c_man posted:

stegosaurus posted:

I was gonna take linear algebra again but it's 1600 dollars. so I'll do a strang lecture and a problem set every week and keep my god damn money making 5 cents interest per month shrimp money bitch!!!

http://twitter.com/yarles_p/status/503322045598281728

the best way to learn linear algebra is to find a decent book and do literally every problem in it

that's a completely unnecessary exercise in masochism

I haven't read either but I've heard Mary McCarthy's book is good. I'm not exactly an expert on Vietnam but another good book is Jeffery Race's War Comes to Long An which is a sort of case study on rural revolutionary strategy. Also I think Kolko focuses too much on structural explanations without considering the political/policy level, so something like American Tragedy by David Kaiser might be a good complement to that.

The cover of a book of miniature silk-screens by Rene Mederos. Rene did 2 tours in Vietnam (during the war) as a Cuban Internationalist. The 2 series of Vietnam silkscreens that he produced in Cuba are now considered masterpieces. This image is the cover of a book of the second series done in 1972 in miniature . The original silkscreens were done in poster size and for this limited edition book they were all redone for the smaller size. Only a few of these still exist.

Edited by ArisVelouchiotis (Aug. 27, 2014 19:04:42)

TG posted:

everything i know about vietnam i learned from a little book called the things they carried by george rr obrien

i was like eh this book's ok until i got to the story where he goes back to vietnam years later and an old guy hatefully stare him down and he tells his daughter, after she asks if the old man is mad, that "all that's finished" lol. granted, even if it's one of those tell your kids something you don't believe things to not expose them to the horror of the world, most of the idiot american readership takes statements like that at face value

conec posted:

Wtf? Can u gimme?? Cost 2 high

i got it from the library today. i'll scan+ocr this weekend if there's interest. first forty pages were really sick

aerdil posted:

dang i was walking past the free book bin at my local bookstore today and impulsively picked up a book called "philosophical problems in physical science." just started flipping through it tonight and turns out was written in the 80s by a few philosophers in the GDR and is "a broad survey in English of philosophical problems in the physical sciences written from the viewpoint of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. It examines in detail questions such as the nature of physical concepts, physical properties and quantities, and causality and law. The power of Marxist-Leninist philosophy as an analyzing and synthesizing tool is clearly demonstrated, for example, in the discussion on causality, in which not only the difference between causality in Newtonian mechanics and quantum mechanics is discussed, but also the connection between them."

idk who you think you are that you can post this without a link

c_man posted:

another book by anne appelbaum and wikipedia

catchphrase

The ensuing interview, which began two hours later than scheduled, meandered on for at least another three hours, fuelled by alcohol and, as the afternoon drew on, amphetamines. (Throughout, the newly clean Cave, much to Smith and MacGowan's surprise, stuck steadfastly to mineral water.) Edited, but still fractured, a transcript was published in NME in late February 1989, under the heading The Unholy Trinity.


MES: Can we drop the cop talk? It's the same with everything else, like lurries...


SM: Lurries? What are lurries?


MES: Lurries. Containers that deliver your fucking food to your fucking house, alright?


SM: Lorries! Yeah right.


MES: The drivers are paid the lowest wages because everyone wants to sit in the office and be a ponce. You can't just go into a hotel and write your name, you've got to fuck around on a bloody computer. Nobody wants to bloody work anymore.


SM: Oh God! You make me wanna puke sometimes, you do. Of course nobody wants to work. Who the fuck in their right mind wants to work?


MES: Alright, alright, that's obvious, the sky's fucking blue. Soccer's the same. None of the fuckers want to hit the ball in the back of the net. They're all too fucking muscly. And thick. Running up and down the field like bloody morons. The England team are all bloody minor executives who can't kick the ball in the back of the net, can't do the bloody job they're hired to do. I do loads of gigs, that's my job to play a load of gigs, I'm not an executive, I don't mind playing in front of a load of sweaty people.

Mark, of the three of you, would you admit to being the professional cynic?


MES: No. Cynicism and defensiveness are two things constantly levelled at me. Look, I've got time for people, I'm good mannered. I usually find that when you're down, nobody has a bloody minute for you. If I was a nobody, you wouldn't even talk to me.


SM: You are nobody.


MES: Fuck off. It's bloody true. Neither would you, Nick.


NC: Bullshit! That's bullshit. I take offence at that.


MES: I'm not levelling anything at you. People, in general, don't like you being upfront and civil. They hate you for it. They label you a cynic 'cos you're reasonable.


SM: You're not reasonable, though. You're a rude bastard. That's fair enough.


MES: OK, I'm cynical. But I'm not defensive. I'm slightly paranoid which is healthy.


Slightly?


MES: Listen, Sean, do you walk around London embracing everybody? If I was in the bleedin' gutter, you wouldn't piss on me.


NC: Your reaction is becoming very defensive, Mark.


MES: You're a failed psychiatrist.


NC: I've analysed you, alright – defensive paranoid with delusions of grandeur.


MES: I have discussions like this all the time in pubs. I end up beaten half to death on the floor. I try to be civil and people assume I'm attacking them.


SM: You attack people all the time. In the press.

MES: I used to. It became too routine so I gave it up. Nietzsche said Embrace your enemies'. You two aren't my enemies, so I won't embrace you.

SM: Read a lot of Nietzsche, have you?


MES: All his stuff. I cant quote him. I'm not into him anymore, gave up three years ago. He taught me a lot, though. I didn't go to college. We're not all born public school boys like you.


SM: I'm not a born public schoolboy.


MES: Do you like Brendan Behan, he's good.


SM: Yeah, he's not a fascist maniac posing as a philosopher.


MES: If we're gonna talk philosophy, that's a load of crap! The Nazis adopted his creed and distorted it, they misquoted him all the time.


SM: The Will To Power Try reinterpreting that statement. You can't, it says what it says.


MES: He wasn't a Nazi – you're only saying that 'cos some polytechnic fuckin' lecturer told you he was.


SM: I'm saying it 'cos I read two of his books where he dismissed the weak, the ugly, the radically impure, Christianity, Socrates, Plato. He was anti anyone who hadn't got a strong body, perfect features...


MES: That's the coffee table analysis. He was the most anti-German, pro-Semitic person...


SM: His books were full of hate.


MES: You just said you're full of hate when you go on stage.


SM: I don't go round saying Socrates was a cunt, Jesus Christ was an idiot, do l?


MES: Jesus Christ was the biggest blight on the human race, he was. And all them socialists and communists – second rate Christianity. It's alright for you Catholics. I was brought up with Irish Catholics. Some of my best friends are Irish Catholics.


SM: Listen to him.


MES: Hitler was a Catholic vegetarian, non-smoker, non-drinker. The way you're talking about Nietzsche is that anyone who's a non-smoker, non-drinker is a Nazi. That's the level of your debate, pal. You don't know fuck all about Nietzsche, pal!

SM: You're anti-socialist, too. Ain't you?


MES: Yeah. I'm an extreme anti-socialist. You don't live on a housing estate in a city where there's been socialism for 30 years and they keep saying it's gonna get better all the time and it never does. Thirty fucking years of it getting worse and worse. You obviously haven't experienced that, living in London.


SM: What's the alternative?


MES: I don't have to worry about that. I'm an adult. I'm working class, me. I come from a generation that fuckin' created this nation pal. You lot, you just sit around and talk about socialism, you're the bloody problem. Eighty per cent of this country are white trash, working class. How come they don't vote Labour? 'Cos the Labour Party area fuckin' disgrace, that's why. I'm against socialism on principle. Engels – he was a factory owner in Manchester exploiting 13 year-old girls. Learn your history, pal, learn your history. I suppose you blame all Ireland's problems on the British. All the problems of the world are down to Britain. That's what you think, why don't you say it? You can't bloody tell me anything about oppression cos, I'll tell you something pal, if you'd been part of Germany, you'd have been liquidated. If you were part of Russia, you wouldn't even exist.


Don't tell me about oppression, my parents and grandparents were exploited to the hilt. Sent to wars, they had gangrene in their teeth. My grandfather was at Dunkirk and all you can see is Margaret Thatcher on my face when, actually, she's on Nick's face. Isn't she Nick? Come on, Nick, help me out. Basically, I like to discuss things right down the line and I don't agree with anybody...

This is getting out of order, can we talk about something less acrimonious. Heroes?


SM: You're into Presley, Nick.


NC: I think his best period was the Vegas years.


MES: A lot of Presley's good stuff was overlooked. Like, the NME viewpoint that he died when he came out of the army. I think the opposite, his best stuff came after the army.


SM: That figures. He was a pile of shit when he came out of the army compared to before he went in. His mother died when he was in the army, that was one of the causes.
"Anyway, he did some good stuff in the late '60s after the army – 'Kentucky Rain', 'Suspicious Minds', 'In The Ghetto' as opposed to 'Heartbreak Hotel', 'Blue Moon Of Kentucky', 'That's Alright Mama'. I suppose that's all shit to you, is it?


MES: I'm not sayin' that but everybody writes the later stuff off...


SM: Who ever writes off Elvis?


MES: Look pal, Elvis was the king, right? To me, Elvis were king. He was only the king 'cos he sustained it. You probably think he's some kind of criminal 'cos he went in the army for a few years. You're insinuating that I'm pro-army and if you have anything to say on that score, say it now, pal and I'll fuckin' argue right through you!


SM: What!? He's off again.


MES: I'm into Merseybeat at the minute – The Searchers. I respect Dylan. The only good thing I've heard of his is that LP he did with George Harrison and Roy Orbison.


What do you think of the blanket critical approval of Morrissey?


MES: Morrissey's another Paddy! A South Manchester Paddy, Shane's got more to say than Morrissey.


NC: I think you guys are encouraging Mark to be like this. You journalists love it.


MES: Of course they do. That's the NME policy, they love a good argument. Don't you, lads?

U.S. Army Techniques Publication 3-39.33: Civil Disturbances (April 2014)By Thomas Gaist
30 August 2014

Links tweeted by WikiLeaks this week called attention to the development of crowd control doctrines by the US military, the most recent of which are codified in a US Army Techniques document dated April 2014, titled “Civil Disturbances.” Main concepts elaborated in the document include crowd dynamics, behavior theories, crowd types, and a “Graduated Response Matrix.”

The document points to various dissident political groups as main targets of the Army’s crowd control planning. “Examples of well-organized groups are anarchists, antiglobalization groups, and anti free enterprise groups,” the US Army document states.

The paper further cites demonstrations coordinated by labor groups, specifically citing the 2011 protests at the Wisconsin capitol. “Labor unions played a large role in the 2011 Wisconsin protests that included passing on information and transporting participants,” the document states.

Special attention is given to “organized protests,” which are said to have more growth potential than spontaneous protests as result of their “centralized planning” and use of “modern technologies that allow for rapid information dissemination.”
Techniques outlined in the document include the use non-lethal weapons, “pain compliance” measures, lethal overwatch teams (snipers), and deployment of aircraft overhead (said to have a “psychological effect”).

The use of military working dog (MWD) teams is highlighted as an especially effective “intimidation measure.” “The presence of the MWD may produce a profound psychological effect on the crowd,” the document states.

The document calls for deployment of “overwatch” sniper teams to intimidate crowds and pick off suspected leaders and organizers. Such use of snipers to terrorize demonstrators, recently on display in Ferguson, Missouri, where protests against the killing of Michael Brown were subject to a massive crackdown by militarized police forces, is part of the Army’s integrated Graduated Response Matrix (GRM). The GRM provides for numerous levels of escalating psychological and physical pressure against a targeted crowd, including:

* Exploit the psychological effect of shows of force.

* Escalate the Military Information Support Operations (MISO) message via loudspeakers and handbills—MISO is a more recently adopted military term for psychological operations (PSYOPS).

* Demonstrate sniper precision strike capability.

* Use riot control ammunition: tear gas, pepper spray, smoke bombs, stun grenades, rubber munitions, acoustic weapons, electro-muscular disruption weapons.

* Move through the crowd using riot control formations and movement techniques.

* Target leaders and “troublemakers” with sniper fire.

* Escalate from single shot small caliber fire to automatic large caliber.

* Close air support and indirect fire (artillery, mortars).

While stating that “coercion dispersal” of crowds may become necessary, the document notes that “negotiated management of crowds … is the preferred method especially if the demonstration or protest leaders are available and willing to participate,” and advises commanders to adhere to the “goldilocks principle,” saying crowd control activities should be “neither too hard nor too soft.”

The document also calls for the use of “high powered cameras mounted on towers and aerial vehicles” to create video recordings of both the crowd and the soldiers engaged in crowd control operations.

Ominously, the document outlines conditions under which the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the US military for police actions on American soil, will not apply. Under a range of loosely defined “exceptional” conditions, the military can conduct unrestrained operations within the United States, the document notes.

In “emergency extraordinary circumstances,” including vaguely defined contingencies such as “unlawful obstruction or rebellion against the authority of the United States,” US military commanders are empowered to carry out, without requiring any form of civilian authorization, “activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances,” the document states.
Such sophisticated crowd control doctrines are an expression of the far advanced preparations by the US ruling elite, dating back decades, to establish martial law and transition to a police state dictatorship.

Congressional hearings in May of 1987 on the Iran-Contra scandal exposed plans, codenamed Operation Rex ’84, to suspend the US Constitution, transfer power to a shadow dictatorship consisting of agents of the military and intelligence apparatus, and conduct mass roundups of hundreds of thousands of political opponents of the American state.

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the George W. Bush administration implemented “continuity of government” (COG) procedures virtually identical to those laid out by Operation Rex, establishing a secret network of anonymous officials working from “undisclosed secure locations.” Without any consultation with or involvement of the legislative and judicial branches, between 75 and 150 members of the executive branch were ensconced in military bunkers and legal documents were drawn up to empower these officials with authoritarian powers.

http://leaksource.info/2014/08/20/us-army-techniques-publication-3-39-33-civil-disturbances-april-2014/