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The Cartels are following in the footsteps of Nigerian delta rebels and Iraqi insurgents.

Though to my mind, this attack was more of a demonstration than a determination to bring the state to it’s knees. Narco business would be impinged by a true state collapse in Mexico which would activate the USG in unhelpful ways. The cartels would rather someone else mind the store while they get on with making money unhindered.

John’s next book should just be titled “See, I told you so”

Fallen Walls and Fallen Towers: The Fate of the Nation in a Global World by Adrienne Redd

I “met” Dr. Adrienne Redd some years ago through the kind offices of Critt Jarvis, which resulted in a wide-ranging and intermittent email discussion, sometimes joined by John Robb and others, of “virtual states”, “virtual nations”, “micropowers” and evolving concepts of sovereignty and statehood in international relations. It was an intellectually stimulating conversation.

Today, Dr. Redd is Nimble Books’ newest author, and she has just sent me a review copy of Fallen Walls and Fallen Towers, the culmination of approximately seven years of research and writing.  Redd investigates nothing less than the “fate of the state” and I am looking forward to reading her argument in detail.

To be reviewed here soon….

Charles Cameron, my regular guest blogger, is the former Senior Analyst with The Arlington Instituteand Principal Researcher with the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University. He specializes in forensic theology, with a deep interest in millennial, eschatological and apocalyptic religious sects of all stripes.

Joan Rivers, terrorists and inflight catering

by Charles Cameron

Don’t you love it when the internet provides us with what appears to be reliable (albeit counterintuitive) answers to rhetorical questions? As when Joan Rivers asks about terrorist dietary restrictions on David Letterman:

Joan in the subject of a new documentary, “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work”. Dave calls the film a wonderful, compelling documentary and something she should be very proud of. Joan recently had some trouble at a Costa Rica airport. She uses an alias on her passport, Joan Rosenberg, her married name, when she travels. The airport security was suspicious. Joan was detained at the airport for 24 hours while everyone she was with went on ahead. It was ridiculous. “What terrorist would take the name ‘Rosenberg’?” Joan wonders. She continued, “Do I look like a terrorist? Does a terrorist order a kosher meal?” Late Show with David Letterman, Show #3345, July 22, 2010

…and the answer is just a quick google away in Ha’aretz:

Matiri’s instruction manual for intelligence agents is part of a series of documents he has written. These include pointers on explosives, building an organization and recruiting agents. There are also explanations about Islam’s enemies. In his writings, Matiri comes across as someone who knows what he is talking about. He cites studies and conclusions from the experiences of other intelligence agencies, and he discusses methods used by Al-Qaida. … Matiri covers a variety of topics in the 42 pages of his instruction manual, among them advice on how the religious spy can get out of uncomfortable situations. He suggests that “Jewish meals” be ordered on airline flights – kosher meals that do not contain pork. Al-Qaida’s mother of all spy manuals, Ha’aretz, May 30, 2010

The Handbook of 5GW – Dr. Daniel H. Abbott, Editor

Nimble Books has published the first authoritative book on the competing interpretations of the military and political theory referred to as “Fifth Generation Warfare“, edited by my friend and colleague Dr. Daniel Abbott. The many contributing authors include academics, journalists such as David Axe, and many blogfriends associated with the former theory site, Dreaming5GW.

My chapter was entitled “5GW: Into the Heart of Darkness“. It is oriented more toward historical case studies than theory and is not in any way, shape or form, a “feel-good” piece. Here is a snippet:

“….This brings us to the probability that for the aforementioned states, their actual options for their ruling elites for adapting to the threat of 4GW will be between accepting varying degrees of failure-from conceding a temporary autonomous zone (TAZ) to rebels, to being overthrown, to imploding into anarchy as insurgents encroach-or “taking the gloves off” and using the indiscriminate, unrestricted violence of genocide to annihilate real and potential enemies before the international community can mobilize to prevent it. History suggests they might well succeed.”

The views within The Handbook of 5GW vary widely, as does the disciplinary approach of the authors, intending to stimulate thought, explore possible scenarios that range from the pragmatic and real to the imaginative and ideal.

Hardcover launch in September, 2010.

The only question is who will be damaged more when their political system implodes after a coup by the ISI’s carefully cultivated  Islamist lunatic fringe, Pakistan or every other country connected to it including the United States?

Will we wake up and disentangle ourselves in time? Our strategic relationship with Islamabad is deemed necessary because of the logistical pipeline that flows through Pakistan (hint: smaller footprint makes Pakistan less valuable) but it is analogous to the guy who remains married to his wife who is a habitually violent, bipolar, crack addict because she stays home and watches the kids.

A superb post by Pundita on America’s whistling past the graveyard policy ofnPakistan:

He ain’t heavy, he’s my genocidal, hallucinatory, two-faced ‘ally’

Earlier this month the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, twisted his mouth into the shape of a pretzel to explain why it was okay for the U.S. to support Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal but not okay to support North Korea’s arsenal and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He also saw no problem with the United States as much declaring war on India when he sympathized with Pakistan’s need to use nuclear weapons against India in order to feel safe.Then Americans wonder why Pyongyang and Tehran laugh at Washington’s lectures on nuclear proliferation. The leaders of both regimes have been doing clandestine nuke business with Pakistan for decades. They know Pakistan is the biggest nuclear weapons proliferator on the planet — and so does Mullen, who is the highest ranking military officer in the USA and as such is the principal military advisor to the President of the United States, the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense.

That’s not the half of the double standard America has practiced with regard to Pakistan. Barely a day goes by that the American news media doesn’t warn of the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran because of the regime’s end-of-time religious views, which American news analyst John Batchelor has termed “hallucinatory.”

It doesn’t get more hallucinatory than the views of Pakistani media mogul, Majeed Nizami, the owner of the Nawa-i-Waqt, The Nation, and Waqt TV channel. During a recent speech at a function given in his honor he declared that Pakistan’s missiles and nuclear bombs were superior to “India’s ghosts,” and that unleashing nuclear war against India was imperative. “Don’t worry if a couple of our cities are also destroyed in the process.”That would be the same Nation newspaper that cites the United States government as being behind every terrorist incident in the world, including the Times Square attack.If you think Nizami is an isolated nut case, you don’t know much about him, or Pakistan. He is the true face of the most powerful factions in Pakistan including its military leaders.

But in the view of the U.S. government and news media it’s okay for Pakistan’s military to hold hallucinatory views whereas it’s not okay for Iran’s leaders because, well, because.

It’s the same for anti-Semitic views that abound in Pakistan. In the same article that discussed Nizami’s view that nuclear Armageddon was the ticket to peace in South Asia, Pakistani journalist Shakil Chaudhary reported on a June 18 column in Nizami’s Nawa-i-Waqt paper in which Lt. Gen. Abdul Qayyum (ret), former chairman of Pakistan Steel Mills, approvingly quoted Adolph Hitler as saying: “I could have annihilated all the Jews in the world, but I left some of them so that you can know why I was killing them.”

Read the rest here.