EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Corporate Win: Supreme Court Says Monsanto Has 'Control Over Product of Life'
- Cornel West: Obama 'Is a War Criminal'
- Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’
- Disaster Capitalism Strikes as Hedge Funds Circle Near-Bankrupt Municipalities Like Vultures
- Ignoring Bee Crisis, EPA Greenlights New 'Highly Toxic' Pesticide
Popular content
Today's Top News
Slum Fights
The Pentagon Plans for a New Hundred Years' War
Duane Schattle doesn't mince words. "The cities are the problem," he says. A retired Marine infantry lieutenant colonel who worked on urban warfare issues at the Pentagon in the late 1990s, he now serves as director of the Joint Urban Operations Office at U.S. Joint Forces Command. He sees the war in the streets of Iraq's cities as the prototype for tomorrow's battlespace. "This is the next fight," he warns. "The future of warfare is what we see now."
He isn't alone. "We think urban is the future," says James Lasswell, a retired colonel who now heads the Office of Science and Technology at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. "Everything worth fighting for is in the urban environment." And Wayne Michael Hall, a retired Army brigadier general and the senior intelligence advisor in Schattle's operation, has a similar assessment, "We will be fighting in urban terrain for the next hundred years."
Last month, in a hotel nestled behind a medical complex in Washington, D.C., Schattle, Lasswell, and Hall, along with Pentagon power-brokers, active duty and retired U.S. military personnel, foreign coalition partners, representatives of big and small defense contractors, and academics who support their work gathered for a "Joint Urban Operations, 2007" conference. Some had served in Iraq or Afghanistan; others were involved in designing strategy, tactics, and concepts, or in creating new weaponry and equipment, for the urban wars in those countries. And here, in this hotel conference center, they're talking about military technologies of a sort you've only seen in James Cameron's 2000-2002 television series Dark Angel.
I'm the oddity in this room of largely besuited defense contractors, military retirees, and camouflage-fatigue-clad military men at a conference focused on strategies for battling it out in the labyrinthine warrens of what urbanologist Mike Davis calls "the planet of slums." The hulking guy who plops down next to me as the meeting begins is a caricature of just the attendee you might imagine would be at such a meeting. "I sell guns," he says right off. Over the course of the conference, this representative of one of the world's best known weapons manufacturers will suggest that members of the media be shot to avoid bad press and he'll call a local tour guide he met in Vietnam a "bastard" for explaining just how his people thwarted U.S. efforts to kill them. But he's an exception. Almost everyone else seems to be a master of serene anodyne-speak. Even the camo-clad guys seem somehow more academic than warlike.
In his tour de force book Planet of Slums, Davis observes, "The Pentagon's best minds have dared to venture where most United Nations, World Bank or Department of State types fear to go... [T]hey now assert that the 'feral, failed cities' of the Third World -- especially their slum outskirts -- will be the distinctive battlespace of the twenty-first century." Pentagon war-fighting doctrine, he notes, "is being reshaped accordingly to support a low-intensity world war of unlimited duration against criminalized segments of the urban poor."
But the mostly male conference-goers planning for a multi-generational struggle against the global South's slums aren't a gang of urban warfare cowboys talking non-stop death and destruction; and they don't look particularly bellicose either, as they munch on chocolate-chip cookies during our afternoon snack breaks in a room where cold cuts and brochures for the Rapid Wall Breaching Kit -- which allows users to blast a man-sized hole in the side of any building -- are carefully laid out on the tables. Instead, these mild-mannered men speak about combat restraint, "less than lethal weaponry," precision targeting, and (harking back to the Vietnam War) "winning hearts and minds."
The Men of Urban Warfare
Take Dr. Russell W. Glenn, a thin, bespectacled RAND Senior Policy Researcher who looks for all the world like some bookish college professor Hollywood dreamed up. You'd never guess he went to the Army's airborne, ranger, and pathfinder schools and is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. You'd also never suspect that he might be the most prolific planner for the Pentagon's century-long slum fight of tomorrow.
In Planet of Slums, Davis notes that the RAND Corporation, a non-profit think-tank established by the Air Force in 1948, has been a key player in pioneering the conceptual framework that has led to the current generation of what's called, in the jargon of this meeting, "urban operations" or, more familiarly, UO. Glenn, it so happens, is their main man in the field. He travels the planet studying counterinsurgency warfare. Of late, he's been to the Solomon Islands, where an island rebellion occurred in the late 1990s, the Philippines, where an insurgency has been raging for decades (if not since the U.S. occupation at the dawn of the twentieth century), and, of course, Iraq. He's co-authored well over 20 UO studies for RAND including, most recently, ''People Make the City": Joint Urban Operations Observations and Insights from Afghanistan and Iraq (publicly available in 86-page executive summary form) and the still-classified A Tale of Three Cities: Analyzing Joint Urban Operations with a Focus on Fallujah, Al Amara, and Mosul. On the technological front, the Pentagon's blue-skies research outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sent its grandfatherly-looking deputy director, Robert F. Leheny, to talk about such UO-oriented technology as the latest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and sense-through-walls technologies that allow troops to see people and objects inside buildings. While Leheny noted that 63% of DARPA's $3 billion yearly budget ($600 million of it dedicated to UO technologies in the coming years) is funneled to industry partners, DARPA is only a part of the story when it comes to promoting corporate assistance in this 100-year-war growth area.
The largest contractors in the military-corporate complex are already hard at work helping the Pentagon prepare for future urban occupations. Raytheon, L-3 Communications, and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) -- the 5th, 7th, and 10th largest Pentagon contractors last year, taking in a combined $18.4-plus billion from the Department of Defense -- have all signed Cooperative Research and Development Agreements with the U.S. Joint Forces Command, according to Berry "Dan" Fox, the Deputy Director of Science and Technology at its Joint Urban Operations Office.
As you might imagine, smaller contractors are eager to climb aboard the urban warfare gravy train. At the conference, Lite Machines Corporation was a good example of this. It was vigorously marketing a hand-launched, low-flying UAV so light that it resembled nothing more than a large, plastic toy water rocket with miniature helicopter rotors. The company envisions a profitably privacy-free future in which urban zones are besieged by "swarms" of such small UAVs that not only peek into city windows, but even invade homes. According to a company spokesman, "You could really blanket a ground area with as many UAVs as you want.... penetrate structures, see through a window or even break a window," in order to fly inside a house or apartment and troll around.
DARPA'S Leheny also extolled hovering UAVs, specifically the positively green-sounding Organic Micro Air Vehicle which brings to mind the "spinners" in Blade Runner or, even earlier in blow-your-mind futuristic movie history, V.I.N.CENT from Disney's The Black Hole. This drone, Leheny noted, has "perch and stare" capabilities that allow it to lie in wait for hours before fixing on a target and guiding in extended-line-of-sight or beyond-line-of-sight weapons. He also described in detail another DARPA-pioneered unmanned aerial vehicle, the WASP -- a tiny, silent drone that spies on the sly and can be carried in a soldier's pack. Leheny noted that there are now "a couple hundred of these flying in Iraq."
In addition to endless chatter about the devastated "urban canyons" of Iraq and Afghanistan, the specters of past battleground cities -- some of them, anyway -- were clearly on many minds. There were constant references to urban battle zones of history like Stalingrad and Grozny or such American examples as Manila in 1945 and Panama City in 1989. Curiously neglected, however, were the flattened cities of Germany and Japan in World War II, not to speak of the bombed-out cities of Korea and Vietnam. Perhaps the Korean and Vietnam Wars weren't on the agenda because "restraint" and "precision" were such watchwords of the meeting. No one seemed particularly eager to discuss the destruction visited on the Iraqi city of Fallujah either -- three-quarters of its buildings and mosques were damaged in an American assault in November 2004.
During James Lasswell's presentation, he was quite specific about the non-Fallujah-like need to be "very discriminate" in applying firepower in an urban environment. As an example of the ability of technology to aid in such efforts, he displayed a photo of the aftermath of an Israeli strike on a three-story Lebanese building. The third floor of the structure had been obliterated, while the roof above and the floors below appeared relatively unscathed. In an aside, Lasswell mentioned that, while the effort had been a discriminating one, the floor taken out "turned out to be the wrong floor." A rumble of knowing chuckles swept the room.
Fighting in the City of Your Choice, 2045
Discrimination, it turned out, didn't mean legal constraint. Speakers and conference-goers alike repeatedly lamented the way international law and similar hindrances stood in the way of unleashing chemical agents and emerging technologies. Microwave-like pain rays and other directed energy weapons -- such as the Active Denial System which inflicts an intense burning sensation on victims -- were reoccurring favorites of the gathering. During their PowerPoint presentation, the men from Lite Machines, for instance, showed a computer rendering of their micro-UAVs attacking an unarmed crowd gathered in a town square with a variety of less-than-lethal weapons like disorienting laser dazzlers and chemical gases (vomiting and tear-gas agents), while a company spokesman regretfully mentioned that international regulations have made it impossible to employ such gases on the battlefield. Undoubtedly, this was a reference to the scorned Chemical Weapons Convention, which has been binding for the last decade.
RAND's Glenn similarly brought up the possibility of reassessing such international conventions and overcoming fears that chemical weapons might fall into the "wrong hands." Saddam Hussein was his example of such "wrong hands," but the hands responsible for Abu Ghraib, Mahmudiyah, Hamdania, Haditha, or the invasion of Iraq itself -- to find non-existent banned weapons -- seemed to give him no pause.
While the various speakers at the conference focused on the burgeoning inhabitants of the developing world's slum cities as targets of the Pentagon's 100-year war, it was clear that those in the "homeland" weren't about to escape some of its effects either. For example, back in 2004, Marines deploying to Iraq brought the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) with them. A futuristic non-lethal weapon alluded to multiple times at the conference, it emits a powerful tone which can bring agonizing pain to those within earshot. Says Woody Norris, chairman of the American Technology Corporation, which manufactures the device: "It will knock [some people] on their knees." That very same year, the LRAD was deployed to the streets of the Big Apple (but apparently not used) by the New York Police Department as a backup for protests against the Republican National Convention. In 2005, it was shipped to "areas hit by Hurricane Katrina" for possible "crowd control" purposes and, by 2006, was in the hands of U.S. Border Patrol agents. In that same year, it was also revealed that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had begun testing the use of remote-controlled surveillance UAVs -- not unlike those now operating above Iraqi cities -- over their own megalopolis.
When it came to the "homeland," conference participants were particularly focused on moving beyond weaponry aimed at individuals, like rubber bullets. Needed in the future, they generally agreed, were technologies that could target whole crowds at once -- not just rioters but even those simply attending "demonstrations that could go violent."
Other futuristic UO concepts are also coming home. According to Dan Fox of the Joint Urban Operations Office, the Department of Justice, like the military, is currently working on sense-through-wall technologies. His associate Duane Schattle is collaborating with the U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) -- set up by the Bush administration in 2002 and whose area of operations is "America's homefront" -- on such subjects as "sharing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, command and control capabilities." He also spoke at the conference about developing synergy between the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security in regard to urban-operations technologies. He, too, expressed his hope that microwave weapon technology would be made available for police use in this country.
A specific goal of DARPA, as a slide in deputy chief Leheny's presentation made clear, is to "make a foreign city as familiar as the soldier's backyard." This would be done through the deployment of intrusive sensor, UAV, and mapping technologies. In fact, there were few imaginable technologies, even ones that not so long ago inhabited the wildest frontiers of science fiction, that weren't being considered for the 100-year battle these men are convinced is ahead of us in the planet's city streets. The only thing not evidently open to discussion was the basic wisdom of planning to occupy foreign cities for a century to come. Even among the most thoughtful of these often brainy participants, there wasn't a nod toward, or a question asked of, the essential guiding principle of the conference itself.
With their surprisingly bloodless language, antiseptic PowerPoint presentations, and calm tones, these men -- only one woman spoke -- are still planning Iraq-style wars of tomorrow. What makes this chilling is not only that they envision a future of endless urban warfare, but that they have the power to drive such a war-fighting doctrine into that future; that they have the power to mold strategy and advance weaponry that can, in the end, lock Americans into policies that are unlikely to make it beyond these conference-room doors, no less into public debate, before they are unleashed.
These men may be mapping out the next hundred years for urban populations in cities across the planet. At the conference, at least, which ones exactly seemed beside the point. Who could know, after all, whether in, say, 2045, the target would be Mumbai, Lagos, or Karachi -- though one speaker did offhandedly mention Jakarta, Indonesia, a city of nine million today, as a future possibility.
Along with the lack of even a hint of skepticism about the basic premise of the conference went a fundamental belief that being fought to a standstill by a ragtag insurgency in Iraq was an issue to be addressed by merely rewriting familiar tactics, strategy, and doctrine and throwing multi-billions more in taxpayer dollars -- in the form of endless new technologies -- at the problem. In fact, listening to the presentations in that conference room, with its rows of white-shrouded tables in front of a small stage, it would not have been hard to believe that the U.S. had defeated North Korea, had won in Vietnam, had never rushed out of Beirut or fled Mogadishu, or hadn't spent markedly more time failing to achieve victory in Afghanistan than it did fighting the First and Second World Wars combined.
To the rest of the world, at least, it's clear enough that the Pentagon knows how to redden city streets in the developing world, just not win wars there; but in Washington -- by the evidence of this "Joint Urban Operations, 2007" conference -- it matters little. Advised, outfitted, and educated by these mild-mannered men who sipped sodas and noshed on burnt egg rolls between presentations, the Pentagon has evidently decided to prepare for 100 years more of the same: war against various outposts of a restless, oppressed population of slum-dwellers one billion strong and growing at an estimated rate of 25 million a year. All of these UO experts are preparing for an endless struggle that history suggests they can't win, but that is guaranteed to lead to large-scale destruction, destabilization, and death. Unsurprisingly, the civilians of the cities that they plan to occupy, whether living in Karachi, Jakarta, or Baghdad, have no say in the matter. No one thought to invite any of them to the conference.
Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation, the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, is due out in the American Empire Project series by Metropolitan Books in 2008. His new website NickTurse.com (up only in rudimentary form) will fully launch in the coming months.
Copyright 2007 Nick Turse
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
29 Comments so far
Show AllMany of the urban warfare clips I've seen on TV show coalition soldiers knocking open doors with battering rams. Did anybody bother getting a search warrant first? (Yeah, I know, this sounds like a joke, but it isn't.)
A U.S. government accustomed to barging in anywhere for any reason or no reason in Iraq can manufacture excuses to do the same in America too.
The most practical antidote to this for ordinary citizens is to vote for the least war-prone candidate at every opportunity. For Democrats, that's Kucinich in the primary, then it's whomever is nominated as the Democratic candidate in the general election. I have been criticized by many people for embracing the election of least worst candidates, but the electable least worst is better than the election by default of the worst worst. I don't like the idea of urban warfare forever. I want to vote against it.
.
As an American slum dweller, I feel threatened by the brutal indifference, insanity and banality of evil which permeates our government. The Military Industrial Complex is America, and America is the Military Industrial Complex. It controls us and no one controls it.
.
I lived and taught in Honduras; I both taught Latin American history and experienced it first hand.
What is emerging is an international oligarchy. One that operates like those in Central America.
What is an oligarchy? Aristotle defined it as when "men of property have government in their hands." Property ownership and oligarchy translates into control over access to life-substaining material resources.
The US, for example, is observed by some as becoming a Banana Republic; a Banana Republics are controlled by oligarchies.
The countryside is rapidly being divested of its peasant population and, of course, they are rapidly enlarging the slums.
Still, people fight for land redistribution and wresting control over agriculture. So, in many parts of the world, rural exploitation will lead to rural-based revolts and repression.
Politically, Costra Rica has the best model for how an oligarchy rules using formal democratic procedures.
Costa Rica's two political parties -the PLN & the Unity Party- "receive virtually all their funds from the country's economic elite. In their campaigns, both parties promise to improve the lot of the middle class, workers, and peasants but once in power invariably carry out a program designed in the interests of the oligarchy. Neither party counts on a strong social organization but simply rallies popular support around election time" (Roots of Rebellion: 61).
In turn, "public opinion is nothing more than the private opinion of those who have the power to disseminate it" (Pressure Groups in Costa Rica).
Becaue of increased privatization, deregulation and cuts in social services, Costa Rica's relatively large middle-class is both contracting and becoming poorer.
Along with the above trends, is the continuous militarization of Costa Rica's police force.
Remember, until the US became the world's military and economic hegemon after WWII, the US possessed a very small standing army and air force.
In fact, in 1933, a right-wing section of the US oligarchy attempted to organize a coup in order to reverse the FDR's reforms.
This attempted coup, The Business Plot conspirators believed they could overthrow FDR's government because the Presidency controlled a very small military...and much of it was overseas.
(It was in reaction to this coup attempt that prompted Marine officer Smedley Butler to present his "I was a Racketer for Capitalism" speech to Congress.)
So, in 1933, the US almost became a Banana Republic. It was held off because of World War II and the postwar need for high-wage consumers off US made products.
Since we bombed our nearest competitors into rubble, the only mass consumers available were US workers. So, they were allowed to organize into business unions (topped with overpaid union CEOs)which would negotiate good wage and benefits packages.
That period of history is over. And now capitalism is driven by its need for quick profits, cheap labor, and increased repression.
Because profits are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, corporations and the related oligarchy are pushing for deregulation, privatization and militarization.
In other words, because of uncontrolled, increased centralization of wealth, the oligarchs are starting to use the "stick" more and the "carrot" less.
The "stick" (prisons, military contracts, defense think tanks, and endless wars) also has the added benefit of providing non-competitive markets for the oligarchs while, at the same time, it demobilizes, spys upon and terrorizes the expanding numbers of impoverished and disaffected people.
People have forgotten how normal capitalism operates. Its oligarchs and their corporate machines need cheap labor, cheap resources and cheap communication and transportation networks.
If they impoverish too many people and contract their customer base, they resort to government support via no-bid contracts, cronyism, privatization, deregulation and inforced debt peonage of the masses (i.e. "backruptcy reform").
Thus, the oligarchs do not mind constant wars, bloodshed and terror. They profit from them as do the oligarchs of Central America.
Once upon a time, we heard Al Qaida would be found most often to be hiding in remote caves. It appears we have found new enemies, and now Republicans believe they're hidden among the impoverished in large cities.
Perhaps we can elect a new female commander in chief, Mrs. Clinton, or a new multi-cultural commander in chief, Mr. Obama, either of whom have a different view of what social work in cities is supposed to be about.
For what it is worth, the following is a true encounter in a normal American town.
In a sporting goods store I was chatting with a young clerk in his twenties who was in the Guard and had just finished a tour in Iraq.
We touched on the idea of global population and limited resources.
In all seriousness he declared that since America has a lot of nukes we should start nuking large population centers in developing nations. He thought it was completely unacceptable that poor nations had so many people and might become a burden to the developed nations.
I became curious about what else was lurking in his head and gave him a little bait adding, " And most of those countries aren't even Christian ". Without hesitation he said, "damn straight".
I then added, " but a lot of those people are part of our markets and manufacture our consuner goods." His response was, "we don't have to kill all of them."
It is a strange new world.
Our enemies are not in Baghdad or Tehran--they're in Washington DC and corporate board rooms.
Mrs. Clinton, the dove.
ROFL.
I'd ask if you were kidding, but we all know you must be. No one in their right mind could possibly suggest that Hillary Clinton was a kinder, gentler candidate.
As Bio-fuels become a larger part of our energy supply those in huge third world cities will find themselves increasingly outbid for food by the energy consumers of the developed nations. By the harvest in the Fall of 2008 the United States will have enough ethanol refineries to convert every bushel of corn the U.S. now exports into fuel for gas guzzeling SUV's. The United States accounts for 75% of the world's corn exports. World grain supplies (translate food supplies) are now at all time lows, wheat is now so expensive that it's no longer used as livestock feed.
At the center of most cities is the commercial district where a handful of the wealthy elite live and work. This elite will need to create a security zone between themselves and the riff-raff in the slums who will likely not acquiesce to their own starvation without putting up a fight.
It's my guess that the third world mega-city will not last another two decades as the population of the world exceeds the food production capacity of the planet. People will flee the cities and migrate closer to where food is produced, the corporate agri-giants will be overwhelmed by waves of squatters each attempting subsistence farming on an acre or two of land.
Do the firebombings of German and Japanese cities during WWII ring a bell? Razing the village to save it has been a cornerstone of war doctrine since the beginning. New gadgets, same old heinous "strategy."
Kill 'em all, let some God sort them out. Or, as our neocrazy compadres like to call it: creative destruction.
As NT points out, the "thinkers" and planners have assumed the rest of the world will just roll over with hardly a fight. This twisted group also believes bombing evil Iran will trigger a peoples' revolution against the Mullahs and install a "US friendly" government.
So it should all work out pretty good...
It would be good to see some coverage of the millions of people living the slums of the world who are NOT a part of the scenario described. People who organize to form daycare centers, food and gardening projects, information technology inclusion and sharing, networking with local, state and federal agencies to secure the minimum because they love their children as much as anyone else. These networks are still in infancy stages. Look at Afro Raegae in Rio de Janeiro. Perhaps we could get an update on the work inspired by Anderson Sa.
The World Social Forum is a tremendous force for good. The goal is the journey - to be able to journey together.
andersdl,
The fascist elites are hoping that Americans do not wake up until it is too late for us to do anything to stop the few from taking total control over the many.
Too few Americans understand the potential of such weapons, as those described in the article, for controlling the US population. I had read about most of those described, and have been most alarmed by the DARPA research into crowd control weapons. With such technology, a frightening and total fascism with the many living in hopelessness and despair is a real possibility. This is our future unless we do something about it and soon.
Two comments:
1) Most of the military's new billion-dollar "toys" have been laughable failures when there have been attempts to use them in actual combat.
2) The war on the urban poor is already going on in this country. In our community, cop shootings of unarmed suspects are at an all-time high. The sheriff's department routinely conducts sweeps--house to house searches--ostensibly for drugs, with dogs, uniformed officers and narcs, but without search warrants. They claim the searches are voluntary--but if you don't comply we'll arrest you on suspicion of narcotics trafficking. The cops stand outside of stores and routinely search all teenagers, "poor-looking people," and minorities. They say it's to prevent shoplifting, but you'll get hauled in for a pocket knife (concealed weapon), and kind of drug or a bad attitude (interfering with a police officer). Not to mention the Migra (ICE) raiding people's homes in the middle of the night like stormtroopers. I've witnessed or experienced all of this myself.
to old goat and to chchicano,
Thanks to both of you. Good, thoughtful posts.
Great posts. As others have said, war is already being waged on the poor, and the middle class is coming under fire. Attempts in the past have been slightly less violent, the legendary concrete Ghettos of Robert Taylor in Chicago and prisons throughout the country have marginalized and controlled a necessary minority. Certainly a consideration at Rand is the anger people will have, for example, when they lose their homes. So, as war is being declared on latinos in Virgina and many thousands are losing their homes near Dulles Airport, why wouldn't someone who's been desensitized to carnal violence in El Salvador attempt to similary protect their families here in the US? One would hope not, but authority is keenly aware of the general threshold, jails are simply built to house troublemakers with planning and research for the worst case scenarios. They can be beaten however; tyranny will be destroyed non-violently.
i thought the assault on Iraq was crazy. the war on terror insane. the planned bombing of Iran beyond madness. and now this? a war on all the wretched of the earth, the pitiful rag picking miserable hungry urban poor? it is true as other posters have said that the moneyed world has bee waging war on the urban poor for the entire last century and before, and that war, the one they have been doing is the shame of all humankind. if any of this stuff Nick is telling about, even a little bit, really happens- somebody help me- i don't know any words for that.
The basic modus operandi comes down to greed. These military "leaders" and their civilian counterparts are out and out madmen. They pose as sane and respectable, but that is a facade. They hide behind authoritarianism and are very adept at playing the patriot card. It smacks of national socialism/fascism, or perhaps it is just a re-incarnation of that system. A lot of Nazi-expatriots were incorporated into our intelligence community after World War Two. Maybe their influence is still substantial in these circles.
These warrior types should be denounced. They suffer from an endemic, mental illness it appears.
wow - i am disgusted on so many levels.
first, glad to have the report because this is the kind of mental disease that has come to represent the peculiar american propensity to hate - i can only say - life itself.
it just never stops.
the history of the united states.
slaughter the natives (a strategy, i see, that still seems fresh and new to these psychotic mercenaries).
the first nations of all of the americas were (are) at a tremendous disadvantage when they encountered white people.
they had no metric to understand the hatred and utter disrespect that is the cornerstone of the white mind. hatred and disrespect for themselves, each other, the animals and the earth.
the first nations were confronted by a world view of life as death that was beyond their ability to understand.
a strategy of rape and pillage with no thought for anyone or anything else.
death as life.
this sickness permeates the entire republic, almost to the last cell.
i'll tell you one thing - you are much more likely to see these weapons used in the continental us than most of the slums mentioned above.
no one cares about those places.
don't forget the fema prisons - they are coming for you...
maybe with a ray gun
the situation is so far over the "gone to far" point that its all moot.
as we approach this contrived war with iran i have come to understand this:
the united states killed themsleves (and maybe us all) aug 6 45
at hiroshima
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
then nagasaki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagasaki#Modern_era
these were sins for which there is no return.
completely irrelevant to ending the war (japan was utterly defenseless - two defensless cities were quite literally made of paper) the bombings served their true purpose of establishing a new kind of shock doctrine.
everyone was freaked out by these weapons and they were afraid - everywhere, including the united states.
within five years we see the measurable dissolution of the american nuclear family by ever more dissatisfied youth who felt the worthlessness of a life that was forever defined over those paper cities.
blowing the president's brains out on national tv was small potatoes after that and you can see the public was whipped and beat to the extent that they didn't even require an investigation.
the stink of death overwhelmed us.
no matter what goes on going forward that has come, to me, to be the day we died.
the day after which nothing really mattered.
abuelito you are right. My thought was every time you think you have reached the depth of depression over the depravity of the world, you find there is a whole new group of people working to make it worse.
Wouldn't be nice if they made an effort to reduce slums or conflict rather than find a way to make both worse.
I guess these good old folks have never stopped to think about the Bill of Rights - or maybe that just doesn't exist anymore. Sure, go ahead and look into anyone's home, there's nothing wrong about that, is there?
Why must they always be thinking of warfare as the answer to everything? Rather than spend 100's of millions on these gadgets, how about thinking of ways to use this money to actually help people so we don't have these slums to begin with? Let's see. A city of 10 million. They could just give everyone a million dollars and the problem's solved, at much less expense. And they would be able to buy things so the tax revenues would be greater and the city itself could make it an even better city. Crime would probably drop to zero. Or, use that one hundred million dollar budget and spread it around to one hundred million people. That would be a quick solution. Nobody would be angry. Instead, you'd have one hundred million very happy people.
If I had a shotgun, it would be nice to sit on the roof of a building with a reflective helmet and take pot-shots at these "UO's" all day. Just blast them out of the sky. Maybe it'll become a new passtime. Or, if they're too high up there, we can all become skilled marksmen with sniper's rifles.
It seems that we'll all need to carry mirrors and earplugs fairly soon so we don't get baked by some micro waves, or wear reflective clothing that will just send the micro-waves bouncing. Maybe the new hat of the future will have a flat top with a mirror on it, wouldn't have to actually be made of glass either. And be sure to keep some eaplugs in our ears so we aren't "brought to our knees" by some device which produces sound waves so powerful a person is incapable of bearing it.
What the hell do these people think of their fellow human brother/sister? These people sound deranged and should be safely locked up somewhere so they aren't a threat to other humans.
"Everything worth fighting ... is in the urban environment."
Yes, that's where the easiest targets live - the women and children. Just one 'smart' bomb on their power supply, water supply or sanitation system and they all begin to die. It's just like Zyclone B but without worrying about the wind blowing the poison gas away. Why would any human being make these things? "Things To Come" wrote Herbert George ... George Herbert & Son have used them. It's time to close this book!
Coming to your hometown sooner than you think....
The technology is passing though the military into the local police along with the attitudes of superiority to non-government personel. They will use it to control you and steal from you.
Here's what's most disturbing to me about this article:
The Constitution and Bill of Rights have already been gutted. Government has positioned itself to declare martial law for any reason--or almost no reason. The US seems to be headed for some serious economic dislocations (another Great Depression?).
Logically it looks like these plans for Urban Warfare will target the people in the US, right along with the peoples of other cities of the world.
To me, all the above looks like advance preparations to control both the peaceful dissent--and the violence and anger that will erupt in cities all over the world, including the US--when the US and global economies collapse.
People in the US are about to be hungry, homeless, heatless, jobless, and rideless. This will not be result-less.
If you live in a major city, it's not too soon to plan an emergency escape route--and an emergency destination to go with it. If you have kids in the city, discuss evacuation plans with them.
Economic collapse, martial law, and military assault on cities in flames may be years away. Or it could happen next year. But it's almost certainly coming. When it does come, you will want to have a full tank of gas, a place to go, and a well-thought-out travel route.
"Everything worth fighting for is in the urban environment."
This is the rankest nonsense. The PTB don't want anything that's in the urban environment--obviously, since the plan is to destroy the urban environment. What they're really after is natural resouces--and the power to subdue the population while the resources are stolen. Subdued populations are also useful for slave labor.
I suppose the plan is to turn the whole world into a replica of Africa.
Our actions will not win their hearts and minds---only their middle fingers.
Hey, at least Costa Ricans had the right to vote on CAFTA in a national referendum. When was the last time the people of the US got a direct vote on anything?
bandido
They did get to vote for CAFTA in a national referendum. However, the US State Dept. continously threatened to cut off trade if the "no" vote won. Simultaneously, CR's oligarchy promised to cut any government aid (for three years) to any community whose majority voted "no".
Last, though ALL opinion and voter preference polls showed that a comfortable majority of Costa Ricans were voting against the trade agreement, it still won by a small majority.
That is way of the oligarchy. If your government has democratic pretension, and fear and threats don't work...rig the votes.
War is our business our only business
balakirev: Thanks for the experienced summary.
I once new a journalist who spent time in Central America and the horror stories were incredible, but all too true. Yet our fascist corporate media manages to keep the average American in the dark.
It is quite amazing that they could sell the invasions of Panama and Grenada as legitimate military actions. Perhaps by attacking defenseless countries the illusion of global military power is created, when of course we could not prevail in Korea, Vietnam or presently in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Another potential future scenario is that as unskilled labor jobs continue to disappear and no longer provide an American worker with a decent standard of living, the military life will be one of the few options.
I have a retired Nam era Ranger friend and he is convinced that Iraq is a training ground for the next generation of "super killers" who will be turned on the American public if necessary.
And the Blackwater scenario may become part of managing the domestic situation. Blackwater has already hired former Pinochet military people as part of the organization. The elite of Blackwater, and other security corporations, are mostly white Americans (preferably Christian right wing nuts) but they also recruit lower-pay mercenaries from other countries to fill the ranks.
Having watched Amerikan police and National Guard violence against civilians, I have wondered why they would turn against their own class and people so to speak at the request of the economic elite ? Why someone would shoot unarmed students (Kent State) is beyond my understanding.
I had a rude political awakening when one of Reagan's Gestapo nailed me with a four-foot baton in Cal. years ago for the crime of non-violent student protest.
Yet, apart from the indoctrination such "warriors" receive, it may already be the best job they can find, just like military enlistment in many developing nations or banana republics.
The Pentagon thinks it can wage a successful class war by bombing the poor of cities?
Such short memories the privilaged have.
They forget that a disparate array of tribals have fought the entire US war machine to deadly stalemate.
They forget that a city isn't a collection of destitute, low-bred, radicalised proto-terrorists.
A city is a function of all it's inhabitants, rich and poor.
Where do they think urban refugees are going to congregate? They'd head straight for the nearest gated community accompanied by the largest of their bum/hobo/slumster friends with a set of sturdy bolt-croppers, shouting "EAT THE RICH!"
Urban War is a self-defeating pursuit, just like all wars.