New academic book on "parapolitics and criminal sovereignty"

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: New academic book on "parapolitics and criminal sovereig

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri Nov 30, 2012 7:36 pm

^^Superb, thank you for this -- all very much new to me.

I will be picking up the book of the OP next week, and probably make this into a 4 page thread.
User avatar
Wombaticus Rex
 
Posts: 10896
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 6:33 pm
Location: Vermontistan
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: New academic book on "parapolitics and criminal sovereig

Postby fruhmenschen » Sat Dec 01, 2012 1:09 am

RocketMan wrote:I just bought this and am about to start reading. Who knows, perhaps I'll be able to marshal some motivation to continue my political science studies. :)

Government of the Shadows: Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty

Here's a snippet from a review on Amazon by Guido Preparata (of Conjuring Hitler fame):

Guido Preparata wrote:First, it wishes to rethink political science entirely, by rejecting definitively the puritanical dichotomization of society into its predominant and "clean" edifice versus the latter's more or less corrupt "covert netherworld" (p. 228)--the prescriptive implication of conventional analysis being that delinquents need only be jailed, and their activities repressed, as the given regime is in the meantime steered (hopefully) toward the eventual and complete assimilation of Liberal institutions, which will naturally cure it of the criminal deviancy.

Second, and no less important, this project seeks to re-endow the movement for social justice of a unity of intent and of thought, which has lately been shattered by an excessive methodological preoccupation with multiplicity and diversity. By denouncing with reason and cogency the inequities suffered by a majority of innocents--throughout our recent history and all over the world--at the hands of identifiable, responsible parties within the power apparatuses in connivance with the world's mafias, and by ordering all such phenomenological mass into theory, this book, as a collective endeavor, acts as a vigorous reminder that realistic sociological analysis is also very much an instrument of pacific dissent. In this sense, GOS stands as a first and decisive installment of a modern anti-oligarchic theory.



To compass the reality of modern power games in its full spectrum, GOS innovates by proposing the new discipline of "parapolitics", defined in Robert Cribb's introductory as "the study of criminal sovereignty, of criminals and sovereigns behaving as criminals in a systematic way" (p. 8 ). The idea issues from the need to embed in conventional analysis the insuppressible evidence of the last fifty years of Pax Americana, which has conclusively shown thus far that high-level political matches, rather than through the official channels of diplomacy and institutional exchange, are actually played out by clans of vested interests whose (transversal) range of allegiances and objectives often seem to transcend the strictly nationalist agendas of their host countries. In its quest for a modern theory of power, GOS thus identifies the actual modus operandi of incumbent power systems as one reliant on hidden State-mandated maneuvers carried out by an unholy connivance of Intelligence nuclei and crime syndicates.

In other words, it attempts to single out the so-called "strategy of tension" as one of the chief instruments of world governance in our epoch
. This pattern is seen as sealing de facto a capital and essential alliance between the oligarchs of the modern "democracies" and the entrepreneurial delinquents of skid row for the twofold purpose 1) of keeping the middle- and low-cohorts under control (by means of drugs, prostitution, and gaming), and 2) of thwarting regenerative forces of progressivism or unwanted nationalist orientations in a colonial environment via the destabilizing tactics of terror, which are perpetrated by low-class desperadoes according to scripts penned by the screen wrights of psyop divisions.






I think you might be better served reading Jane Roberts book SETH SPEAKS AND THE NATURE OF PERSONAL REALITY.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9RIOK_BlEw
http://books.google.com/books/about/Set ... MsJgrqMPYC
then hang out at AWTTT http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org
fruhmenschen
 
Posts: 5712
Joined: Thu Aug 12, 2010 7:46 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: New academic book on "parapolitics and criminal sovereig

Postby DrVolin » Sat Dec 01, 2012 6:05 pm

Interesting reading. But a strange mix of fairly generally accepted deep political historical views, way out fringe stuff, and clear misreadings of history. The notion of the cold war as theater of the abusrd is not overly controversial, at least in RI terms. But the idea that the Allies and the Soviets conspired pre-war to destroy Germany by baiting it into Barbarossa is a little more difficult to support.

Of course, the Brits quite aggressively boxed in the Germans in the run up to 1914, and the Americans did the same to Japan in the late 1930s, and the Allies essentially created conditions that forced both Germany and Japan to either go to war or accept vassalage. But the role of Russia and the Soviet Union in all this is I think more difficult to decipher than he lets on. Until August 1940, one could still have believed that the Brits would agree to the kind of division Mackinderian division he describes, between a Anglo-American Rimland and a German (or French) dominated Heartland. This idea was not new, and it was essentially what Napoleon had proposed more than a hundred years earlier. When he found the British unwilling, he tried to impose it by the Continental system and the subjugation of Russia.

But British policy had resolutely always been one of balance on the continent, effected by supporting whoever was the weaker power at a given moment. If there was any doubt that Britain had abandoned that policy in the late 30s and struck a deal with Germany, that doubt must have been destroyed by the Battle of Britain in August 1940. This, however, raises the question of why Germany would have thrown its weight to the east in 1941 and invaded the USSR. This is what he tries to resolve.

I think the answer is simpler than he supposes. In 1940, Stalin was preparing to invade Eastern Europe and Germany, but on his own timeline, perhaps by 1944 or so. This explains the formidable forward deployed arsenals and fully stocked depots that the Germans found, encircled, and captured in the first few weeks of the invasion, as well as the poor state of preparation and low level of organization of the troops manning them. The Wermacht and the Red Army had shared doctrinal and human resources through the 1920s and 1930s. They had literally been to the same schools and the officers on both sides, especially the field ranks, knew each other well. If the Red Army had been preparing a defense of the Eastern Front, they would have been deployed in depth and would have kept their heavy equipement back in concentrations ready to strike at the German breakthroughs.

The Germans had accurately detected the Soviet offensive preprations and were in a hurry to secure the West and then strike East while they still had the chance. They knew that if the Soviets completed their preparations, they would be steamrolled. In the event, they didn't succeed in knocking out the Soviets, who then had time, with Allied help, to accelerate and complete those preparations, and they unleashed their big offensive in the winter of 43. Supporting the Soviets from 41 to 43 was simply part of the traditional Anglo-American strategy of balance.

For the German officer and intellectual classes, it was simply unthinkable that the Allies would allow Russians to invade Europe. Those steeped in Nazi (and other) racist ideologies could not imagine that the Anglo-Americans would let Europe fall to the Barbarian horde. The others would ne believe that they would let communism expand to that extent. Even after Casablanca in 1943 and the reiteration of the doctrine of unconditional surrender, only a few leading Germans really got the message that the Allies were ready to work with the Soviets to carry the war to the end. Most of them expected that at the critical moment, when the Soviets were about to break through the Niemen or thereabouts, the Allies would enter into negotiations and reverse their support in accordance with the strategy of balance, or in anticipation of a slavic or communist take over of Western Europe. But of course, Russia had been the natural ally of the Brits in keeping European balance since at least 1812, through 1914, and the Anglo-Americans now saw the possibility of a balance between an isolated and contained Soviet Russia and a France reanimated and supported by its reconstituted empire. This plan supposed the complete neutralization of Germany.

I would not be surprised if the Brits led the Germans on a bit between 1941 and 1943 with back channel assurances that they would not allow a Soviet invasion of Central Europe, and such negotiations may very well have been part of Hess' mission. But the reception he got, combined with Casablanca, would have (and did) convince any external observer that Germany was not part of the deal.

As his papers make clear, Rommel was one of the few leading Germans who had come to this conclusion by 1944. He decided that if the Anglo-Americans were unwilling to deal with the Germans to defend Europe, he would put before them a fait accompli. His intention, in the wake of Walkyrie, was to pull all German forces out of Western Europe and throw them against the Soviets to at least stabilize the Eastern Front long enough for the Allies to just walk in. He was hoping, but by the end no longer convinced, that they would not be able to resist the urge. In the end, he was prevented from doing this when he was critically injured in the strafing of his staff car by an RAF Hurricane. If you're looking for Allied-Soviet conspiracy, this would be an interesting event to investigate. But this was long after simple geopolitics had made it clear that the Allies and Soviets should be natural partners in the elimination of Germany and doesn't require a pre-war Anglo-Soviet understanding and baiting of Germany into invading the USSR. In fact, I would speculate that as the Soviets neared readiness to invade Europe in the mid-1940s, Anglo-American support would have gradually shifted to the potentially beleaguered Germans. But the war intervened.
all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

--Guns and Roses
DrVolin
 
Posts: 1544
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 7:19 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: New academic book on "parapolitics and criminal sovereig

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Dec 04, 2012 12:14 am

DrVolin wrote:Interesting reading. But a strange mix of fairly generally accepted deep political historical views, way out fringe stuff, and clear misreadings of history.


Yeh. He's the most brilliant blowhard ever. It's still very fertile stuff -- too much skipping around and definitive pronunciamentos in the interview, still it seems like reading the longer rendering would be worth it.

I think the answer is simpler than he supposes. In 1940, Stalin was preparing to invade Eastern Europe and Germany, but on his own timeline, perhaps by 1944 or so. This explains the formidable forward deployed arsenals and fully stocked depots that the Germans found, encircled, and captured in the first few weeks of the invasion, as well as the poor state of preparation and low level of organization of the troops manning them. The Wermacht and the Red Army had shared doctrinal and human resources through the 1920s and 1930s. They had literally been to the same schools and the officers on both sides, especially the field ranks, knew each other well. If the Red Army had been preparing a defense of the Eastern Front, they would have been deployed in depth and would have kept their heavy equipement back in concentrations ready to strike at the German breakthroughs.


Has research been done on when these arsenals were in fact forward deployed? It wouldn't surprise me if it turns out the answer suggests little in the way of a system or a strategy. I don't see how these could have been components of a credible Soviet plan for invading Central Europe on any timeline. Given the risk of preemption, a sensible strategy would have kept all the gear in the rear and prepared for lightning deployments at the last minute. But it was the Germans who had understood the interwar military revolution of armor and air, and clearly no other military establishment had done so as of the start of World War II. (This explains the inaction of the Western Allies during the "Phony War" phase, one of the supposed mysteries brought up by Preparata's interviewer. They had the armor and air forces to plunge straight into Germany, but demonstrated in the follow-up that they'd never understood how to use these resources. I don't doubt that hesitation to commit fully to a mutual carnage, the results of which they could not fathom how to guess, was a natural concommitant to their general cluelessness.)

My understanding is that the Red Army had become a mess thanks to the climactic Stalinist purges and massacres, which killed off the best Soviet military theorists like Tukhachevsky and in the military did not end after 1939 but continued all the way into 1942. The toll was especially heavy on precisely those officers who had "shared doctrinal and human resources through the 1920s and 1930s" with the Wehrmacht. It wouldn't surprise me if Red Army strategists were unaware of a weakness in the placement of their arsenals prior to June 1941, and if officers who saw the need for a reform in military strategy and redeployment of forces were too terrified to draw attention to themselves by showing any kind of initiative. The mess of the campaign in Finland would also support this view. I can't see that the results of the Winter War would have inspired eagerness to try an invasion of Germany any time soon.

The US-UK reluctance to open up a European front prior to 1944 is much easier to parse. They understood this would involve huge casualties and preferred to let the Soviets take the brunt and spill the blood until they had prepared an overwhelming armada. They didn't necessarily reckon with how deeply the Soviets would penetrate into Eastern Europe by war's end.

But hey! Now thanks to Preparata, I've also had the pleasure of this:


(1920, in review of Keynes, 1919)

http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/econ ... nes/vebrev

Review of John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the
Peace


by Thorstein Veblen

Political Science Quarterly, 35, pp. 467-472.


It is now something like a year since this book was written.
And much of its argument is in the nature of forecast which has
in great part been overtaken by the precipitate run of events
during these past months. Therefore it would scarcely be fair to
read the author's argument as a presentation of client fact. It
is rather to be taken as a presentation of the diplomatic
potentialities of the Treaty and the League, as seen beforehand,
and of the further consequences which may be expected to follow
in the course of a statesmanlike management of things under the
powers conferred by the Treaty and by the Covenant of the League.
It is an altogether sober and admirably candid and facile
argument, by a man familiar with diplomatic usage and trained in
the details of large financial policy; and the wide vogue and
earnest consideration which have been given to this volume
reflect its very substantial merit. At the same time the same
facts go to show how faithfully its point of view and its line of
argument fall in with the prevailing attitude of thoughtful men
toward the same range of questions. It is the attitude of men
accustomed to take political documents at their face value.
Writing at about the date of its formulation and before its
effectual working had been demonstrated, Mr Keynes accepts the
Treaty as a definitive formulation of the terms of peace, as a
conclusive settlement rather than a strategic point of departure
for further negotiations and a continuation of warlike enterprise
-- and this in spite of the fact that Mr Keynes was continuously
and intimately in touch with the Peace Conference during all
those devious negotiations by which the Elder Statesmen of the
Great Powers arrived at the bargains embodied in this instrument.
These negotiations were quite secret, of course, as is fitting
that negotiations among Elder Statesmen should be. But for all
their vulpine secrecy, the temper and purposes of that hidden
Conclave of political hucksters were already becoming evident to
outsiders a year ago, and it is all the more surprising to find
that an observer so shrewd and so advantageously placed as Mr
Keynes has been led to credit them with any degree of bonafides
or to ascribe any degree of finality to the diplomatic
instruments which came out of their bargaining.
The Treaty was designed, in substance, to re-establish the
status quo ante, with a particular view to the conservation of
international jealousies. Instead of its having brought a
settlement of the world's peace, the Treaty (together with the
League) has already shown itself to be nothing better than a
screen of diplomatic verbiage behind which the Elder Statesmen of
the Great Powers continue their pursuit of political chicane and
imperialistic aggrandisement. All this is patent now, and it
needs no peculiar degree of courage to admit it. It is also
scarcely too much to say that all this should have been
sufficiently evident to Mr Keynes a year ago. But in failing to
take note of this patent state of the case Mr Keynes only
reflects the commonplace attitude of thoughtful citizens. His
discussion, accordingly, is a faithful and exceptionally
intelligent commentary on the language of the Treaty, rather than
the consequences which were designed to follow from it or the
uses to which it is lending itself. It would perhaps be an
ungraceful overstatement to say that Mr Keynes has successfully
avoided the main facts in the case; but an equally broad
statement to the contrary would be farther from the truth.
The events of the past months go to show that the central and
most binding provision of the Treaty (and of the League) is an
unrecorded clause by which the governments of the Great Powers
are banded together for the suppression of Soviet Russia --
unrecorded unless record of it is to be found somewhere among the
secret archives of the League or of the Great Powers. Apart from
this unacknowledged compact there appears to be nothing in the
Treaty that has any character of stability or binding force. (Of
course, this compact for the reduction of Soviet Russia was not
written into the text of the Treaty; it may rather be said to
have been the parchment upon which the text was written.) A
formal avowal of such a compact for continued warlike operations
would not comport with the usages of secret diplomacy, and then
it might also be counted on unduly to irritate the underlying
populations of the Great Powers, who are unable to see the
urgency of the case in the same perspective as the Elder
Statesmen. So this difficult but imperative task of suppressing
Bolshevism, which faced the Conclave from the outset, has no part
in Mr Keynes's analysis of the consequences to be expected from
the conclave's Treaty. Yet it is sufficiently evident now that
the exigencies of the Conclave's campaign against Russian
Bolshevism have shaped the working-out of the Treaty hitherto,
beyond any other consideration. This appears to be the only
interest which the Elder Statesmen of the Great Powers hold in
common; in all else they appear to be engrossed with mutual
jealousies and cross purposes, quite in the spirit of that
imperialistic status quo out of which the Great War arose. And
the like promises to hold true for the future, until after Soviet
Russia or the Powers banded together in this surreptitious war on
Russia shall reach the breaking-point. In the nature of things it
is a war without quarter; but in the nature of things it is also
an enterprise which cannot be avowed.
It is quite needless to find fault with this urgent campaign
of the governments of the Great Powers against Soviet Russia or
to say anything in approval of it all. But it is necessary to
take note of its urgency and the nature of it, as well as of the
fact that this major factor in the practical working-out of the
Peace has apparently escaped attention in the most competent
analysis of the Peace and its consequences that has yet been
offered. It has been overlooked, perhaps, because it is a
foregone matter of course. Yet this oversight is unfortunate.
Among other things, it has led Mr Keynes into an ungracious
characterization of the President and his share in the
negotiations. Mr Keynes has much that is uncomplimentary to say
of the many concessions and comprehensive defeat in which the
President and his avowed purposes became involved in the course
of those negotiations with the Elder Statesmen of the Great
Powers. Due appreciation of the gravity of this anti-Bolshevist
issue, and of its ubiquitous and paramount force in the
deliberations of the Conclave, should have saved Mr Keynes from
those expressions of scant courtesy which mar his
characterization of the President and of the President's work as
peacemaker.
The intrinsic merits of the quarrel between the Bolsheviki
and the Elder Statesmen are not a matter for off-hand decision;
nor need they come in consideration here. But the difficulties of
the President's work as peacemaker are not to be appreciated
without some regard to the nature of this issue that faced him.
So, without prejudice, it seems necessary to call to mind the
main facts of the case, as these facts confronted him in the
negotiations with the Conclave. It is to be remarked, then, that
Bolshevism is a menace to absentee ownership. At the same time
the present economic and political order rests on absentee
ownership. The imperialist policies of the Great Powers,
including America, also look to the maintenance and extension of
absentee ownership as the major and abiding purpose of all their
political traffic. Absentee ownership, accordingly, is the
foundation of law and order, according to that scheme of law and
order which has been handed down out of the past in all the
civilized nations, and to the perpetuation of which the Elder
Statesmen are committed by native bent and by the duties of
office. This applies to both the economic and the political
order, in all these civilized nations, where the security of
property rights has become virtually the sole concern of the
constituted authorities.
The Fourteen Points were drawn up without due appreciation of
this paramount place which absentee ownership has come to occupy
in the modern civilized countries and without due appreciation of
the intrinsically precarious equilibrium in which this paramount
institution of civilized mankind has been placed by the growth of
industry and education. The Bolshevist demonstration had not yet
shown the menace, at the time when the Fourteen Points were drawn
up. The Fourteen Points were drawn in the humane spirit of
Mid-Victorian Liberalism, without due realization of the fact
that democracy has in the meantime outgrown the Mid-Victorian
scheme of personal liberty and has grown into a democracy of
property rights. Not until the Bolshevist overturn and the rise
of Soviet Russia did this new complexion of things become evident
to men trained in the good old way of thinking On questions of
policy. But at the date of the Peace Conference Soviet Russia had
come to be the largest and most perplexing fact within the
political and economic horizon. Therefore, so soon as a
consideration of details was entered upon it became evident,
point by point, that the demands of absentee ownership coincide
with the requirements of the existing order, and that these
paramount demands of absentee ownership are at the same time
incompatible with the humane principles of Mid-Victorian
Liberalism. Therefore, regretfully and reluctantly, but
imperatively, it became the part of wise statesmanship to save
the existing order by saving absentee ownership and letting the
Fourteen Points go in the discard. Bolshevism is a menace to
absentee ownership; and in the light of events in Soviet Russia
it became evident, point by point, that only with the definitive
suppression of Bolshevism and all its works, at any cost, could
the world be made safe for that Democracy of Property Rights on
which the existing political and civil order is founded. So it
became the first concern of all the guardians of the existing
order to root out Bolshevism at any cost, without regard to
international law.
lf one is so inclined, one may find fault with the premises
of this argument as being out of date and reactionary; and one
might find fault with the President for being too straightly
guided by considerations of this nature. But the President was
committed to the preservation of the existing order of
commercialized imperialism, by conviction and by his high office.
His apparent defeat in the face of this unforeseen situation,
therefore, was not so much a defeat, but rather a strategic
realignment designed to compass what was indispensable, even at
some cost to his own prestige -- the main consideration being the
defeat of Bolshevism at any cost -- so that a well-considered
view of the President's share in the deliberations of the
Conclave will credit him with insight, courage, facility, and
tenacity of purpose rather than with that pusillanimity,
vacillation, and ineptitude which is ascribed to him in Mr
Keynes's too superficial review of the case.
So also his oversight of this paramount need of making the
world safe for a democracy of absentee owners has led Mr Keynes
to take an unduly pessimistic view of the provisions covering the
German indemnity. A notable leniency, amounting to something like
collusive remissness, has characterized the dealings of the
Powers with Germany hitherto. As should have seemed altogether
probable beforehand, the stipulations touching the German
indemnity have proved to be provisional and tentative only -- if
they should not rather be characterized as a diplomatic bluff,
designed to gain time, divert attention, and keep the various
claimants in a reasonably patient frame of mind during the period
of rehabilitation needed to reinstate the reactionary régime in
Germany and erect it into a bulwark against Bolshevism. These
stipulations have already suffered substantial modifications at
every point that has come to a test hitherto, and there is no
present indication and no present reason to believe that any of
them will be lived up to in any integral fashion. They are
apparently in the nature of a base for negotiations and are due
to come up for indefinite further adjustment as expediency may
dictate. And the expediencies of the case appear to run on two
main considerations: (a) the defeat of Bolshevism, in Russia and
elsewhere; and (b) the continued secure tenure of absentee
ownership in Germany. It follows that Germany must not be
crippled in such a degree as would leave the imperial
establishment materially weakened in its campaign against
Bolshevism abroad or radicalism at home. From which it also
follows that no indemnity should effectually be levied on Germany
such as will at all seriously cut into the free income of the
propertied and privileged classes, who alone can be trusted to
safeguard the democratic interests of absentee ownership. Such
burden as the indemnity may impose must accordingly not exceed an
amount which may conveniently be made to fall somewhat
immediately on the propertyless working class, who are to be kept
in hand. As required by these considerations of safety for the
established order, it will be observed that the provisions of the
Treaty shrewdly avoid any measures that would involve
confiscation of property; whereas, if these provisions had not
been drawn with a shrewd eye to the continued security of
absentee ownership, there should have been no serious difficulty
in collecting an adequate indemnity from the wealth of Germany
without materially deranging the country's industry and without
hardship to others than the absentee owners. There is no reason,
other than the reason of absentee ownership, why the Treaty
should not have provided for a comprehensive repudiation of the
German war debt, imperial, state, and municipal, with a view to
diverting that much of German income to the benefit of those who
suffered from German aggression. So also no other reason stood in
the way of a comprehensive confiscation of German wealth, so far
as that wealth is covered by securities and is therefore held by
absentee owners, and there is no question as to the war guilt of
these absentee owners.
But such a measure would subvert the order of society, which
is an order of absentee ownership in so far as concerns the Elder
Statesmen and the interests whose guardians they are. Therefore
it would not do, nor has the notion been entertained, to divert
any part of this free income from the German absentee owners to
the relief of those who suffered from the war which these
absentee owners carried into the countries of the Allies. In
effect, in their efforts to safeguard the existing political and
economic order -- to make the world safe for a democracy of
investors -- the statesmen of the victorious Powers have taken
sides with the war-guilty absentee owners of Germany and against
their underlying population. All of which, of course, is quite
regular and beyond reproach; nor does it all ruffle the course of
Mr Keynes's exposition of economic consequences, in any degree.
Even such conservative provisions as the Treaty makes for
indemnifying the war victims have hitherto been enforced only
with a shrewdly managed leniency, marked with an unmistakable
partisan bias in favor of the German-Imperial status quo ante; as
is also true for the provisions touching disarmament and the
discontinuance of warlike industries and organization -- which
provisions have been administered in a well-conceived spirit of
opéra bouffe. Indeed, the measures hitherto taken in the
execution of this Peace Treaty's provisional terms throw
something of an air of fantasy over Mr Keynes's apprehensions on
this head.

We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 15983
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: New academic book on "parapolitics and criminal sovereig

Postby DrVolin » Tue Dec 04, 2012 9:32 pm

Of course, having a plan and being able to carry it out successfully are different things. But 20th century military establishments and states were slow, ponderous things, none more so than the USSR. The purges no doubt had an impact, but they didn't select for military ability or training, only for political fit. There were no doubt as many (or as few) good military men among the stalinists as among the trotskyists and other factions. The Winter War is often said to be the demonstration that the purges devastated the Red Army, which devastation explains the early German successes of 1941 and (to a lesser degree) 1942.

I would argue that the invasion of Finland shows no such thing. The Winter War is really two very different conflicts. In the south, mainly in Karelia, the Finns threw every last ounce of energy and equipment they had to stop a Soviet battle of attrition. The Finns were very rapidly losing that one. They were running out of men and equipment much faster than the Soviets, obviously. But they also made it more expensive than the Soviets expected. Around Kuusamo and points north, the Soviets actually attempted a modern mechanised advance in columns, and the Finns were of course completely powerless to stop it, so they didn't. They did the only reasonable thing, which was to let it through. But like Balck in Greece two years later, they found that the very sparse and very poor road net, and the fact that their tracked armour and troop transports were much more mobile than their wheeled and horse draw supply, severely hampered them. The Finns reacted by going off the roads, bypassing the columns and cutting their supply at the source along the narrow, isolated roads behing them. This created isolated pockets of what they called motti, and they literally harvested this fire wood at leisure while interdicting supply into the pockets. In other words, just like the early bolsheviks had strangely tried to apply an ideology of industrial organization to a mainly agrarian society, the Red Army of 1939 tried modern mechanized warfare in an environment perfect for asymmetrical guerilla. The Soviets were far from incompetent at modern war in 1939, but like the British and later the Americans in Afghanistan, they were fighting the wrong war in the wrong country against the wrong people. In the end, the old White Russian Marshall Mannerheim had to make very significant territorial and policy concessions to the Soviets just to keep the country from being completely annexed, perhaps going so far as to agree not to give Leningrad the coup de grace during the Continuation War after Barbarossa. But only perhaps.

They evidence that the striking power of the Red Army was slowly being assembled and organized in the West is that the Wermacht captured so much equipment, so much supply, and so many men in the first few weeks of the invasion that it almost broke the entire German logistical system. Such a great concentration of stuff and people could only have been captured if it was forward deployed, if there were no provisions to pull it back in a defensive action, and most importantly, if the equipment, supply, and men were not yet connected into a coherent fighting force. In a defense, the priority is to connect them, even if in smaller quantities, so they can be effective at a moments notice. You also want to set them up in depth, with small tripwire forces up front that can warn you and disorganize the enemy while your counterattack prepares at the anticipated schwerpunkt. Think of the first Marne, for example. When preparing an offensive, the priority is to get as much stuff forward as you can, and then assemble it into units. This process can take years.
all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

--Guns and Roses
DrVolin
 
Posts: 1544
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 7:19 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: New academic book on "parapolitics and criminal sovereig

Postby semper occultus » Fri Feb 12, 2016 6:27 am

Anatomy Of The Deep State: An Open Conspiracy

written by daniel mcadams thursday february 11, 2016

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2016/february/11/anatomy-of-the-deep-state-an-open-conspiracy/

What is the "deep state"? Is it a secret national security apparatus that spies on us and operates "black sites" overseas? Some judicial star chamber ruling in secret? Well, partly. But as Mike Lofgren, author of "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government" points out, the whole truth is comparatively banal. The deep state consists of the multiple layers of government and quasi-government bureaucracies and the myriad of cottage industries they spring up around them, including the military-industrial complex and the election-industrial complex. They operate out in the open and are almost completely overlooked, while Americans instead to turn their attention to the latest election. But elections change very little in Washington with the deep state in the driver's seat:

User avatar
semper occultus
 
Posts: 2974
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 2:01 pm
Location: London,England
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: New academic book on "parapolitics and criminal sovereig

Postby semper occultus » Tue May 03, 2016 6:38 am

User avatar
semper occultus
 
Posts: 2974
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 2:01 pm
Location: London,England
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: New academic book on "parapolitics and criminal sovereig

Postby semper occultus » Sat Oct 07, 2017 8:44 pm

Image

https://www.routledge.com/The-Darkest-Sides-of-Politics-I-Postwar-Fascism-Covert-Operations-and/Bale/p/book/9781138785618

This book examines a wide array of phenomena that arguably constitute the most noxious, extreme, terrifying, murderous, secretive, authoritarian, and/or anti-democratic aspects of national and international politics. Scholars should not ignore these "dark sides" of politics, however unpleasant they may be, since they influence the world in a multitude of harmful ways.

The first volume in this two-volume collection focuses on the history of underground neo-fascist networks in the post-World War II era; neo-fascist paramilitary and terrorist groups operating in Europe and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s; and the manipulation of those and other terrorist organizations by the security forces of various states, both authoritarian and democratic. A range of global case studies are included, all of which focus on the lesser known activities of certain secular extremist milieus.

This collection should prove to be essential reading for students and researchers interested in understanding seemingly arcane but nonetheless important dimensions of recent historical and contemporary politics.


Table of Contents

1 Introduction: ideologies, extremist ideologies, and terrorist violence

2 Political paranoia versus political realism: on distinguishing between bogus conspiracy theories and genuine conspiratorial politics

3 Postwar neo-fascist internationals, part 1: Nazi escape networks, the Mouvement Social Europeenne, Europaische Neu-Ordnung, and Jeune Europe

4 Postwar "neo-fascist" internationals, part 2: Aginter Presse and the "strategy of tension" in Italy

5 The December 1970 "Borghese coup" in Rome

6 The May 1973 terrorist attack at Milan police HQ: anarchist ‘propaganda of the deed’ or ‘false-flag’ provocation?

7 Concluding thoughts on the terrorist "strategy of tension" in Italy

8 The ultranationalist right in Turkey and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II

9 ‘National revolutionary’ groupuscules and the resurgence of ‘left-wing’ fascism: the case of France’s Nouvelle Resistance


Image

https://www.routledge.com/The-Darkest-Sides-of-Politics-II-State-Terrorism-Weapons-of-Mass/Bale/p/book/9781138785632

The second volume in this two-volume collection focuses primarily on assorted religious extremists, including apocalyptic millenarian cults, Islamists, and jihadist terrorist networks, as well as CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear) terrorism and the supposedly new "nexus" between organized criminal and extremist groups employing terrorist operational techniques. A range of global case studies are included, most of which focus on the lesser known activities of certain religious extremist milieus.

1. Terrorists as State "Proxies": Separating Fact from Fiction 2. South Africa’s Project Coast: "Death Squads," Covert State-Sponsored Poisonings, and the Dangers of CBW Proliferation 3. "Privatizing"Covert Action: The Case of the Unification Church 4. Apocalyptic Millenarian Groups and Mass Casualty Terrorism 5. Jihādist Ideology and Strategy and the Possible Employment of WMD 6. Islamism and Totalitarianism 7. Denying the Link between Islamist Ideology and Jihādist Terrorism: “Political Correctness” and the Undermining of Counterterrorism 8. "Nothing to Do with Islam"? The Terrorism and Atrocities of the Islamic State are Inspired and Justified by Its Interpretations of Islam 9. Ahmad Rassam and the December 1999 "Millennium Plot" 10. Some Problems with the Notion of a "Nexus" between Terrorists and Criminals
User avatar
semper occultus
 
Posts: 2974
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2006 2:01 pm
Location: London,England
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: New academic book on "parapolitics and criminal sovereig

Postby elfismiles » Sun Oct 08, 2017 7:57 pm

Thanks for the heads-up!
User avatar
elfismiles
 
Posts: 8511
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:46 pm
Blog: View Blog (4)

Previous

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 40 guests