21:13 +0000

“To publicly promote a political profile of peculiarly self-congratulating moral earnestness it is simultaneously necessary to feed the shadows.”

There’s an interesting alternate way of parsing this statement …

To be Progressive is to identify, correct, and atone for society’s past sins. And the more awful those sins, the better for the Progressive to beat his breast and bask in his halo. If there were no “police brutality”, no torture, no armed forces atrocities — what would fill Mr. Obama’s teleprompter? How would change.org raise funds?

By: Lord Auch

Lord Auch — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 22:46:07 +0000

The Greeks you have known have nothing to do with those Greeks (HBD) – unless you’re really really old.

By: E. Antony Gray (@RiverC)

E. Antony Gray (@RiverC) — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 22:26:35 +0000

Well, Greeks I’ve known pride themselves in inventing democracy as though it is some kind of great thing… but reading those same Greeks who supposedly invented it tells an entirely different story.

So maybe it’s only ironic to ME…

By: Off the Books | Reaction Times

Off the Books | Reaction Times — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 20:51:56 +0000

[…] Source: Outside In […]

By: cassander

cassander — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 20:09:08 +0000

So that history of the CIA is a bit off. the CIA has always been a very large organizations, tens of thousands. what was small before 9/11 was its covert action wing, the branch that did covert stuff like organizing paramilitaries and supplying stingers to afghanistan. That said, the reason the CIA was anointed was that the CIA is the lead intelligence agency. it’s in charge of doing things like the presidential daily briefing, and there’s a long tradition of the other agencies deferring to it somewhat. THe other agencies have a particular mandate of some sort. some are really specific, like national GeoStat, which does nothing but operate spy satellites, some less so, like the Defense Intelligence agency, which focuses on the very broad category of military intelligence. The CIA is the only agency with no such specific mission, so anything new goes to them by default.

the most interesting thing to happen to the US government since 9/11 is the simply massive growth of special forces. there aren’t just more of them now, (they have at least 10 times as many operators as the CIA) but they’ve been given the freedom to plan and execute their own operations on a global scale, and they’ve been doing it with gusto. it’s essentially become an intelligence agency almost totally dedicated to overt and covert action, and it’s huge. no country in history has ever had anything like it.