Quote of the week

“objectification” is a funny word invented by feminists because we look so cute when we’re angry

We Surrender, just take over dammit!

News from Mexico:

this is from the primary newspaper in one of the major Mexican cities near the border, and heavily infested with drug gang(s) who seem to be killing journalists writing disapproving stories:

From this Sunday's editorial in Diario de Juarez, translated by Borderland Beat:

We would like it to be known, we are communicators, not psychics. With that in mind, as information correspondents, we want you to explain, What is it you want from us? What is it you want us to publish, or stop publishing? Explain so we can attend these issues.

You are, at present, the de facto authorities of this city. The legal security commands have done nothing to prevent our colleagues from being killed in the line of their duties, although we have repeatedly demanded protection.

That is why, faced with this indisputable fact, we are writing to you and asking, because the last thing we want is another one of our colleagues to become another victim of your shootings.

The whole editorial is important and a condemnation of Calderon's policies towards CJ. However, I thought the key line was the one in which the newspaper declared that they believe the organizations to whom they address the editorial are "the de facto authorities of this city." While some pundits argue that Mexico's organized criminal groups don't have the goal of overthrowing or replacing the government, Diario de Juarez is suggesting that, at least in one city, they already have.

So much for government, apparently. Of course, thats how the robber barons originally got into the business, so I suppose there is a certain appropriateness to it.

Fuck the players ... again

From Lawyers, Guns and Money:

During the upcoming NFL labor negotiations, I’m either going to have to avoid reading much about it or be careful to watch my blood pressure.   The journalists who cover all sports (with a few honorable exceptions) seem to seem their role during labor negotiations as pretending that the interests of the owners and the interests of the fans are one and the same no matter how absurd or self-serving the arguments the owners put forward, but as Pierce says given the career and life expectancies of NFL players the inevitable sucking up to NFL owners is especially grotesque.
I’ve written this before, but as I public service I would like to note the following, which seems to escape both a majority of fans and a majority of sports reporters.

Distribution of money that comes from reductions or artificial limitations on player salaries:

• Teachers, cancer researchers, Haitian orphans, and other comparative groups often cited as more deserving of money paid to athletes in order to justify owners screwing players:   0%
• Extremely wealthy, usually lavishly taxpayer-subsidized owners: 100%

…And, as NonyNony reminds us in comments, “Amount that ticket prices would be reduced by if players were payed less: 0%.”

And the crazed hatred of anything Union-related just keeps on growing ... mostly among those who would benefit most. Welcome to the wage-slavery galley boys, take an oar and sit right down.

And in related football news:

Word comes that Reggie Bush will forfeit the 2005 Heisman Trophy because the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association) has ruled him ineligible for accepting money from an agent while still playing football in college.
I have seen many disgustingly hypocritical organizations in my life, but the NCAA ranks at the top. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the NCAA is a cartel, which licenses universities to establish franchises that participate in its branded market niche, university atheletics. It's a scam unique to the United States, other countries having had the good fortune of avoiding this particular institutional setup.

The NCAA protects its niche in the sports entertainment market by -- get this -- preventing the players from getting any share of the millions and millions of dollars that flow through the system. And by trumpeting the moral superiority of this system, in which student-athletes play for the love of the game, rather than for the filthy lucre of the professionals. That this system provides a healthy living for thousands of sportswriters, and huge salaries for the coaches at the top, doesn't stain them, of course, because they are concerned with the "growth" of their athletes.
Probably the choicest bit of hypocrisy comes in keeping players from being "exploited" by agents who would -- gasp -- pay them in advance of their signing professional contracts. That's right, the NCAA tries to "protect" athletes by keeping them from being paid! And what harm is produced by these agents? They break NCAA rules, of course. The role of sports media is to imbue these rules, which are no more than tricks of the trade by which the the NCAA scam artists keep the money to themselves, with some sort of vague moral worth. "OMG, he broke the rules! The rules, the rules!"
I have an analogy which makes the hypocrisy clear. Imagine that college theater produced millions and millions of dollars in revenue. Imagine that the NCDA (National Collegiate Drama Association) established "rules" by which the money goes to the directors and lighting designers, and whoever else can leech off the labor of the student actors, but none goes to the actors themselves. Further imagine that the NCDA "protects" those student actors by making rules against Hollywood or Broadway agents who might want to give the best actors money while in school, in hopes of securing their patronage when they sign their professional contracts.
But that's ridiculous, right? The NCDA would be laughed out of existence, though perhaps a wry chuckle might come their way, acknowledging their chutzpah in trying to imbue their "rules" with some sort of moral worth, when it's clearly just a scam. So where, tell me, are the howls of laughter when the NCAA pulls its scam?

Welcome to the new Fascism

This just left me flabbergasted:

Yep, my older child has made a few choice observations during this first week of high-school: where to start? First of all, she was none too enthusiastic about the form we were asked to sign giving the US military permission to add her barely-out-of-middle-school name to their roster of potential recruits. (For pity’s sake. Could we hurry up and ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, already? Seriously.) OK, OK, at least they asked permission. 

I mean, wow. Just wow. And given that its a US High School, you just KNOW that anyone who doesn't give permission is going to be singled out for humiliation after it is 'accidentally' leaked'. Purely optional, my arse.

Clausewitz and the centre of gravity

From ReadTeamJournal

   In James McPherson’s retelling, Abraham Lincoln’s strategic acumen lay in his recognition that the Confederate Army was the COG of the Southern war effort. His generals, on the other hand, were obsessed with maneuvering to gain control of the Southern capitol. Seen in this light, striking the COG had massive effect across the Southern system. This is what an real “effects-based operation” looks like. The Southern Army was neither either purely of strength or weakness, but it was what bound the Southern war effort together. There is nothing really complex about this–as Clausewitz tells us defeating the enemy’s fielded forces is a good idea. This is true either in a campaign of annihilation or erosion.

 The whole concept seems to me to have been taken a great deal too seriously, I must admit - when reading Clausewitz, I thought of this as nothing more than a metaphor, rather than a specific functional object.

If the purpose of war is to destroy the enemy will to resist*, then the 'Centre of Gravity' is whatever binds the enemy will together and gives unity - in the example above (as often in participatory governments) the field armies embody this, and should be the focal point of attacks, with subsidiary targets being whatever sustains them (e.g. March through Georgia destroying the logistical basis for the field armies).

But to enshrine the CoG in the way the US armed forces doctrine appears to have, is to set it in concrete and avoid any analysis of what is actually needed to destroy the enemy will, rather than to enable open thinking about it.



*and to exploit that lack of will until it recreates itself, see Iraq 2003-10!