Jersey City
Gun Powder, Shrapnel and Ball Bearing
Factory

WNA was @ SteelNDirt's place in Clifton. We played Bomberman Wii. (Host won 3-0, then QueepQuap won 3-0.) We ate kielbasa & sauerkraut Then we played COIN BATTLE and shit got tragic. Finally, we inlocking a couple more star stages in Super Mario Bros Wii.


Blogger is doing away w/ FTP. Yay.


If you weren't sure how nuclear weapons work, here's a helpful infographic.


Firefox devs were terrifyingly uninterested to learn the Chinese govt is spying on them. For Firefox, go to Tools → Options → Advanced → Encryption → View Certificates → Authorities and delete the CNNIC cert. For IE, go to Tools → Internet Options → Content → Certificates → Trusted Root Certification Authorities and delete CNNIC ROOT. I'm assuming Opera users can figure it out no problem.


Edward Luttwak wrote an article on how the Byzantine empire would handle Afghanistan.

Even by the shortest reckoning, the Byzantine empire survived for eight centuries (from the fourth to the twelfth)--longer than any other in history. Although the Byzantines were supremely tenacious in combat, their strategy--invented in response to the unprecedented threat of Attila's Huns in the 5th century--relied on diplomacy, evolving into a body of rules and techniques that is still relevant today.

Unlike the Romans, the Byzantines wrote official guidebooks on statecraft, foreign relations and espionage: writings I find especially fascinating, as I once helped compose the main field manual of the US army. These ancient techniques centred on a single, paradoxical principle: do everything possible to raise, equip and train the best possible army and navy; then do everything possible to use them as little as possible.

With Afghanistan, the west faces a simple strategic calculus: too costly to stay in, too risky to leave. A Byzantine response would be, first to withdraw the west's scarce, expensive troops, and arm local proxies instead. This was the standard remedy for turbulent, worthless lands where no taxes could be collected, but which were to be denied to enemies: an improvement over the Romans' fondness for battles of attrition and annihilation.

Edward Luttwak

The Defense Department commissioned a report on what America could learn from ancient empires. Surprise! Byzantium wasn't one of them.

As hinted at earlier, his recommended solution for Afghanistan is to use proxies to spoil an enemy victory (in short the same strategy that defeated the USSR years before). Unfortunately, the article ends there. If he had gone on to write a more complex application of Byzantine strategy to the US situation he would have probably concluded:

• Move from mass to elite forces. The US military is built for overwhelming an enemy by the application of superior resources. That's a path to failure merely given the inability of the US to finance it. Mass is in contradiction with the major trend of the 21st Century: technological super empowerment.
• Avoid COIN, the use of military forces to build functional nations, like the plague. This type of effort is extraordinary expensive (in money and manpower and time) and therefore can't scale to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving threat environment.
• The ability to conduct complex diplomacy and effectively manage/incentivize a plethora of small proxies (open source defense) is critical to survival.

John Robb

Ominous...


Terrorists released from Guantánamo Bay went on to commit more terror, as is their occupation. Makes you think maybe the United States shouldn't release terrorists from prison.

A couple of weeks after the failed Christmas plot, when the recidivism issue was at the fore again, Obama administration official started quietly making a bold claim: the recidivists exist, but most, if not all, were released by the shockingly incompetent Bush/Cheney administration.

…

In his correspondence, Brennan specifically made the claim that "all" of the detainees who returned to terrorist activities were "released during the previous administration."

The ineffective review process Bush/Cheney relied on has been replaced, Brennan added, by a task force established by President Obama. It consists of "60 career prosecutors, agents, analysts and attorneys from across the government, including civilian, military, and intelligence officials." Before anyone is transferred or released, the decision must receive the unanimous endorsed of "all agencies involved with the review process after a full assessment of intelligence and threat information."

I can appreciate why this may seem hard to believe, but it's really not -- the way Bush/Cheney handled this issue was almost comical in its ineptitude. In some cases, the Bush administration released some detainees who turned out to be pretty dangerous. In other cases, the Bush administration refused to release other detainees who weren't dangerous at all, and were actually U.S. allies. The gang that couldn't shoot straight just didn't know what it was doing, and the results of their incompetence put lives in danger.

Steve Benen

I know this was mentioned not too long ago. And, to be fair, John Brennan is a cunt. But goddamn. Seriously.