A small number of activists (and poor, unemployed, disgruntled, etc.) are realizing that they have been wasting their time with their signs and letters-to-the-editor etc. and are moving to more traditional insurgency tactics. That is, they are becoming insurgents. This isn't my definition. The following is from
U.S. Army Field Manual FM 100-20, Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict / The Nature of Insurgency:
An insurgency is an organized, armed political struggle whose goal may be the seizure of power through revolutionary takeover and replacement of the existing government. In some cases, however, an insurgency's goals may be more limited. For example, the insurgency may intend to break away from government control and establish an autonomous state within traditional ethnic or religious territorial bounds. The insurgency may also only intend to extract limited political concessions unattainable through less violent means.
I've covered this before. Violent tactics against the American Corporate State are doomed to fail because the ACS enjoys a position of total dominace when it comes to perception management in these matters.
All students of insurgency must understand that overthrowing an existing regime by force is impossible unless the masses are behind the thing, at least in principal. In the U.S., would-be insurgents are simply pissing in the wind. The more miserable average Americans get, the more they cling to the state, their crappy jobs, their empty consumer lifestyle and their addictions.
Get them to support a revolution?
Which Americans? The tens of millions of who watch American Idol? Maybe the ones who do price comparisons on aerosol cheezepHood? The 61% who believe the Bible is literally true?
The point that any would-be insurgent must keep in mind is that Americans, in general, have fully internalized the axiom: Do as Dick Cheney says, not as Dick Cheney does. The corporate state doesn't even need to teach them to be this way. Most of the time, they spring from the womb in this state.
Additionally, my guess is that the insurgents would have more to fear from a mob of troglodyte Americans than Cheney's ninja suited minions. Threats to The Machine are interpreted by troglodytes as threats to their iPods, pills, pornography, video games, etc. They will support anything the government does to protect these core values. In other words: Any insurgency will be opposed by not only the corporate state, who's military, intelligence and PSYOP capabilities are almost unimaginable, AND the troglodyte masses who rely on the corporate state for their existence and their drugs:
UCLA will increase security for animal researchers because of a harassment campaign that included the attempted firebombing of a professor's home, the acting chancellor said.
"These activities have risen to the level of domestic terrorism, and that's what we should call them," Norman Abrams told the Los Angeles Times in Saturday's editions.
The school will increase security and try to reduce the time it takes police to respond to threats at the homes of researchers, Abrams said. It also will warn researchers of possible threats.
posted by Kevin at 6:22 PM