boycott everything

Kim Walker · at 12:18 PM

The Egyptian Struggle- An Anarchist Perspective - Blogs - AmeriKan Konspiracy - Free Speech Conspiracy Forum: "From an Anarchist perspective...

For those among us who have long struggled to understand and define Anarchy you now have your answer.

The anti-state activists in Tahrir Square are coming to exemplify the best of Anarchism- natural Syndicalism. They began as a popular resistance movement and have now come under siege by agents of established government. It's their response to this condition that is so hopeful in terms of the promise of Peoples' Rule in the last analysis. What has evolved among them? Ad hoc syndicates and incipient soviets dedicated to mutual care and survival. That is what typifies their exhilarating struggle. In essence they are now an Anarchist Commune- an orderly assemblage fighting the chaos introduced by the coercive tactics of the state. The feelings of natural freedom inherent in such activism will have changed the activists forever, placing them permanently outside the parameters of mindless patriotism and subservience to Leviathan. What we're witnessing in the Square is nothing less than the ideal of Anarchy- the bringing forth of creative order from the chaos of subjugation.

'But that's no more true than saying the universe is ineluctably bound to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In the end it's all an entropic stew but in the meantime we got some serious livin' to do.' Arthur Afterburn

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Kim Walker · at 11:15 AM

Middle East to Global Revolution - Wishful Thinking? - Blogs - AmeriKan Konspiracy - Free Speech Conspiracy Forum: "As for hunger, considering that corporations and big banks which now, more than ever, are at fault for the hunger and the hunger to come are the ones backing governments and using them as puppets, I think hunger and the rising price of oil will eventually either bring on revolution or martial law. It may take 20 years, but unless something big happens to change things for the better, that's the future.

Quote Originally Posted by BE2 View Post
The opposite is more likely true. They are adept at tossing grain to the sheep. No sheep- no wool. A shepherd doesn't starve his flock. The corporations suffer from the same illusion as you- that hunger will spark a revolution. That's why they feed the people. But what they, and you, fail to recognize is that hunger is just as likely to produce docility as rage. The same can be said of bread and circuses. In the end though it is the suppression of the peoples' humanity that provokes revolt.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Kim Walker · at 11:13 AM

AmeriKan Konspiracy - Free Speech Conspiracy Forum - Blog Entries - Blogs: "Padilla and Mubarak
by
BE2
on 02-28-2011 at 07:49 AM (BENewsCorp™ Blogs Here)

This relates to this tread.

The suspension of Habeas Corpus is unfortunately permitted by the sloppiest thinking in the Constitution. Article 1 states in part, 'The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.' Notice that Habeas is not even referred to as a right in that clause but rather as simply a 'privilege.' Suspended for purposes of 'public safety?' And while it's commendable ...

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Kim Walker · at 11:12 AM

Behind the Arab Revolt Is a Word We Dare Not Speak - Blogs - AmeriKan Konspiracy - Free Speech Conspiracy Forum: "Behind the Arab Revolt Is a Word We Dare Not Speak
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4 Comments
by
boycotteverything
on 02-28-2011 at 09:39 AM (65 Views)

Quote Originally Posted by BE2 View Post
It's unfortunate that this contains no reference to Marx inasmuch as his (re)discovery of the Material Dialectic was informed by a previous and similar awakening- the European Spring of 1848. The echoes and fingerprints of history are found all over the noisy exuberance of the new Arab Revolution. What complicates the Marxist interpretation of the events is the admixture of the Islamic dialectic which, of course, Marx never envisioned. And what are the constituents of the Islamic Dialectic that complicate and enrich this new revolution? Submission, Charity, and Jihad. Those three principles elevate this revolution beyond the Marxist classic revolution in new ways that transcend the predictability assumed by Marxist theory while not nullifying the essential laws of Dialectical Materialism.

Pilger misses this (or ignores it) and that's not surprising to me since his focus has always been on the inevitable and predictable consequence of Capitalistic contradiction. That is the limited analysis of Marxist orthodoxy and the reason that Marx always maintained his theory applied most essentially to France and Germany- the milieu w

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Kim Walker · at 11:10 AM

AmeriKan Konspiracy - Free Speech Conspiracy Forum - Recent Blogs Posts - Blogs: "Originally Posted by Snow Crash
It (jihad) actually means 'struggle'...
Quote Originally Posted by BE2 View Post
That is exactly what it means. Internal and external struggle. In the case of this new revolution it means the struggle for self-determination and human rights. That is the best of jihad. From a Marxist perspective struggle

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Kim Walker · at 11:07 AM

Pope exonerates Jews for Jesus' death - Blogs - AmeriKan Konspiracy - Free Speech Conspiracy Forum: "Well I suppose Benedict takes his identification with the Olivine sect of the Benedictines seriously. Peacemakers. This forgiveness really is a confirmation of John the 23rd's rejection of Jewish Deicide. I think he also has a strong sense that end times are at hand. Recall the Apostolic Constitution of 2009 inviting the Anglican Church to rejoin the Roman Church unconditionally. He has made similar overtures to the Orthodox Churches. Gathering the flocks for the immanent eschaton? I think so. Is he also mindful of the prophecies of Saint Malachy concerning the end of the RC Church in our day? That the Olivine is next to last? I'd have to think that he is. Before becoming Pope, Benedict was the head of the Inquisition- and these are likely the matters that he concerned himself with.

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Kim Walker · at 8:13 AM

Re: The Unithread is here!

Quote:

Not a police state yet, be patient, we are working on it.

HP, this is an incipient police state like none ever before imagined- not by Orwell, not even by Huxley. Here, even though we can mitigate it to a certain degree, we volunteer evidence of our own sedition. We give ourselves up to the GoogleBorg and rejoice when they republish our subversive discussions for the benefit of the IC collectors- and for the benefit of our own conceit. Some vaguely sense the repercussions, while others are too shallow to see anything beyond their next fix. But there will be a reckoning- of that we can be certain. Certainly there's much to be said for Jack's and Snow's recognition of the pressing inevitability of fascist usurpation- the brutal tactics in the mendacious cause of conformity. We see it, we feel it and we protest against it. But there's a tenor of captivity that's even more profound and pernicious- and novel. A paradigm that is sensed rather than felt. The government watchers and their enablers seem to be benign and go unnoticed while their garrote slowly tightens around the collective neck of reasonable polity. By ignoring that we are complicit in our own captivity.

__________________
sock of Cartoon and proud members of the LLF.
'sometimes nuthin' is a cool hand.' Luke

Quote:

Wait.....You're a draft dodger. Carry on.

Lex 2009

Quote:

"We are a country whose greatest science minds are devoted to solving the conundrum of how many gallons of vile crud need to be burned in order to fly one contraption, three men and a bomb from Blefuscu to lilliput."

General Striker

worship the seal

Kim Walker · at 8:12 AM

Re: The Unithread is here!

John Hicks awakens.

Quote:

I have nagging questions that bother me about the whole Source A thing.......why bring it only to the people who study Ufology? Why does this type of info again and again get directly targeted to online Ufo communities? Why is this not going into newspapers? At least get George Knapp involved. Outside of visiting this forum, no one discusses, cares, knows about, or gives a rats patootie about any Secret UN meeting or Source A. It is like it was designed just for little ole us. The Pickerings have a bar in a major city with plenty of professional journalists. Some of them are probably new young blood that would love to sink their teeth into this and at least attempt to verify some of it. But it seems like that is a no no. It is just for us little forum dwellers to discuss and discuss until 2017...........wow!

John's question is critical: "Why bring it only to the people who study Ufology? Why does this type of info again and again get directly targeted to online UfO communities?" The answer, I believe, lies in IC Collections Agents methods of enabling, manipulating and studying the Ufer petri dish forums such as OM. It appears that Jed, a former OM moderator, finally has a sense of his forum members having been reduced to little more than lab rats by proactive CIA operatives who have conspired to co-opt and subvert the site for their own purposes. The purpose? Hold onto your hats- to emulate the secret seditious methods of the silent ET invasion. In a sense that would not be far from the mark it can be said that the worst fears of Gary Barker have come to fruition. The Men in Black are in actuality unexceptional, middle aged men in pin-striped suits. The only question that remains- and it the largest question of all- is at whose behest do these agents work? Are they ours or theirs? Who can we trust? Is their publication of a picture of the Saint Francis Church as a representation of a Serponian outpost designed to fool the lab rats or bewilder them? Is such obvious fraud designed for the purpose of separating out the credulous 'true believers' for further indoctrination and future pro-action on their behalf? It would appear so. And what is the glue used by these agents to maintain the integrity of their flocks? The promise of a fatuous 'Disclosure' that will never come about. That promise has also taken on religious implications and has become conflated with the inherrent yearning of all true believing CTers to be counted among the 'raptured' in the approaching denouement of history. The role of savior is filled by one Dan T. Smith in the OMer community. Note that he has even referred to himself as the final Messiah in his long and tortured discourses on eschatology- a messiah who also admits to be on the control of a CIA handler by the name of Ron Pandolfi. Smith makes no secret of this connection but rather revels in it.

John Hicks is finally sensing all this but has yet to fully understand the implications. I look for his eventual silencing by the OM moderation team just as they've seen fit to silence other members and syndicates who have attempted to expose their cultist alliance with the post-modern MIBs.

I would ask all Amkoids who are still a members there to publish the above analysis on their forum in the interests of truth.

__________________
Luddite Liberation Front

Kim Walker · at 6:44 AM

China warns against Obama-Dalai Lama meeting - Yahoo! News

Boycott China!

China warns against Obama-Dalai Lama meeting

By Chris Buckley and Ben Blanchard Chris Buckley And Ben Blanchard – Wed Feb 3, 3:04 am ET

BEIJING (Reuters) – China warned President Barack Obama on Wednesday that a meeting between him and the Dalai Lama would further erode ties between the two powers, already troubled by Washington's arms sales to Taiwan. The White House confirmed on Tuesday that Obama would meet the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader reviled by Beijing as a separatist for seeking self-rule for his mountain homeland. China's angry response reflected deepening tension between the world's biggest and third-biggest economies, with Beijing noting that President Hu Jintao himself urged Obama not to meet the exiled Tibetan leader. Ma Zhaoxu, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, said his government "resolutely opposes the leader of the United States having contact with the Dalai under any pretext or in any form." During Hu's summit with Obama in Beijing last November, the Chinese leader "explained China's stern position of resolutely opposing any government leaders and officials meeting the Dalai," said Ma. "We urge the U.S. to fully grasp the high sensitivity of the Tibetan issues, to prudently and appropriately deal with related matters, and avoid bringing further damage to China-U.S. relations," said Ma. China's ire at the White House announcement was predictable, as was the White House's confirmation of the meeting, which has long been flagged. But the flare-up comes soon after Beijing lashed Washington over a $6.4 billion U.S. weapons package for Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing deems an illegitimate breakaway province. It also comes during Sino-U.S. tensions over the value of China's currency, trade protectionism and Internet freedoms. BEIJING GETS PUSHY Beijing has become increasingly assertive about opposing the Dalai Lama's meetings with foreign leaders, and the issue is a volatile theme among patriotic Chinese, who see Western criticism of Chinese policy in Tibet as meddling. Protests over Chinese rule in Tibet that upset the London and Paris legs of the torch relay for the 2008 Beijing Olympics drew angry counter-protests by Chinese abroad and demonstrations in China urging boycotts of French goods. When French President Nicolas Sarkozy would not pull out of meeting the Dalai Lama while his country held the rotating presidency of the European Union in late 2008, China canceled a summit with the EU and there were Chinese calls for boycotts of French goods. On Tuesday, a Chinese Communist Party official said any meeting between Obama and the Dalai Lama "would seriously undermine the political basis of Sino-U.S. relations." The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese Communist Party forces who entered the region from 1950. He says he wants true autonomy for Tibet under Chinese sovereignty, but Beijing says his demands amount to seeking outright independence. Previous U.S. presidents, including Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, have met the Dalai Lama, drawing angry words from Beijing but no substantive reprisals. China's latest statement did not mention any specific retaliation over Obama's planned meeting. "I think it indicates their nervousness in the issue of Tibet ... the wider world recognizing that there is problem in Tibet and China should do something about it," said Thubten Samphel, spokesman of the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamsala, northern India. The White House shrugged off Beijing's earlier warnings about the meeting, which may happen as early as this month. "The president told China's leaders during his trip last year that he would meet with the Dalai Lama and he intends to do so," White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters. "We expect that our relationship with China is mature enough where we can work on areas of mutual concern such as climate, the global economy and non-proliferation and discuss frankly and candidly those areas where we disagree." The United States says it accepts that Tibet is a part of China and wants Beijing to open up dialogue with the Dalai Lama about the future of the region. But a Chinese foreign policy analyst said the response from Beijing, increasingly assertive on what it sees as core concerns, would be tougher than Washington anticipates. "China wants to change the rules of the game," Yuan Peng, head of US studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times, a Chinese newspaper. "Though the U.S. has previously sold weapons to Taiwan and met the Dalai Lama, and we've
then railed at the United States, this time there'll be true cursing and
retaliation."

(Additional reporting by Reuters Television in Dharamsala; Editing by Nick Macfie

Kim Walker · at 6:32 AM

From The American Conservative. Brownshirts at the door?

The lives of genuine conservatives in Britain have been made much harder by the recent growth of the British National Party, a sordid and disreputable group with its origins in racial obsessions and Holocaust denial. Its success, achieved by faked reasonableness and slick PR, ha seemed to confirm the liberal Left’s view that the Right is just one step away from Hitlerism, steeped in prejudice and loutish stupidity.This is a grave burden to proper, patriotic conservatives, and I am ceaselessly amazed at how many people are taken in. Perhaps a few words of explanation and background are in order for any on the far side ofthe Atlantic who might have been beguiled.Imagine a political party where the ex-leader launches an investigation into his successor because he thinks he may be Jewish. There is, infact, no need to imagine. The British National Party’s podgy chieftain,Nick Griffin, actually had his ancestry probed for alleged Jewishness by the organization’s former Fuehrer, the late John Tyndall.

Kim Walker · at 6:28 AM

How exactly do/will they control us?

That we don't know. Nor can we answer the larger question of 'why?' For many years I was on the side of the 'explorer' hypothesis. I figured it was a scientific endeavor- that we were being studied just as we study penguins and lizards. What changed my mind was the testimony of experiencers beginning with the Hills. The deeper I looked- considering the work of Jacobs and Hopkins and Mack- and the further manipulation of Ufology by a strange assortment of intelligence agents (operating in ways not dissimilar to the methods of the silent invaders- who do they serve?) the more I became convinced that this phenomenon was not only real- but immediate. I have come to an understanding that the US Government has studied this problem in depth for the last 63 years and that those who are most responsible for the study have been compromised and co-opted by the very subject of their study. There is a Majestic 12 and there is ongoing contact. And that circumstance, above all else, should worry us. Immersion in the study of Ufology should not be taken lightly nor by the faint of heart.

From an interview with David Jacobs On "The Threat"

http://aliensandchildren.org/InterviewwithProf.htm

Is this what the government knows? Is this the real core story? I think David nails it. He hasn't written on the subject in over 10 years even though his research continues. Is that because he's concluded that there's nothing that can be done about this silent invasion? Yes, and the very thought both stuns him and depresses him. The Earth is slowly and inexorably being incorporated into a Borg. This the reason that any Disclosure will take on a religious and eschatological quality despite the efforts of Exo-polity. The phenomenon can not be controlled and resistance, or even deflection, will ultimately prove to be futile. Don't want to face it? Who can blame you? Maybe it's best to live out these last years immersed in the illusion of freedom laughing at the prospect of incorporation into a malevolent and highly strange new paradigm. "Oh there's nothing to it. Oh it's all just bullshit." Let that denial serve you well. 'Denial Macht Frei,' will serve as a fitting epitaph for the sound and fury show. C'est la vie.

Kim Walker · at 6:14 AM

The first step in the Boycott of Everything is the boycott of popular culture. By popular culture I mean the 'spectacle' that's given us by the ruling class as a substitute for authentic existence. The most obvious among these is of course is the rampant consumerism that you've mentioned- but that's only one facet of the problem. If one were to incline towards the principle of 'taking only from existence that which we need' the problem solves itself. But such principle requires serious consideration of authentic needs to start with. We need to be serious about life and its continuance and reject everything that contradicts that basic constraint, as Boycotteverything has indicated ad nauseum on these little stitch and bitches for the better part of the last decade. What is required is a study and an immersion in process and a rejection of snap-shot reality- a realization that we are not tourists here in the Disneyland of the mind. What is required is an overcoming of temporal morality and an approach to transcendent Ethics. Will must give way to Imagination and the real revolution can then proceed. Che said, "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the real revolutionary is motivated by great feelings of love." That's a decent point of departure. The next step in the process then must be the contemplation of the meaning of 'love' per se or his entire argument has no meaning. It has been said that one must 'love oneself' but this is untrue. Real love is a matter of loving everything that is 'not self.' You can see where this leads. What we require in order to love is nothing less than purging the 'self' as a quality of the loved. To love without regard for self is the highest calling and overcomes the conundrum of 'will' and trivial morality that has led humanity to our present nihilistic impasse. So the boycott of everything can also be reasonably expressed as the boycott of self in the first instance. Self preservation gives way to altruism in such a regime- and opens the door to meaningful existence and immersion in process.

Kim Walker · at 6:09 AM

Radio broadcasting began in 1906. The signals betrayed the existence of earth civilization to any advanced ET worlds with the capacity to intercept the signals originating from this planet. The Roswell visitation, I feel, may have been the direct consequence of such interception. That being the case, the Roswell crafts would have originated no more than 41 light years from earth. At this point in time the earth would most likely to have become known to, and visited by, other ET worlds within 104 light years of our solar system. It is also my feeling that the atomic explosions of 1945 taken in conjunction with the radio and television broadcasts would definitely be of interest to any highly developed ET civilization within the 65 light year limits of speed of light signal emanation. Any visiting ET explorers will also no doubt recognize that our species is close to becoming space travelers ourselves. The question then arises: are we perceived as a curiosity or a threat?

And it's also worth noting that the entire case lay dormant for 40 years before it was revived by serious Ufologists like Stan Friedman in the 80s. It was one of those anomalous events that Charles Fort would have called the 'damned.' Don Keyhoe never mentioned it in his UFO expositions in the early 50s. As it turns out all the records of the 509th were mysteriously lost soon after Friedman's research was published. There was and continues to be a tight cover-up in place by the US Gov. What are they covering up? Mogal balloon tests? Crashed V-2 rockets? After 60 years would such cold war nonsense still be worth covering up? The General Twining Memo explains everything in that regard. He concluded in 1947 that we were dealing with ET phenomena and an incipient invasion against which our armed forces had no defense. That was and still is the reason for the cover up.

Kim Walker · at 5:35 AM

The first step in the Boycott of Everything is the boycott of popular culture. By popular culture I mean the 'spectacle' that's given us by the ruling class as a substitute for authentic existence. The most obvious among these is of course is the rampant consumerism that you've mentioned- but that's only one facet of the problem. If one were to incline towards the principle of 'taking only from existence that which we need' the problem solves itself. But such principle requires serious consideration of authentic needs to start with. We need to be serious about life and its continuance and reject everything that contradicts that basic constraint, as Boycotteverything has indicated ad nauseum on these little stitch and bitches for the better part of the last decade. What is required is a study and an immersion in process and a rejection of snap-shot reality- a realization that we are not tourists here in the Disneyland of the mind. What is required is an overcoming of temporal morality and an approach to transcendent Ethics. Will must give way to Imagination and the real revolution can then proceed. Che said, "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the real revolutionary is motived by great feelings of love." That's a decent point of departure. The next step in the process then must be the contemplation of the meaning of 'love' per se or his entire argument has no meaning. It has been said that one must 'love oneself' but this is untrue. Real love is a matter of loving everything that is 'not self.' You can see where this leads. What we require in order to love is nothing less than purging the 'self' as a quality of the loved. To love without regard for self as the highest calling and overcomes the conundrum of 'will' and trivial morality that has led humanity to our present nihilistic impasse. So the boycott of everything can also be reasonably expressed as the boycott of self in the first instance. Self preservation gives way to altruism in such a regime- and opens the door to meaningful existence and immersion in process.

Kim Walker · at 6:01 AM

Doctors Without Borders | MSF USA

Kim Walker · at 6:53 AM

Kim Walker · at 6:45 AM

Philosophy and Ufology

'What the fuck was that?' defines Ufological enquiry. Three questions follow by logical extension and form the impetus for the entire field of speculation.

1. Where do they come from?
2. How did they get here? and-
3. What do they want?

The entirety of the vast body of Ufer literature is devoted- depending on the relative ambition of the author- to answering one or more of those three questions. It's interesting that those very same queries also form the basis of all Philosophical, Metaphysical and Scientific investigation regarding the nature of existence per se.

Drake's Equation and Fermi's paradox are typical of the concomitant blending of the fields. Both beg the largest of questions and demonstrate the futility of scientific method regarding a cohesive theory- the answer to the questions they pose. And why? Because both are based in presuppositions that are themselves unproven. It's the nature of presuppositions to be assumptions derived from anecdotal data. That's actually the contradiction that lies at the heart of all Ontological hypothesis and it necessarily substitutes 'belief' for 'proof' as the foundation of Theory. Such is the nature of human endeavor to provide a proof of any existents beyond the brackets of Logic and is the reason that rationalists insist that logic does not apply to the 'real world' except by the (tenuous) extrapolation of analogy.

So this is the Epistemological dilemma in a nutshell: Every speculation concerning existence is ultimately founded in nothing more 'proven' than a leap of faith. Why should the study of Ufology escape conformity to this universal conundrum?

Does all of this mean that, despite the contradictions and the futility, that the questions ought not be even asked in the first place? Certainly there are those who would say precisely that- that adherence to rational skepticism precludes flights of imaginative speculation. I'm not among them for one simple reason- a simple choice, really- a choice to be curious about the mind of God.

Kim Walker · at 9:20 AM

© General Striker News Service, 2009

Econ 101

The US has completed a de facto repudiation of debt. How was this possible and what does it matter? It's possible because capital is essentially amoral. Debt has no other reality than as a monetary instrument regardless of the importunate protests of the lender. Debt is no more than a matter of record keeping. It only becomes overbearing and consequential when it has become imbued with the quality of moral obligation- which is essentially nothing more than a refutation of reality. This is so because money is conjured out of thin air and depends for its value on nothing more substantial than faith. Faith in the value of currency is all that stands between wealth and penury. This is so for nations as well as individuals. It can be said that economic value is actually derived from the production of commodities and, as Marx and the rest of the civilized world would have us believe, the labor required for that very production. But this is not so and has never been so. Economic value is actually determined by the records of bookkeepers. And therefore both accumulation of wealth and the onerous bonds of debt are equally illusory figments. Freedom from economic shackles is simply a matter of tossing the books on the ash bin of history. It is the case that those who are imprisoned by monetary economy must be complicit in their own captivity in order for the bars of the gaol to remain secure. The worst nightmare for the rich is the waking of the people from the cloying hypnosis brought about by the political magicians in their employ. It is of such stuff that economic depressions are constructed. Economic depression is freedom in the last analysis.

Kim Walker · at 7:53 PM

After a brief time to reflect on the most recent Koidal Drama I offer this synopsis.

Follow this foodfight at Amkon.

Even before our pizza-faced Quickie Mart slurpee jerker saw fit to accuse BE of issuing threats against the community there was another threat, a real threat, isssued in our name. It began with that most heinous of crimes- that of expropriating Hissels’ very name. In a pique of sanctimonious indignation Pack decided it was a good idea to force his nemesis to demonstrate some obligatory regimen of obeisance and contrition by stealing his very name- creating a website falsely attributed to Hissel that would link anyone searching his band back to the 200 page record of his humiliation at Amkon. The threat? Bow to me come to me with hat in hand, duly apologetic, for re-education. If you refuse- rest assured that your identity now belongs to Pack for the long war of endless torment.

Hazel and the famous Wall of Type

Who was this guy, Hissel, and what was he up to? Hazel answered that mystery early on. Averred she- this is a child at war with his own reality. MissA wondered if he were not a Raskolnikov. But I think that was not that. Hazel’s assessment was that he was in fact more of a Holden Caulfield lashing out at the electronic phonies who inhabit the internetz- and the real world beyond. And with that I agree.

What exactly was his Wall of Type?

What did it say and what was its purpose? To answer that question it is perhaps telling to consider not what it was but rather what it was not. It was not coherent Philosophy or a prolegomena to any Philosophical analysis. It was a manifesto, a spat slogan, a broadside, a shot across the bow of the community. It was not designed to enlighten us but rather to bring attention to a dysfunctional, generic teen-aged mal-content. It said, in effect, I am not You. I am a Necropulse, dead yet breathing, look at me- make me real. Hazel implied all this and she was correct.

The shameless attack

And our response to this perceived challenge? Marginalization, a demand for contrition. In short- gang rape. The leader of the gang?
Disguised as some sort of perverse minister, none other than Pack. For most of the Amkoids, the shitfest was good fun. Nothing serious happening here- just a rapidly tiring mouse for the big cats to toy with for a time. But there was also a moment, shameless in it’s degree of manipulation and degradation, when a line was crossed from playful tossing to sadism. It was the point when Hissels’s very name, the aggregation of his reality, was stolen from him. All your bases are now belong to us. Justice henceforth devoid of mercy. Your being, itself, appropriated for our own uses. This was no ordinary threat- no ‘we’ll beat your sill ass if you don’t comply’ kid of threat. No- this was an existential threat. ‘Be us or be nothing.’ It went well beyond Ducky’s absurd chest thumping challenge, well beyond Mojo’s incisive analysis, well beyond MissA’s motherly comfort, well beyond BE’s cross admonition concerning the use of the word ‘jew’ as a pronoun. The theft of the guy’s identity was more than that- it was an attack on the soul.

The slurpee jerker’s reaction

When I called attention to this very real threat of usurpation, naturally I was called for my own hypocrisy by none other than our Admin of the Year- Skunk. ‘Threat? Well what about you threatening the members here for years?’ he scolded. If there is one certainty in life it is that Skunk will always carry the water for his little gaggle of colleagues regardless of the merits of their positions. His approach is always the same- the proverbial. “So’s your old man.” Unable as he is to formulate any real analysis he relies on the very same method as Hissel to justify his inflated view of his own importance- the Manifesto. But unlike Hissel he does not defer to a Wall of Type- he’s incapable of that. His method has always consisted of carrying the piss bucket for the good ol’ boyz- whether they require one or not. That he could accuse me of issuing threats against the community is nothing short of blood libel. It is not simply untrue but a gratuitous and self-serving lie- the resort of an angsty sophomore when reason is beyond reach.

What should be done?

Hissel’s name should be given back to him. Period. This shameless and vindictive act of electronic theft is unbecoming of a member of Amkon, especially a staff member. Skunk should be shitcanned as an admin. If the rest of the admins, including the semi-retired Mojo, decide that he needs to be replaced there are several good choices here. My own choice would be MrPenny or Homingpigeon or both. Other than that- carry on, kids, and smoke em if ya got em.

Kim Walker · at 12:29 PM

This just in from Apple

Miniature Nuclear Reactor Developed to Power New Iphones...

United Nuclear Labs of Albuquerque, NM has revealed a miniaturized nuclear power module for the Apple Iphone. The module runs on Element 115 and is smaller than a match head yet contains more power than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Apple has announced that the device will be included on all new Iphone 32 Gig and higher 3GS units shipping as of July 19, 2009. Concerned scientists at Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Laboratory are said to have warned Apple that the unit can be easily converted to a fission bomb with only a paperclip and a tablespoon of baking soda. An Apple spokesman replied "...that the interests of Iphone users transcend any silly concern over obsolete bombs that are unlikely to be used on US territory in any case. Progress will not be sacrificed out of concern for a few hysterical anti-bomb, hippie scientists." In response to the potential threat posed by this new unit, Apple has proposed restricting the purchase of baking soda under the anti-terrorism provisions of the Patriot Act.

Kim Walker · at 12:28 PM

Nobel Committee rescinds Obama Award
Breaking news!
Oslo, Norway October 15, 2009
....
In a shocking reversal, the Nobel Prize Committee this morning voted unanimously to rescind the award of the Peace Prize to Kenyan presidential impostor Barry Hussein O'bama. A committee spokesman said that the decision was made after assessing the outraged response of the American online community and in particular from the well known eccentric web site Amkon.net and that site's senior janitor Mr. Birther-Truther Skunk. "That boy is not only a lazy bastard but a Kenyan spy planted to disrupt our long and hard-won traditions of white superiority and patriotism," said Mr. Skunk in an exclusive BE News interview.

More on this story as it develops. Please stay tooned.

Kim Walker · at 7:42 AM

The Whole Foods forum! Be there of be square!

Kim Walker · at 4:28 PM

After a long hiatus, General Striker has agreed to resume posting on the Boycott Everything blog! Look forward to industrial sized dollops of horse shit coming your way shortly!

Thankyaverramuch

Kim Walker · at 3:16 PM

THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Kim Walker · at 12:33 PM

This 'stimulus' regime will never succeed in reviving the tattered world economy. President Hoover tried the same thing in 1930. It failed then and it will fail now.

However, as a means of redistribution of wealth the results the program will be a spectacular and enduring success. What we are witnessing is the inevitable result of liberal republican democracy-- Socialism- wherein all increasingly scarce resources will be henceforth rationed. ‘From each in accord with his abilities and to each in regard to his needs’ is an idea whose time has now arrived.

And to those who mourn for the ‘productive’ sector of society it’s high time for them to accede to the truth that the real problem with the world economy is not[i] lack[/i] of production but rather meaningless and destructive production. Entropic resolve. The overwhelming majority of the world's workers are engaged in transforming the earth into a vast strip-mine dedicated to producing abject shit for the benefit of those whom FDR called the 'economic royalists.' The famous graffiti at the Sorbonne during the New Paris Commune of 1968 will prove to be not only prescient, but will also serve as a warning: ‘Humanity will not be happy until the last capitalist is strung-up from the guts of the last bureaucrat.’

The foreshadowed New Revolution is quietly upon us. The Malthusian garrote, now tighted and drawn, has made it so.

Rage against the dying of the light.

Kim Walker · at 7:08 AM

GENERAL STRIKER SAYS:

VOTE EARLY VOTE OFTEN!

Here are the positions of the Colorado Democratic Party. Print and take with you to the poll. My only personal recommendation would be to always vote against any gambling expansion. NO TO FASCIST REPUGLICAN BUSHBOTS! ALWAYS VOTE DEMOCRATIC! ALWAYS SUPPORT UNIONS! ALWAYS SUPPORT CHOICE!

at ease now people/ smoke em if ya got em

Kim

Ballot Measure

Short Description

CDP Position

Platform Citations

Amend. 46

Anti-Affirmative Action

OPPOSE

C124, C130, C185, C205, C206, C207, C532, C536, C537, C584, C587, C839, C841, C843, C844

Amend. 47

So-called "Right To Work"

OPPOSE

C833, C834, C867, C868, C869, C870, C871, C872, C873, C874, C879, C880

Amend. 48

Definition of a fertilized egg as a person in the Colorado Constitution

OPPOSE

C111, C142, C143, C190, C192, C193, C200, C201

Amend. 49

"Paycheck Deception"

OPPOSE

C871, C876

Amend. 50

Expansion of Limited Gaming

NEUTRAL

Amend. 51

Increased Funding for Development Disabilities Services

SUPPORT

C251, C252, C253

Amend. 52

Diversion of severance tax for highway projects

OPPOSE

C633, C634, C635, C636, C637, C638, C639, C644, C645, C646, C647, C648, C695, C696, C699, C704, C720, C721, C722, C723, C724, C725, C990, C1001, C1003, C1237

Amend. 53

Executive Liability for Corporate Fraud

removed from the ballot

Amend. 54

Preventing political participation by government contractors

OPPOSE

C871, C879

Amend. 55

Just Cause for employee termination

removed from the ballot

Amend. 56

Employer responsibility to provide employee health insurance

removed from the ballot

Amend. 57

Remedies for workplace disabilities

removed from the ballot

Amend. 58

Oil and gas extraction tax for funding education and other programs

SUPPORT

C506, C510, C545, C532, C536, C537, C584, C587, C1075, C1076

Amend. 59

Savings Account for Education

SUPPORT

C506, C510, C545, C532, C536, C537, C584, C587, C925, C1056, C1070

Ref. L

Reducing minimum age requirement to serve in state legislature

SUPPORT

C385

Ref. M

Removing obsolete Colorado Constitution provisions about land valuation

NEUTRAL

Ref. N

Removing obsolete Colorado Constitution provisions about alcohol

NEUTRAL

Ref. O

Altering rules for citizen-initiated statutory and constitutional changes

NEUTRAL

Kim Walker · at 6:29 AM

From the right at Antiwar.com

Perhaps most egregious is the failure to delve with anything more than superficial slogans into the possible reasons for hostility to the West or the U.S. in particular. Can it possibly be because Arabs "hate democracy"? Most of them wouldn't know what democracy was if they suddenly woke up living in a fully democratic society. They have never experienced it. What they have experienced is invasion and military occupation by countries that call themselves democracies – several Western European colonial powers and now the United States. There are now 22 times as many Western soldiers in Anwar alone as the West had in the Middle East at the time of the Crusades, but Western journalists are not inclined or are not allowed to wonder if that has anything to do with why those benighted people hate us so.

Kim Walker · at 5:44 AM


Does The Bailout Pass The Smell Test? By Paul Craig Roberts 10-16-8

The explanation that has been given for the financial crisis does not match up with the solution that has been devised. Moreover, the windows into the crisis offered by the authorities are opaque rather than transparent. The only clarity we have is that the crisis is resulting in financial concentration and that the bailout constitutes a massive raid by financial crooks on both taxpayers and central bank reserves in the US and Europe. The public monies that are being directed to private financial institutions are huge. According to news reports, Germany is devoting $540 billion to shoring up German banks, England is devoting $73 billion, and France has pledged over $400 billion. The US now has four separate bailouts underway, $800 billion for banks, $200 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, $85 billion for the insurer AIG, and $25 billion for the US auto industry. These figures add to more than $2.1 trillion. Some of these public monies are for purchasing troubled paper assets. Others are to be directly injected into the banks as public supplied capital for private financial institutions, an ironic outcome for the free market ideology that resulted in the deregulation of the US financial system. According to news reports, in England the entire $73 billion is being poured into banks as publicly supplied new capital. In Germany $135 billion is for recapitalizing troubled banks. In the US Treasury Secretary Paulson is talking about using bailout money to purchase non-voting bank shares. How is it possible that a financial crisis of such magnitude hit with such suddenness and urgency, catching finance ministries and central banks unaware? If the problem is what the public has been told, namely that defaulting subprime mortgages are reducing the income flows through to the holders of the mortgage-backed securities, why isn't the bailout money being used to refinance the defaulting mortgages and to pay off the foreclosed mortgages? That would restore the value of the mortgage-backed securities, and it would not be necessary to pour huge amounts of taxpayers' money into recapitalizing banks and purchasing their bad assets. There is not an unmanageable number of defaulting mortgages. According to the US Treasury estimate, 90-93% of the mortgages are good. How does a 7% or 10% default rate on US mortgages translate into a systemic worldwide financial crisis? The popping of the US real estate bubble could not produce worldwide systemic financial crisis without the mark-to-market rule, short-sellers, and a great deal of hype and orchestration. Why did Secretary Paulson let Lehman Bros. fail when every other firm is bailed out? Did Lehman's failure, by unwinding its own large portfolio, push hedge funds and banks into panic selloffs that spread the crisis at home and abroad? The US Congress held no hearings on the crisis and consulted no independent experts. Congress responded dumbly to the financial crisis, just as it did following 9/11 when the Bush regime handed it the PATRIOT Act and the Afghan invasion. To secure Congress' acquiescence to the Paulson bailout, the Bush regime used threats of meltdown and martial law to panic Congress into turning over vast amounts of money for which accountability is lacking. The hype behind the Paulson bailout is the financial version of the mushroom cloud evocation used by the Bush regime to panic Congress into accepting the US invasion of Iraq. Is yet another hidden agenda at work? It is unclear how the bailout will play out. The monies for the US bailout will have to be borrowed abroad or printed. If foreign central banks need their dollar reserves in order to bail out their own banks that are polluted with toxic US financial instruments, the US Treasury might not have an easy time in the debt market. Moreover, the interest expense on an additional borrowed $700 billion will raise the US current account deficit and burden US taxpayers with higher interest payments. If the money has to be printed, inflation and dollar devaluation will depress living standards for most Americans. If the US economy sinks deeper into recession, lost jobs and rising interest rates on troubled mortgages will result in more defaults and foreclosures, thus further impairing mortgage-backed securities and requiring Congress to put more burdens on hard-pressed US taxpayers in behalf of the banks. The authorities have blamed subprime mortgages for the crisis. Why then does their solution fail to address the problem of the mortgages? Instead, the solution directs public money into an increasingly concentrated private financial sector, the management of which is not only vastly overpaid, but also has escaped accountability for the financial chicanery that, allegedly, threatens systemic financial meltdown unless bailed out by the taxpayers. Perhaps my nose is too sensitive, but this bailout doesn't pass the smell test. _____ Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan's first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow's Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

Kim Walker · at 7:12 AM

Sarah Palin visits the White House!

developing...

Kim Walker · at 10:15 AM

The General Banned at AMKON

Comments at Boycotteverything.com

Anonymous said...

Hey General, Stop being a big girl and come back and play.

Some people can be a real pain in the arse, just have to leave those with the whore moans alone...

Come on, no one is using big words to abuse me.. How dull.

Fox

7:07 AM

General Striker said...

Nah, Fox. I can't put up with the bullshit censorship and nannyism there any longer. The nannies seem to think that their personal issues are somehow more important than the larger issue- the one that Amkon was supposed to represent, free speech. They choose to advocate for the protection of hermit crabs and to bitch about their nasty divorces while the big issues- like Freedom of Expression get short shrift and minor lip service. I'm over it bigtime. GN seems to take a self-serving and perverse joy in the fact that I've been banned from posting on several forums for exactly the reasons that her and Vick banned me there. I had hoped that Amkon was different. But c'est la vie. You give a little colonel a hat with a star and some power and this is the result. But I have enjoyed your take on things and will miss you and several other big issue strugglers over there.

Here are the telltale emails among the Amkoids:

ME,

Here are some emails that are germane to the issue. I posted this exchange on Amkon but I'm sure GN and her buddies (biddies?) will kill it immediately. Too bad because some important issues might have been discussed there. Hopefully someone else will post it. It seems that the admin team has circled the wagons and gone into self protection mode. Their hypocrisy is shocking.

Best,

Kim

Hi Kiwi,

Here's an exchange of emails between GN and me And let me belatedly add you and Fox to the list of those for whom my explanation was intended. And, no- 72 had nothing to do with this. It had to do with GN and Vick making censorship decisions on the basis of their parochial ideas of good taste.

Best,

Kim

On Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 7:55 PM, <amerikankonspiracy@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello boycotteverything,

The following is an e-mail sent to you by KIWI via your account on "Forums

@ AmKon". If this message is spam, contains abusive or other comments you
find offensive please contact the webmaster of the board at the following
address:

amerikankonspiracy@gmail.com

Include this full e-mail (particularly the headers). Please note that the
reply address to this e-mail has been set to that of KIWI.

Message sent to you follows
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

dont be selfish and deprive all the rest of us from you farkin clever funny
and most importantly,understandable posts!....dont no what happened but can
only imagine that 1972 was involved?.. the guy cannot hide his dislike for
you

KIWI

Hello boycotteverything,

The following is an e-mail sent to you by Yo Mama via your account on

"Forums @ AmKon". If this message is spam, contains abusive or other
comments you find offensive please contact the webmaster of the board at
the following address:

amerikankonspiracy@gmail.com

Include this full e-mail (particularly the headers). Please note that the
reply address to this e-mail has been set to that of Yo Mama.

Message sent to you follows
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your timeout is over.

You and I both know you got no where else to play.

We don't have a lot of rules, I'm just going to look at this as your
testing the limits.

Come back when you're ready. Nobody is going to hold it against you.

Next time an admin says stop, just stop. There's plenty of other trouble
you can get into/cause on the boards. LOL

Now put on your big girl panties and we'll see you on the forum.

*muah*

Reply

Forward

Invite amerikankonspiracy@gmail.com to chat

show details 7:56 AM (4 minutes ago)

Reply

mailed-by gmail.com

Reply

Nah. Thanks anyway, K. I don't hold anything against you (or any other Amkoid) but i won't be back. When it comes to free speech I'm a radical purist- whether or not that's held against me. While I certainly respect your right to censor posts- it's your yard, afterall, self respect is a higher issue for me- And holding fast to what I consider the most sacred of human rights- the right to self expression in any form, dictates that I say adios and a hearty vaya con carne to Amkon. Please post this as I would have loved to explain my decision to Mojo, Jasn, Chii, Gummer, ME, Fox, Kiwi, Johnlear, and a few others- and in hopes that this bit of speaking from beyond the grave may serve to provoke a real discussion of free speech.

Canabalistically yours,

Rod Upyors, ANBUS President
Anti-Nannyist Brigade of the United States, LLC

On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 8:37 AM, <amerikankonspiracy@gmail.com> wrote:
- Show quoted text -

On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 8:26 AM, <amerikankonspiracy@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello boycotteverything,

The following is an e-mail sent to you by Martian Exile via your account on
"Forums @ AmKon". If this message is spam, contains abusive or other
comments you find offensive please contact the webmaster of the board at
the following address:

amerikankonspiracy@gmail.com

Include this full e-mail (particularly the headers). Please note that the
reply address to this e-mail has been set to that of Martian Exile.

Message sent to you follows
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I requested of the cunt to give you my email, doubt she will,
...@yahoo.com, rest asure, I will raise hell.

--
lk walker

The thread that started it all is here. Note that some of the most insipid posts by various admins and my (Boycotteverything's) responses have been censored. A follow up thread by me that contained, for the most part, the emails quoted above was pulled in its entirety just minutes after it was started this morning since it exposed the admins in question as small minded little gauleiters who are embarrased by their own mendacity. Maybe there's an archived copy on Google that shows it all.

Kim Walker · at 3:15 PM

DENVER AUGUST 24th, 2008

"All we are saying, is give peace a chance."

Our brave children:

Kim Walker · at 7:16 AM

DNC report

Kim Walker · From Antwar.com today: August 12, 2008

From Antwar.com today:

August 12, 2008

The American Military Crisis

by Andrew Bacevich and Tom Engelhardt

TomDispatch

All you really need to know is that, at Robert Gates' Pentagon, they're still high on the term "the Long War." It's a phrase that first crept into our official vocabulary back in 2002 but was popularized by CENTCOM commander John Abizaid in 2004 – already a fairly long (war-)time ago. Now, Secretary of Defense Gates himself is plugging the term, as he did in April at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, quoting no less an authority than Leon Trotsky:

"What has been called the Long War is likely to be many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity. This generational campaign cannot be wished away or put on a timetable. There are no exit strategies. To paraphrase the Bolshevik Leon Trotsky, we may not be interested in the Long War, but the Long War is interested in us."

The Long War has also made it front and center in the new "national defense strategy," which is essentially a call to prepare for a future of two, three, many Afghanistans. ("For the foreseeable future, winning the Long War against violent extremist movements will be the central objective of the U.S.") If you thought for a moment that in the next presidency some portion of those many billions of dollars now being sucked into the black holes of Iraq and Afghanistan was about to go into rebuilding American infrastructure or some other frivolous task, think again. Just read between the lines of that new national defense strategy document where funding for future conventional wars against "rising powers" is to be maintained, while funding for "irregular warfare" is to rise. The Pentagonization of the U.S., in other words, shows no sign of slowing down. Here, by the way, is the emphasis in the new Gates Doctrine – from a recent Pentagon briefing by the secretary of defense – that should make us all worry. "The principal challenge, therefore, is how to ensure that the capabilities gained and counterinsurgency lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the lessons relearned from other places where we have engaged in irregular warfare over the last two decades, are institutionalized within the defense establishment." Back to the future?

And here's a riddle for our moment: How long is a Long War, when you've been there before (as were, in the case of Afghanistan, Alexander the Great, the imperial Brits, and the Soviets)? On the illusions of victory and the many miscalculations of the Bush administration when it came to the nature of American military power, no one in recent years has been more incisive than Andrew Bacevich, who experienced an earlier version of the Long War firsthand in Vietnam. His new book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, has just been published. Short, sharp, to the point, it should be the book of the election season, if only anyone in power, or who might come to power, were listening. (The following piece, the first of two parts this week at TomDispatch, is adapted from section three of that book, "The Military Crisis.") But if you want the measure of our strange, dystopian moment, Barack Obama reportedly has a team of 300 foreign policy advisers – just about everyone ever found, however brain-dead, in a Democratic presidential rolodex – and yet Bacevich's name isn't among them. What else do we need to know? Tom

Illusions of Victory

How the United States did not reinvent war… but thought it did
by Andrew Bacevich

"War is the great auditor of institutions," the historian Corelli Barnett once observed. Since 9/11, the United States has undergone such an audit and been found wanting. That adverse judgment applies in full to America's armed forces.

Valor does not offer the measure of an army's greatness, nor does fortitude, nor durability, nor technological sophistication. A great army is one that accomplishes its assigned mission. Since George W. Bush inaugurated his global war on terror, the armed forces of the United States have failed to meet that standard.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush conceived of a bold, offensive strategy, vowing to "take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge." The military offered the principal means for undertaking this offensive, and U.S. forces soon found themselves engaged on several fronts.

Two of those fronts –- Afghanistan and Iraq – commanded priority attention. In each case, the assigned task was to deliver a knockout blow, leading to a quick, decisive, economical, politically meaningful victory. In each case, despite impressive displays of valor, fortitude, durability, and technological sophistication, America's military came up short. The problem lay not with the level of exertion but with the results achieved.

In Afghanistan, U.S. forces failed to eliminate the leadership of al-Qaeda. Although they toppled the Taliban regime that had ruled most of that country, they failed to eliminate the Taliban movement, which soon began to claw its way back. Intended as a brief campaign, the Afghan War became a protracted one. Nearly seven years after it began, there is no end in sight. If anything, America's adversaries are gaining strength. The outcome remains much in doubt.

In Iraq, events followed a similar pattern, with the appearance of easy success belied by subsequent developments. The U.S. invasion began on March 19, 2003. Six weeks later, against the backdrop of a White House-produced banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," President Bush declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." This claim proved illusory.

Writing shortly after the fall of Baghdad, the influential neoconservatives David Frum and Richard Perle declared Operation Iraqi Freedom "a vivid and compelling demonstration of America's ability to win swift and total victory." Gen. Tommy Franks, commanding the force that invaded Iraq, modestly characterized the results of his handiwork as "unequaled in its excellence by anything in the annals of war." In retrospect, such judgments – and they were legion – can only be considered risible. A war thought to have ended on April 9, 2003, in Baghdad's al-Firdos Square was only just beginning. Fighting dragged on for years, exacting a cruel toll. Iraq became a reprise of Vietnam, although in some respects at least on a blessedly smaller scale.

A New American Way of War?

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Just a few short years ago, observers were proclaiming that the United States possessed military power such as the world had never seen. Here was the nation's strong suit. "The troops" appeared unbeatable. Writing in 2002, for example, Max Boot, a well-known commentator on military matters, attributed to the United States a level of martial excellence "that far surpasses the capabilities of such previous would-be hegemons as Rome, Britain, and Napoleonic France." With U.S. forces enjoying "unparalleled strength in every facet of warfare," allies, he wrote, had become an encumbrance: "We just don't need anyone else's help very much."

Boot dubbed this the Doctrine of the Big Enchilada. Within a year, after U.S. troops had occupied Baghdad, he went further: America's army even outclassed Germany's Wehrmacht. The mastery displayed in knocking off Saddam, Boot gushed, made "fabled generals such as Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison."

All of this turned out to be hot air. If the global war on terror has produced one undeniable conclusion, it is this: Estimates of U.S. military capabilities have turned out to be wildly overstated. The Bush administration's misplaced confidence in the efficacy of American arms represents a strategic misjudgment that has cost the country dearly. Even in an age of stealth, precision weapons, and instant communications, armed force is not a panacea. Even in a supposedly unipolar era, American military power turns out to be quite limited.

How did it happen that Americans so utterly overappraised the utility of military power? The answer to that question lies at the intersection of three great illusions.

According to the first illusion, the United States during the 1980s and 1990s had succeeded in reinventing armed conflict. The result was to make force more precise, more discriminating, and potentially more humane. The Pentagon had devised a new American Way of War, investing its forces with capabilities unlike any the world had ever seen. As President Bush exuberantly declared shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, "We've applied the new powers of technology … to strike an enemy force with speed and incredible precision. By a combination of creative strategies and advanced technologies, we are redefining war on our terms. In this new era of warfare, we can target a regime, not a nation."

The distinction between regime and nation was a crucial one. By employing these new military techniques, the United States could eliminate an obstreperous foreign leader and his cronies, while sparing the population over which that leader ruled. Putting a missile through the roof of a presidential palace made it unnecessary to incinerate an entire capital city, endowing force with hitherto undreamed-of political utility and easing ancient moral inhibitions on the use of force. Force had been a club; it now became a scalpel. By the time the president spoke, such sentiments had already become commonplace among many (although by no means all) military officers and national security experts.

Here lay a formula for certain victory. Confidence in military prowess both reflected and reinforced a post-Cold War confidence in the universality of American values. Harnessed together, they made a seemingly unstoppable one-two punch.

With that combination came expanded ambitions. In the 1990s, the very purpose of the Department of Defense changed. Sustaining American global preeminence, rather than mere national security, became its explicit function. In the most comprehensive articulation of this new American Way of War, the Joint Chiefs of Staff committed the armed services to achieving what they called "full-spectrum dominance" – unambiguous supremacy in all forms of warfare, to be achieved by tapping the potential of two "enablers" – "technological innovation and information superiority."

Full-spectrum dominance stood in relation to military affairs as the political scientist Francis Fukuyama's well-known proclamation of "the end of history" stood in relation to ideology: Each claimed to have unlocked ultimate truths. According to Fukuyama, democratic capitalism represented the final stage in political economic evolution. According to the proponents of full-spectrum dominance, that concept represented the final stage in the evolution of modern warfare. In their first days and weeks, the successive invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq both seemed to affirm such claims.

How Not to "Support the Troops"

According to the second illusion, American civilian and military leaders subscribed to a common set of principles for employing their now-dominant forces. Adherence to these principles promised to prevent any recurrence of the sort of disaster that had befallen the nation in Vietnam. If politicians went off half-cocked, as President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had back in the 1960s, generals who had correctly discerned and assimilated the lessons of modern war could be counted on to rein them in.

These principles found authoritative expression in the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, which specified criteria for deciding when and how to use force. Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense during most of the Reagan era, first articulated these principles in 1984. Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the early 1990s, expanded on them. Yet the doctrine's real authors were the members of the post-Vietnam officer corps. The Weinberger-Powell principles expressed the military's own lessons taken from that war. Those principles also expressed the determination of senior officers to prevent any recurrence of Vietnam.

Henceforth, according to Weinberger and Powell, the United States would fight only when genuinely vital interests were at stake. It would do so in pursuit of concrete and attainable objectives. It would mobilize the necessary resources – political and moral as well as material – to win promptly and decisively. It would end conflicts expeditiously and then get out, leaving no loose ends. The spirit of the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine was not permissive; its purpose was to curb the reckless or imprudent inclinations of bellicose civilians.

According to the third illusion, the military and American society had successfully patched up the differences that produced something akin to divorce during the divisive Vietnam years. By the 1990s, a reconciliation of sorts was under way. In the wake of Operation Desert Storm, "the American people fell in love again with their armed forces." So, at least, Gen. Colin Powell, one of that war's great heroes, believed. Out of this love affair a new civil-military compact had evolved, one based on the confidence that, in times of duress, Americans could be counted on to "support the troops." Never again would the nation abandon its soldiers.

The all-volunteer force (AVF) – despite its name, a professional military establishment – represented the chief manifestation of this new compact. By the 1990s, Americans were celebrating the AVF as the one component of the federal government that actually worked as advertised. The AVF embodied the nation's claim to the status of sole superpower; it was "America's Team." In the wake of the Cold War, the AVF sustained the global Pax Americana without interfering with the average American's pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. What was not to like?

Events since 9/11 have exposed these three illusions for what they were. When tested, the new American Way of War yielded more glitter than gold. The generals and admirals who touted the wonders of full spectrum dominance were guilty of flagrant professional malpractice, if not outright fraud. To judge by the record of the past twenty years, U.S. forces win decisively only when the enemy obligingly fights on American terms – and Saddam Hussein's demise has drastically reduced the likelihood of finding such accommodating adversaries in the future. As for loose ends, from Somalia to the Balkans, from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf, they have been endemic.

When it came to the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, civilian willingness to conform to its provisions proved to be highly contingent. Confronting Powell in 1993, Madeleine Albright famously demanded to know, "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about, if we can't use it?" Mesmerized by the prospects of putting American soldiers to work to alleviate the world's ills, Albright soon enough got her way. An odd alliance that combined left-leaning do-gooders with jingoistic politicians and pundits succeeded in chipping away at constraints on the use of force. "Humanitarian intervention" became all the rage. Whatever restraining influence the generals exercised during the 1990s did not survive that decade. Lessons of Vietnam that had once seemed indelible were forgotten.

Meanwhile, the reconciliation of the people and the army turned out to be a chimera. When the chips were down, "supporting the troops" elicited plenty of posturing but little by way of binding commitments. Far from producing a stampede of eager recruits keen to don a uniform, the events of 9/11 reaffirmed a widespread popular preference for hiring someone else's kid to chase terrorists, spread democracy, and ensure access to the world's energy reserves.

In the midst of a global war of ostensibly earthshaking importance, Americans demonstrated a greater affinity for their hometown sports heroes than for the soldiers defending the distant precincts of the American imperium. Tom Brady makes millions playing quarterback in the NFL and rakes in millions more from endorsements. Pat Tillman quit professional football to become an army ranger and was killed in Afghanistan. Yet, of the two, Brady more fully embodies the contemporary understanding of the term patriot.

Demolishing the Doctrine of the Big Enchilada

While they persisted, however, these three illusions fostered gaudy expectations about the efficacy of American military might. Every president since Ronald Reagan has endorsed these expectations. Every president since Reagan has exploited his role as commander in chief to expand on the imperial prerogatives of his office. Each has also relied on military power to conceal or manage problems that stemmed from the nation's habits of profligacy.

In the wake of 9/11, these puerile expectations – that armed force wielded by a strong-willed chief executive could do just about anything – reached an apotheosis of sorts. Having manifestly failed to anticipate or prevent a devastating attack on American soil, President Bush proceeded to use his ensuing global war on terror as a pretext for advancing grandiose new military ambitions married to claims of unbounded executive authority – all under the guise of keeping Americans "safe."

With the president denying any connection between the events of Sept. 11 and past U.S. policies, his declaration of a global war nipped in the bud whatever inclination the public might have entertained to reconsider those policies. In essence, Bush counted on war both to concentrate greater power in his own hands and to divert attention from the political, economic, and cultural bind in which the United States found itself as a result of its own past behavior.

As long as U.S. forces sustained their reputation for invincibility, it remained possible to pretend that the constitutional order and the American way of life were in good health. The concept of waging an open-ended global campaign to eliminate terrorism retained a modicum of plausibility. After all, how could anyone or anything stop the unstoppable American soldier?

Call that reputation into question, however, and everything else unravels. This is what occurred when the Iraq War went sour. The ills afflicting our political system, including a deeply irresponsible Congress, broken national security institutions, and above all an imperial commander in chief not up to the job, became all but impossible to ignore. So, too, did the self-destructive elements inherent in the American way of life – especially an increasingly costly addiction to foreign oil, universally deplored and almost as universally indulged. More noteworthy still, the prospect of waging war on a global scale for decades, if not generations, became preposterous.

To anyone with eyes to see, the events of the past seven years have demolished the Doctrine of the Big Enchilada. A gung-ho journalist like Robert Kaplan might still believe that, with the dawn of the 21st century, the Pentagon had "appropriated the entire earth, and was ready to flood the most obscure areas of it with troops at a moment's notice," that planet Earth in its entirety had become "battle space for the American military." Yet any buck sergeant of even middling intelligence knew better than to buy such claptrap.

With the Afghanistan War well into its seventh year and the Iraq War marking its fifth anniversary, a commentator like Michael Barone might express absolute certainty that "just about no mission is impossible for the United States military." But Barone was not facing the prospect of being ordered back to the war zone for his second or third combat tour.

Between what President Bush called upon America's soldiers to do and what they were capable of doing loomed a huge gap that defines the military crisis besetting the United States today. For a nation accustomed to seeing military power as its trump card, the implications of that gap are monumental.

Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army with the rank of colonel. This piece is adapted from his new book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (Metropolitan Books, 2008). He is also the author of The New American Militarism, among other books. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic Monthly, the Nation, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. A TomDispatch interview with him can be read by clicking here, and then here.

[Note for TomDispatch readers: This is the first of a two-part series, "The American Military Crisis," adapted from Andrew Bacevich's new book, The Limits of Power. Next up: "Is Perpetual War Our Future? Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Bush Era."]

From the book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew Bacevich, copyright © 2008 by Andrew Bacevich. Reprinted by arrangement with Metropolitan Books, an Imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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