"Joy, sadness, confidence, anxiety, love, hate, fear -- all of these feelings and thousands more that make up the human "heart" are as useless to the living dead as the organ of the same name."
Excerpts from How To Make Friends With Volcanoes, originally published by Hackbloc / Microcosm Publishing under anti-copyright “license” in 2010.
Capitalism is run on information systems. Computer networks track and link products, components, resources, and people into the global hydra known as the just-in-time economy. We who work in the industry are all implicated in the perpetuation of this system, even as we struggle against it. We use our skills for competing purposes, to enrich the powerful and empower those who would put an end to power.
Recently though, a new ally has surfaced - the earth itself. The eruption in Iceland and earthquakes in Chile and Haiti have revealed cracks in the just-in-time economy. Capitalism is as unprepared for the vagaries of nature as it is for the needs of humanity. Eyjafjallajokull has given us hope and set us thinking - what is our place in the struggle? How can we clog the engines? Can we build boats to float below the cloud? And when the whole mess comes spiraling down, where does that leave us, our technical skills and technical systems? Are they needed, or merely artifacts of advanced capitalism?
The fossil record stretching back forty thousand years into pre-history is a record of flora and fauna laid waste by humans. On a geologic time scale it will hardly matter whether we do it with atom bombs or atlases. During the neolithic era we were still destabilizing hill sides, salinating the plains, silting the rivers, and burning the forests.
Anti-civ anarchists emphasize a cultural revolution away from patriarchy and exploitation and towards mutual aid and a drastically slimmer technological footprint. But slow, well-intentioned destruction can still occur, outside the bounds of living memory and known history. I doubt the first peoples of Australia and the Americas intended to wipe out almost all the mega fauna. The extinctions happened “fast.” They took a few thousand years. Clever minds and dexterous hands allow us to change our condition too quickly vis a vis the rest of our ecology. It is our nature as a species to have agency that outstrips our understanding and memory. Destruction is now rapid enough for all but the most profoundly deluded people to notice. But the end of civilization will not
be the end of destruction.
Up until now, our technology has enhanced agency without any corresponding enhancement of memory. I believe information technologies are changing that picture, enhancing memory as well as agency. What if we sought to build systems that could record the state of our world and track our action within it, so we truly knew what we were doing? What if those systems were designed with an eye to the future, towards a geologic scale? Within a non-exploitive, non-authoritarian culture, those memories could guide us away from destruction. I see hope for such systems, although few examples. I wish more (any!) anarchists worked on network-mediated systems of accounting and exchange based on real value, like soil fertility and biodiversity.
I don’t mean to vindicate information systems from exploitive culture. There is much to loathe about them and their place in capitalism. I don’t know what they would look like in the endgame. Certainly not like they do now, built of rare-earth minerals, running on fossil sunshine, and designed only for experts. But I do see hope and possibility in there somewhere.
Metroplex 2016-W15 ♫ "They conferred on him scepter, throne, and vestment; They gave him unequaled weapons that ward off the foes: Go and terminate the life of Tiamat. May the winds bear her blood to places undisclosed."
Metroplex 2016-W14 ♫ “For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, and breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, and their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still.”
Metroplex 2016-W13 (Ishtar Editon) ♫ “Deity of Men, Goddess of Women, where thou gazest, the dead live! In the Name of the Covenant, sworn between thee and the race of men. Ishtar – Queen of Night, Lady of the Battle, Sword of the People, Lady of the Gift of Love – open wide thy gate to me!”
Excerpts from Guerrilla Warfare Tactics in Urban Environments, thesis by Maj. Patrick D. Marques, presented to the Faculty of US Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 2003.
The environmental aspects of the urban areas forced each of the researched guerrilla organizations to develop specific tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) to overcome the disadvantages they faced in the cities. The IRA had a small manpower pool in the cities to attack the British military and RUC forces, which always had nearby units for backup, and had to contend with the police forensics that could connect them to attacks after the fact. In order to avoid direct engagement with security forces and escape criminal prosecution if captured, they developed and utilized tactics that disassociated the guerrilla from the act of violence.
The Mujahideen also had to overcome the large numbers of Russian and DRA military forces in the urban centers who were often enclosed in secure compounds. They countered the threat of enemy quick reaction and security forces in the cities with extensive security of their own, often utilizing the majority of forces available, and close collaboration with the local population to gain access to enemy compounds. As the Chechen rebels prepared to defend Grozny they correctly identified the Russians’ tremendous advantage in firepower and their ability to destroy or seize defensive positions as their strength. To overcome the imbalance in firepower, the Chechens operated in small, mobile teams that struck the Russians quickly and then just as quickly dissipated into the depths of the city. During firefights they stayed close to the Russian units to avoid indirect fire and close air support.
The urban environment also offered the guerrilla certain advantages the rural areas could not. One of the most obvious advantages is that of drawing attention to the guerrillas’ cause, whatever it may be. As FM 3-05.201, Special Forces Unconventional Warfare Operations (Initial Draft), states in the appendix dedicated to unconventional warfare in urban environments, the political institutions and communication media are located in its urban centers, with their controls centered in this seat of power. When a guerrilla organization conducts operations in the cities it ensures that the mass of the population, and the outside world, are aware of its existence and capabilities. This is an operational or strategic advantage to guerrilla warfare in urban areas but can assist the tactical operations by increased recruiting, support from outside organizations or nations, and increased internal or external pressure on the enemy to resolve the conflict on favorable terms to the guerrillas.
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