Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The fictional attack on the Michigan fusion center. Critiques of the chapter "Wolverines."

The chapter just posted has been fisked for error, factual and ideological, by folks and here are a couple:

"He hoped the owner would forgive him for what he was about to do with his prized possession, but he doubted it."

Typical collectivist, stealing whatever war materials he wants from the war's victims. The bands of knights support their campaigns against other bands of knights by stealing from the peasants. The Camelot military industrial complex never achieves its stated goal of peace, because then the pork would stop. Why don't you write a chapter where a bandit leader gets killed by his victim's illegal and effective private security during his attempted tax collection? That would be consistent with liberty.

Anonymous -- September 20, 2010 10:47 PM


The polite anarchist would, presumably, go ask the owner who is otherwise unknown to him and might be a regime supporter -- after all, Steven Spielberg is a collector of World War II armor -- if he would lend the vehicle in an enterprise that, given the environment, the government forces might kill him for if they found out? War presents awful moral choices by its very nature. I toyed with inserting a line or two about leaving the owner a scrip promising payment after the Restoration, but the author of the criticism above would have found that equally hypocritical. I would welcome a discussion by readers of how one carries out a successful war of resistance against a totalitarian leviathan without soiling one's hands in regard to property. Taking life of course calls for a different and much higher standard, and rightfully so. But here the criticism is in regard to property. How does one fight the larger evil without committing smaller evils? The CO expresses remorse for stealing the vehicle, differentiating himself from the collectivists who take property as part of their world view entitlement. But is that enough?

Another question: The entire mission is an exercise in the destruction of government property which has been taken by that government from its people. Presumably, the regime will extort the value of its replacement from those same people. Does the anonymous critic find that to be morally repugnant on the part of the resister as well?

I repeat, how do you fight such a war without infringing, at least in some way, upon the critic's pristine property principles?

Then there is this from Dedicated Dad:

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the time is long past when destroying a single installation would serve to eliminate databases such as this...

First: At a minimum, all data is backed up to some removable media - more and more often of late this means hard-disks. Backups are taken offsite at a minimum, in many cases to hardened, secure facilities designed to withstand a nuke-strike.

And that's just for "everyday" business-data.

Something like MIOC *PROBABLY* has a huge storage-array -- think hundreds of disk-drives in a huge "farm" -- which has a twin somewhere far removed from "home base."

The hardware involved is usually designed to "mirror" the entire farm -- the change of a single bit of data results in said bit also being changed on the mirror farm.

Sometimes there's a lag - a few milliseconds to a full second or two - between the updates, usually depending on the bandwidth allocated to the mirroring operation, but that's about it.

Usually, there's a contingency plan in place - businesses may allow a few hours (in the event of total destruction of the main data center) to be back in play with all critical functions online.

One can bet that anything labeled "national security" already has a full-on, 100% functional(though perhaps virtual) set of servers sitting idle, ready to resume immediately in the event of failure or destruction of the main data-center.

Bottom line: Makes for good fiction, proving the Resistance could pull off such a feat might even make for some pretty amazing psychological warfare, but otherwise the net result of a mission like this against a NS-related target would be to inconvenience a bunch of geeks, and perhaps cause some hiccups for a few days while the undiscovered bugs were worked out of the stand-by systems.

Even total destruction of all systems would only hamper operations for as long as it took to restore their backups.

This is why so many nations are developing cyber-warfare strategies and capabilities -- something your fictional folk might want to think about as well....

G*D -- now I just seriously depressed MYSELF...

DD


DD, you are pretty much correct technically and I knew that going in (I take my research seriously). So why did I write it the way I did?

First, recall that the entire point of writing Absolved is as a "useful dire warning," as David Brin puts it. Pat Frank wrote Alas, Babylon, for example, in the hope that if people understood how devastating a nuclear war with the Soviets would be that they would do their damnedest to prepare for one and hopefully by that preparedness avoid one.

But any story of "useful dire warning" has three audiences and a different message for each. For those who agree with the author and see the danger, it should spur their preparations for the perceived coming calamity. For those who were unaware of what was going on around them, the story should wake them up to the danger and begin preparations. And, perhaps more importantly, it should raise in the minds of the people who intentionally or unintentionally are driving the real-world conflict described in the story to the brink (whatever that is) the caution that such conduct may have personal consequences.

Pat Frank was no unilateral disarmament advocate when he wrote Alas, Babylon. Somewhere around this impending avalanche of a mess that is my office, I have an interview with Pat Frank right after his book came out that I found in an old yellowed newspaper. Asked who he wanted to read his book, he replied (And I'm probably paraphrasing here because I can't find the article and haven't read it in ages.): "The Russians. I want them to understand that no matter how weak the United States may seem or how indecisive some of our leaders act sometimes, that we still win our wars."

Now, with that in mind, go back and re-read the chapter Wolverines from the perspective of a mid-level bureaucrat in a fusion center. You may find it utterly fantastic, because it challenges everything you think you understand about yourself. You don't see yourself as a secret political policeman, even though you will admit that you and your agency do represent federalization of local and state law enforcement and thus puts them in the chain of responsibility for present or future federal tyranny. After reading it, you will still reject the notion that you are a traitor to the Founders' Republic, but you will be put on notice that others think you are. Others who are at least willing to discuss in a fictional setting the deliberate killing of people just like you. Remember Hannah Arendt's comment on Eichmann about "The banality of evil." Most Gestapomen were ordinary folks who kissed their wives and children goodbye in morning after breakfast, patted their dogs on the head and went forth to a JOB that they believed needed doing, like a municipal garbageman. They thought of themselves as patriotic Germans. They did not look in the moral mirror. And, like today's "anti-terrorism" cop, he thought he was on the right side of history, and, more importantly, the WINNING side of history.

What then of today's state and local cops who participate in the fusion centers? Merely introducing the idea between their ears that what they do is viewed as treason to the oath they took by others who will make it their business to reverse -- perhaps with personal consequences -- is a "goodness thing."

Count on this: Most of these folks who work in fusion centers are highly intelligent. They are also, the best of them, very curious. They wouldn't be intelligence analysts if they weren't. Now, one of the things that their federal bosses are convinced of is the "right wing terrorist." Apart from racial collectivists which they wrongfully (per the SPLC's "Narrative of 1995" which Prof. Churchill has indentified) lump in with constitutional militiafolk, they are, as we know our own hearts, absolutely wrong. We view ourselves rightly as the bulwark of ordered liberty, not a threat to it.

Ah, but here in this chapter of fiction is "proof" of their bosses' prejudices. Not seeing themselves as doing wrong in any way -- not even in some fictional showdown between federal tyranny and people who insist upon being left alone -- they will seize upon this chapter and distribute it to their fellows and subordinates. "Did you read this Vanderboegh thing about destroying fusion centers and killing cops?" they will ask. Missing the underlying point, they will still be circulating the message -- an inherently subversive message to their purpose -- to ANY and ALL fusion center employees, not just in Michigan where I'm SURE it is already fodder for water cooler chat, but EVERYWHERE.

Thus is the third audience of the "useful dire warning" recruited. Like a squeamish traffic expert bystander to a deadly car crash, they will not be able to look away from the fictional gore without first analyzing the facts presented, simply because they will perceive that it is one of them in the car. Merely getting a few of them thinking along these lines, if those few are well-enough placed, could help avoid the accident -- in this case, the accidental civil war.

Now, as Dedicated has pointed out, utterly destroying the physicality of a single fusion center, or group of fusion centers, will not likely destroy all the data.

But, in the first place, the data system is neither as "seamless" nor as "collaborative" as it seems -- something that the fusion center employees know themselves and something that the bosses and academic Heideggers ceaselessly complain about in public hearings and on the Internet. They demand more resources and more top-down "collaboration" to address the nagging inefficiencies at the Department of Pre-Crime.

Secondly (in our fictional future universe), the destruction of ANY fusion center, even if no data was lost to the federal domestic spies, would be a blow the entire system. Think. These centers represent hundreds of millions of investment in electronic and other infrastructure. The destruction of one, even only by EMP, would necessitate its replacement. And destruction by EMP, in a world of increasingly restricted government income streams and "meddlesome" politicians, would perhaps be even worse than by C-4. What do you do when you want to deny a bridge to an advancing enemy? You only blow it PARTWAY up. Enough so the enemy cannot use the damaged remains, but not so much that you help his reconstruction efforts by utterly destroying it. You leave enough useless wreckage that he has to waste time and effort and resources clearing it before starting the rebuilding.

A building left standing, but electronically gutted, would be an imposing piece of such wreckage. There is also the matter of will. Without the initial shock of 11 September 2001, they would never have received the acquiescence of the public to build such an Orwellian future. How then will they replace it when the taxpayers are tired, jaded and bled white?

In addition, there is the far greater psychological wreckage in the fictional fusion center employees' heads. Like the Doolittle raid was "a pinprick to the heart," an EMP attack (using a new technology demonstrating a hitherto unused Fourth Generation warfare capability on the part of the Restoration forces) on a fusion center would demonstrate to every regime employee that the enemy they fight is not as stupid or unsophisticated as they had imagined. If an enemy is audacious, brave and technically brilliant, he just may be smart enough to beat you. That thought, set loose among bright minds that have been intellectually surprised and emotionally shaken yet remain curious, is ultimately subversive to the purpose of their less intelligent, thuggish bosses who use their work product to target tyranny.

Finally, there are the limitations of posting a single chapter. In my head (and on paper) but necessarily unknown to the reader, the attack on the MIOC was mere cover for the larger plan to take down the tyrannical infrastructure on the part of my new Polish-American freedom fighter character, John Piasecki. (And yes, boys and girls, the name is no accident. Think about what a helicopter DOES.) All I can say is don't catch a cold while you are trying to work it out.

I hope this helps explain some of my seeming lapses.

Mike
III

37 comments:

Anonymous said...

ok, fiction, that is what it is, I thought a good read and intreging anyway. But, if in a real modern day III'per scenario we will be loaned and given items by the 10%'ers to help us (maybe old or newer stuff, tanks?) and we would be taking from the remains of where we created those encounters to further accomplish our mission. I am reminded of Red Dawn.....and the Patriot.
VETTOM III

Anonymous said...

I very much enjoyed the chapter and appreciate the psy aspect of the assault. The IT character coming to grips with realities from his heritage was very well done and stands out in my mind as the true warning in that the battlespace is or will contain many unknowns.

Cory

Slobyskya Rotchikokov said...

Two more thoughts...
regarding the murky morality of war time acquisitions ( remember Johnson's Motor Car by the Clancys and Makem?) I should mention that it is said that one of my relations was killed in helping a Jew and a German sympathizer to blow up the locomotive ( and a section of bridge) scheduled to be used to send Jews to a death camp to following morning. Three lives lost in destroying government property and in perhaps only delaying the events.... sadly, no one fights a war by the Marquis of Queensbury rules.

A second thought = not suggesting this, just a thought - if info supplied by the mole could have been used by the Wolverines computer expert to insert a virus into the gov software, which would indeed have been spread to other backup locations, a day or so before the strike, then the strike would have served a twofold purpose.
ONE - a distraction and coverup of the virus insertion, which would probably divert all attention of the evil PTBs until the virus had done most of its damage. Attack on multiple fronts, one being the major distraction for the others...
TWO -the brute shock of the attack, demonstrating the ease of penetration of even the more hardened targets, the public demonstration that retribution would be swift, overwhelming and irresistible, and the assassinations demonstrate that there ARE no safety zones for the gutless bastards who issue the orders.
Nemo Me Impugne Lacessit.

pdxr13 said...

Theft of vintage military equipment is the best overall for both the actives and the owner of the equipment. The owner has deniability of cooperation with the insurgents (true) and it's likely that he will either get his machine back with a caution to secure it better, or get an insurance payoff.

Wolverines acted honorably in allowing the guards to surrender and doing what was needed against those who wouldn't. Criminals would find it more convenient/desirable to leave no witnesses. I understand that leaving live witnesses (suffering somewhat from CS) provides a credible story for any investigator who cares to find out what happened.

If this is a war, there are legitimate targets, and a Fusion Center is among the most obvious.

EMP is the new WMD, better than a Neutron Bomb was alleged to be in the 1970's. What sci-fi book was it where the commies had a bomb that wiped out buildings and infrastructure without hurting people and the West had super-neutron bombs that left everything running and no one home?

Cheers.

Hollywood said...

Mike, you could pay for the vehicle with "Colonial Dollars" that would be worthless if you lose the war, and then regardless of winning inflate the currency so much that it is practically worthless.

Nay, never mind, that was already done the first time around. Like you said war is messy business, fought by fallible human beings...

I think it adds realism....

Be safe.

Anonymous said...

http://jasonkelly.com/2010/09/trillion-dollar-conspiracy/

Mike;
Look at this article, while it raises a LOT of consipacy issues, you may want to read this anyway. The link was on the Rawles Survival Blog.
thanks
Tom
aka VETTOM

parabarbarian said...

My problems with the chapter were mostly techno-geek nit-picking. For instance, while you don't describe your device in detail it seems to be omni-directional utilizing a capacitor bank to power the magnetron. I'm a little skeptical such a setup could generate enough power to do some of the damage listed.

OTOH, there is definitely a coolness factor there.

Anonymous said...

On property,
In war property is damaged or destroyed. It is the nature of the beast. What I think is important is that the restoration forces do what they can for those impacted. Maybe later chapters can have the Wolverines steal the LVT back and hide it for the original owner. After all now that his vehicle has been used in a major operation he will become a target of the OpFor and most likely his collecction will be taken from him.

Kyle Bennett said...

"I would welcome a discussion by readers of how one carries out a successful war of resistance against a totalitarian leviathan without soiling one's hands in regard to property."

War is what is left when reason is off the table. Morality depends on reason, and so there is none vis a vis the enemy.

Vis a vis third parties (usually put in the middle by that same enemy) you can't do war without soiling your hands, the trick is to do it without soiling your soul. If your plans depend, a-priori and deliberately on stealing property and killing innocents, you're lost, even if you win. If you have to do those things incidentally, you've wounded yourself, but you'll recover.

Anonymous said...

Well,
I liked it.
And I've been around IT (and .gov IT) long enough to know that even the best backup plans have holes in them and unexpected things go wrong at the worst time.

Something like this would be a significant blow, no matter how good the backups were.

Oakenheart said...

Suggestion -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator

Redleg said...

Is the book close to being finished yet?

Anonymous said...

I hate to be a nag, but when is the book coming out?

Xenophon said...

What Kyle Bennett stated is correct. As those who have actually engaged in small unit firefights know, if you lose, it is generally final. During WWII we set loose the best and most efficient killers on our enemies. But when they came home, they raised families, built industries, taught schools, and we're all the better for them. One has best prepare one's mind to see horrors and maybe to engage in them to survive. PTSD comes from not understanding the nature of war. As we contemplate the unthinkable, we need to review the YouTube videos of strikes on our enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq. We would be on the receiving end of them. How would we fight then? How many would fight for more than one day? Freedom would have a cost like 1,000 Cold Harbors. Would we still want it? Wolverines is a good piece, Mike. Maybe your hero could be bolstered by a little music from the Swedish band, Sabaton. Google Sabaton and then watch the YouTubes done to their song, "40-1".

Xenophon said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoQj8GGHNxU&feature=related

To save ya'll some time here's the link to the best video to be made to
"40-1"

And no, I'm not Polish, just an admirer of courage.

Allen said...

my only criticism is I wouldn't have used a Buffalo...maybe a LARC, alvis stalwart, or a "duck tours" DUKW.

the "duck tours" vehicle could have been used to get in close as a "party boat" all lit up, everyone having a good time, (and concealing the zodiacs right up until it hit the riverbank going full force. the confusion between disaster/accident and intentional ram would have slowed the OODA loop of the gaurds even more.

but that's more towards style than substance.

Anonymous said...

Having worked in government data centers, I can say that .gov is good at spending millions of dollars on redundant storage system that, 1) are rarely as robust as advertised, and 2) almost never tested.

It doesn't matter how expensive or fancy a backup system is, if the backups aren't checked then you can just about guaranty that they are no good. Just google chase bank computer failure, to see how a little glitch in their backups and database failure shut them down for almost a week.

Scott J said...

The only thing that strained my suspension of disbelief was the EMP taking out CDs.

A CD not in a drive should be impervious to EMP if I understand the science of both correctly.

As someone who has been involved in several exercises of a hot site backups like Dedicated Dad mentioned I know that even the best ones are a royal PITA to bring on line and a data center strike like you have written about would be a huge blow even with the best backus.

Dedicated_Dad said...

Mike,

No negativity was intended - I hope none was perceived.

Like PB, it was "techno-geekery" - that, and an irresistible opportunity to share some knowledge from my primary sphere of influence.

Also, I've gotta tell you -- I'm pretty proud that I caught the "psy-ops value" aspect as well -- and you should be too. See, I'd never have thought in such terms prior to finding your blog - and the fact that I now do is both directly and indirectly the result of your efforts.

And I'm just one in an innumerable list of people so enriched by our acquaintance with you. I'm sure the others appreciate it as I do!

All that said, I decided to brainstorm on this a bit.

The question is a difficult one:

How could one - theoretically, of course, and only discussed in the context better, more accurate "faction" - accomplish the goals of neutralizing the opfor's databases and seriously lowering their morale?

I've been gnawing on this all evening, and I can't really see any way that destruction of a physical plant - or even all of them - could do it.

Whether attempted with fire, water, electricity, magnetism, explosives or even good, old-fashioned brute human force, you'd never get past data archiving, distributed networks and cloud-computing. You'd tie 'em up for a while, but they'd soon be back online in a much more hardened facility, making it infinitely more difficult to try again.

That doesn't mean it couldn't be done, if one considers the old adage about the "pen" and the "sword."

What if we could "write" the solution, instead?

If a Mr. Piasecki existed, his best use would be to subtly corrupt the data -- peppering it with confusing, inaccurate, and utterly false entries.

The results could be rather severe, and (for the Restoration folk) entertaining as all hell.

Imagine:

* Raids -- complete with the usual dog-shooting, kitten-stomping, child-terrorizing (or even -killing) flash-bang tossing shock-and-awe tactics by real jackboots -- conducted on the homes of friends and family members of powerful people within the opfor agency and the tyrannical .gov

* Perhaps even the homes of some actual opfor agents being raided by other agencies/installations in the all-too-common-TODAY "wrong address" fiascos.

* A number of Opfor agents falsely identified as moles, resulting in total breakdown of trust -- nobody in the op-for could be SURE what color hat any other person was REALLY wearing.

* untold amounts of money and man-hours spent on surveillance of utterly clueless, 100% innocent - even collaborating - citizens, and fellow agents -- not to mention politicians, bureaucrats and other 2-legged vermin.

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea.

The goal would be not to attempt to destroy the database by making it cease to exist, but by turning into such a Charlie-Foxtrot of a spaghetti-pile that it could never be sorted out, and would need to be scrapped and redone pretty much from scratch.

Sorta like - oh... the NFRTR and others - like the no-fly-list - are right now!

Even better, making it look like every single agent in the opfor had a hand in creating the bad data would be trivial for someone with the requisite skills and system rights - necessitating a 100% re-vetting of all personnel from the Secretary of DHS to the newest maid or janitor!

IMAGINE the chaos!

If I were writing such a story, that's sure how I'd try to do it...

Only for Faction-of course...

DD

Jensko said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/business/15piasecki.html?_r=1

EJR914 said...

I just got done reading "Predator." Wow, what a story. I couldn't stop reading it. I was gripping my laptop so hard that my hand cramped up form the tension and suspense. You really know how to write, Mike. Its my favorite story so far.

I've got to admit, this needs to be made into a movie or a mini-series. Its just riveting. I can't help but pull for the good guys. After all, one day that is going to be us.

Anonymous said...

As someone who works with this kind of thing, the EMP as described would be underpowered and non-isotropic. It would not generated sufficient B-field to erase magnetic media beyond a meter or so given its described size and the limitations of present carbon foam supercapacitors.

An explosive flux compression device would have been better, but would have generated a signifcant conventional blast.

Introducing a computer virus or man in the middle attack via well publicized backdoors in the Cisco routers, then hosing down the place with methylmercaptan or another thiol compound would have had the same effect.

Cybrludite said...

"What do you do when you want to deny a bridge to an advancing enemy? You only blow it PARTWAY up. Enough so the enemy cannot use the damaged remains, but not so much that you help his reconstruction efforts by utterly destroying it. You leave enough useless wreckage that he has to waste time and effort and resources clearing it before starting the rebuilding."

Another analogy would be comparing the cleanup of Hurricane Andrew to that of Hurricane Katrina. Easier to rebuild when the storm left nothing but an empty concrete slab, than when it's left a soggy, moldy mess that you can't even tear down without gutting & doing mold remediation first.

Johnny said...

I agree with anon @5:57, to imagine that data backup and redundancy works as advertised is risible when you consider the empirical evidence.

As for the military surplus vehicle, isn't it effectively the case in USA that you don't really own military surplus unless it is classified as scrap and, in theory, they can ask for it back at any time?

http://www.govliquidation.com/terms.html

How can the Government sell something it doesn't actually own in the first place...

Little Sally Sunshine said...

I think Dedicated Dad hits a lot of interesting targets here...
especially the re-vetting of even the maids! I hear that cleaning crews are notoriously easy to recruit for such things, even going as far as installing venemous spiders in sensitive places :o)

Witchwood said...

While I will not be reading your novel, I believe I read that Colonel John Glover commandeered Durham boats so that Washington's army could cross the Delaware and crush the Hessians at Trenton. I'm not sure if the boats were returned afterward or not. Regardless, no boats = no victory at Trenton.

Personally, I think you damage your own mind and with it your chances of success in such a torturous dilemma over mere property. You have a few absolute moral lines that you will not cross (e.g. killing innocent non-combatants), and everything else must be given over to military necessity. This is not a game, and victory is by no means assured. It's a fool who does not seize every conceivable advantage.

The cost of defeat will be paid for decades, and sons will pay for the sins of their fathers.

PTSD comes from not understanding the nature of war.

I tend to agree. It is my opinion that the modern phenomenon of PTSD is brought on not so much by the nature of war itself, but by a government's attitude toward the wars it wages and the strategies and tactics that naturally flow from this attitude. To whit, hugely restrictive rules of engagement, no tolerance for initiative on the part of junior officers and NCO's, over-humanizing the enemy, and in some cases failing to differentiate between allies and enemies (think tribal politics in Afghanistan) or simply refusing to identify an enemy as such play a major role in forming PTSD within an unprepared mind. PTSD is a mostly foreign concept to armies that believe in themselves, their mission, and their methods.

Grumpyunk said...

As far as computer things I don't really understand. Read this - http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/327178

I can see the 4GW end.

CorbinKale said...

DD,

Your comments reminded me of a term I hadn't thought of in years. A 'self-licking ice-cream cone'. The tyranny enforcement machine would be turned into an entropic white elephant!

I can't stop smiling!

J. Croft said...

On an entertainment level I adored the Wolverines chapter as well as the entire Absolved series. However it's dangerous for us to assume in a real life situation that you could get a hold of vintage armor vehicles, zodiac boats, or happen to know people who "somehow" socked away train cars full of vintage firepower or, worse, an entire shipload of M14 rifles and recoilless rifles barely escaped from a defeated Taiwan(refer to previous chapters of Absolved...)

No what is likely if we depend on such luck is that we will lose. Because to win we need to be able to make our own war material. Weapons, munitions and make them better than the enemy's. That means having designs that can be built clandestinally yet be battlefield effective. We have to do this in the most effective police state in history, with a largely hostile, ignorant populace behind them.

You win wars by gaining ground and killing the enemy. For us that means winning hearts and minds. For us to do that, words and yes, videos, are not enough though there's always a place for propaganda. We have to show people they're NOT free. We have to show them what living in a truly Free society really is. We need a demonstrator town.

That means marshalling our meager resources and replicating what the GI's of Athens TN in 1946 did-politically... and then not drop the ball afterward like they did post election(Athens TN is now as corrupt as before the 46 election). No, we don't have that luxury; we have reform, broadcast our results as long as communications are open and expand as aggressively as possible.

The rest will follow.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for taking my criticism seriously.

Some collateral damage is unavoidable in wartime. One example of collateral damage is the bullets that must have gone into occupied buildings at Lexington and Concord. It is "wartime" to whatever extent that theft victims don't have the ability to put an accused thief on trial in front of a jury of his victims' peers.

There are very strong incentives for rebels to set themselves up as a new government, with a monopoly on defense, and conscription and taxation and paper money and a military industrial complex and oops, now they are the American replacements for British aristocrats with their new constitution, or the Confederacy. Orwell wrote in the book inside 1984 that the normal progress of history is for a portion of the middle class to displace an upper class which has lost control, becoming the new upper class, nothing otherwise changing.

Yes, replacements for the capabilities the rebels destroy will be stolen at gunpoint by organized criminals. Liberty forces can keep their hands clean by focusing on ruining the tax collection capability. The Whisky rebellion stripped away the lies. If you fight against the tax collectors, you are for liberty. If you fight for the tax collectors, then you want to be the new aristocrats. Liberty takes supplies from the tax collectors, which strengthens liberty's position twice. Aristocrats take supplies from the tax payers, which strengthens the aristocrats' position twice. Which side are you on?

Anonymous said...

Consider the following list as ordered from least to most effective in achieving liberty:

1. The Judean suicide squad. 2. Nonviolent protesters allowing themselves to be beaten and crippled. Bhuddist monks setting themselves on fire. 3. American ghetto blacks rioting and burning down their own homes and businesses. 4. Union cannon fodder facing Confederate cannon fodder in lines, while Southern planters and Northern industrialists made bets on the outcome from safety. Hurrah for the poor white boys who fight our rich man's war! 5. Fusion center cannon fodder with college degrees facing threeper cannon fodder with college degrees in squads in a fictional raid on an office building to control intel, while the same Socialist bankers and industrialists who support both sides make bets on the outcome from safety. Jeff Davis says to wipe it, but Google'll buy we're told. We'll compromise our principles, IF THEY PAY IN GOLD! 6. Toothless law-abiding MLK civil rights marches. Toothless law-abiding threeper armed demonstrations. 7. Everything Britain did in India, and everything America is doing in the Middle East. 8. The American colonials preferentially targeting the British officers. 9. The American colonials burning down the well-known Tories' houses, which was easy, rather than fighting the Tories' armies, which was dangerous. 10. Gun blogs. 11. Wikileaks. 12. Lysander Spooner showing people that the core idea of government is evil. 13. An anonymous web. 14. An anonymous blog. 15. An anonymous ebay. 16. An anonymous bank and credit card payment system. 17. A million people deciding government is bogus, and resolve to never pay taxes to anything ever again. And now we won't repay our loans from all those Chinese banks!

Does this give you some story-writing ideas?

Anonymous said...

Mike,

Opening for critique and posting about it will sharpen the chapter, but will drain you from being creative.

I loved this chapter.

One nit in your response......what war have we WON lately. WON as in TOTAL RECOGNIZED THEY SIGNED IT TO GET IT OVER, VICTORY??

I am sick of draws and pulling out.

Just my .02

EDSG
www.everydaysurvivalguy.com

Anonymous said...

One nitpick,...No drives,personnel or backups were seized (not copied no time for that)militia cannot exist without signals division.
You passed up the equivalent of
WW II grabbing an enigma off a scuttled U-boat.

Fusion

verification
Minsest (mindset?)

Anonymous said...

Just take off the head... eyes rolling.
Seriously, go after the management and you are way ahead. Officers are targeted on the battlefield, well...

Anonymous said...

Here is another story idea.

Get five million like-minded folk to promise to (a) stop paying taxes, (b) stop voting and respecting government, and (c) not get on boxcars to prison. Five million is too many to digest militarily if they have more self-esteem and will to live than the German Jews did.

Then it doesn't matter what voters do in November. Not the newly un-illegal voters, the Muslim voters, the federal reserve, the New York Times editorial page, the United Nations, or anybody else. Five million is too many to digest militarily.

Statists everywhere, which includes most of the fundamentalist Christians who want a Christian theocracy, will do the Exorcist head spinning spitting pea soup thing at this existential challenge to their moral authority. So what. Five million is too many to digest militarily. Turn off the TV talking heads and go grill some hamburgers over Korans, the good life has started. Now that the ball and chain of government has been rejected, the entire middle class will find the industrial revolution has been a dazzling success. Any normal person willing to work can make themselves independently wealthy inside a decade.

Anonymous said...

It's not about destroying the data, it's about destroying the attitudes of tyranny. Peaceful means are best, but other options can never be taken off the table as the simple possibility of other than peaceful means to eradicate tyranny may well keep things peaceful. Capisce?

Bob Katt

Anonymous said...

Good idea to know your enemy - by name and general location. Leviathan is not one big beast, it is a million tiny ones.

There are professors in the Michigan higher education system who have made big bucks teaching the finer points to what have become ... political secret policemen working in an increasingly Orwellian Department of Pre-Crime.... The quotes I put in the mouth of the fictional professor, for example, were actually said by a real professor and, if you can figure out who he is, you may find them on variuous web sites.

All of the quotes from the chapter can be found at the following site:

http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/files/RIC/Publications/carter.pdf

"The absence of evidence is not the absence of a threat" Page 4

"What is more important, protecting an American community from a terrorist attack or protecting individual civil rights?" Page 9

"Sometimes the 'legal way' may not seem like the 'right way.'" Page 9

"The most fundamental principle of ethical behavior is 'Do No Harm' but one of the problems is the definition of 'harm" and "it is often based on one's perspective and personal philosophy of what is important." Page 9

Isn't the Internet a great tool?