Tag Archives: benevolent leader

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My online activity has been eating into my time, so I have deleted my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. I have found no willpower to resist engaging online, so I hope this drastic action will help focus my activity locally.

I am in the process of remodeling our home. I have made my wife live in this shack too long, and now that she is retiring, I hope to give her something more worthy for her to retire in.

But to accomplish this task we basically have to move out, and that is what I am up to. We not only have to pack and move our stuff (read here cherished belongings) and put them mostly in storage, but we also need to find temporary living accommodations. So far these temporary living accommodations have gone from building a home on our bare lot next door to erecting a yurt.

I also placed my web site into private, but have decided to open it again to the public for those of you who like to check in every so often.

Beauty sent my a message on LinkedIn, but because my account is closed I can’t reply.

So far everything is good. Will post changing conditions on this web page if I find the time.

The Strategic Advantage in Fighting on Only One Front

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“It is a concern to me, it’s a concern to any veteran, anybody in the military,” Hagel said during his first appearance on Capitol Hill since being confirmed as defense secretary.

I think it is significant that this is the only news I found coming out of Fox News, but maybe I just didn’t look hard enough. I guess Fox couldn’t find anything more important coming out of the House Armed Service’s committee than this one issue, who deserves a medal more, those with or without “skin” in battle.

Taking medals away from someone that actually might have earned them is not something I imagine Fox wants to be behind of. Fox better hope Hagel doesn’t come to the conclusion that someone fighting in a Nintendo environment needs to be reward with this medal, as someone in the Service that Hagel talks about in this quote did. If they do deserve it, then Fox should ask why.

As it is, anyone getting the “Nintendo Medal” with Hagel as the top administrator will deserve it. Fox should figure out why he/she would deserve such a medal, before they get on the wrong side of  the strategy behind the giving out of this medal.

But then Fox is owned by someone that wasn’t, if I understand correctly, born or raised  as a North America. Apparently their owner wants America to follow the Rightwing Conservative principles of another nation, in another hemisphere.

The nation he was or still is a citizen of has gone from calling China a totalitarian nation to aggressor nation, and now an assertive nation. It kinda makes me wonder what the Fox’s owner thinks of his own nation, as their Conservative principles change.

It doesn’t appear that China has changed all that much, at least in structure. The Right is a structure, not a culture, and China doesn’t appear to be changing its structure anytime soon.

It also appears that China’s culture is going to need more time for change. China is a very complex culture in which change doesn’t culturally seem to happen, unless there is a revolution. China’s structure is geared towards stopping revolutions.

But then, Fox’s owner is not a North American. He is Australia by culture, so what would he know about strategy anyway?

I think North American people’s advantage has always been that they think more strategic. After reading “Empire of the Summer Moon, I think strategy has always been the North’s advantage, as it presents itself to the world historically.

To that end, I never really understood the significance of Lincoln’s strategy, of using people from both sides of the aisle to fill some of the executive positions within his administration. That was until I watched this hearing on CSPAN yesterday.

The strategy that Lincoln used has the advantage of using an executive, such as Hagle, from the opposition  positioned as a handle to a lever that pushes against the force of the opposition and the POTUS forces as well. Kinda of a twofer.

In the House yesterday, Hagel not only tore into the Republican Chairman of the House Armed Service Committee, who wanted Hagle to take something like a 100 billion more dollars, but Hagle also tore into the smug Democrat who thought Hagel was a force pushing Democratic issues as well. The Republicans and Democrats both got their asses kicked.

In politics, the enemy isn’t in front of the POTUS, but positions themselves behind the leader. The people infront represent an image of change, as the image of Hagel in front of the POTUS.

Lincoln’s strategy handles those behind the POTUS (today they are called Democrats) as well as those in front of the POTUS (today they are called Republicans). Hagel with Dempsey at his side, tore up the House yesterday and made mincemeat out of all who were in front of him.

I would like to see him do the same in the Senate.

Really? The Republicans want to come out on the side of spending more money at the expense of our civilian society, while at the same time the Democrats want to come out on the side that says spending cut aren’t hurting our military, as our civil society takes a pass on having to make any sacrifices?

All Hagel and Dempsey are asking for is time to reposition our forces. I mean everyone realizes that Iran is in Asia, right?

When falling back to a defencive position, as our resources go bye-bye, there is some advantage to be had in having to defend only one front, and that front should be “pivoting” across the Pacific.

The Pacific is the position our debt is centered in. This center can be called a pivot point. While Boehner has come out in favor of paying our debt, I am not sure the Red States agree with him.

I mean, if they really want to secede from the US, aren’t they independent of the debt? If the Red States what to take advantage of our nukes and not pay back our debt, who’s to stop them, Obama?

Oh, right! If they did secede it wouldn’t be their decision, but that ain’t going to happen now, is it.

via Hagel Decision on ‘Nintendo Medal’ Expected Next Week – Fox News.

With Friends Like These…

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“Over here, China is doing all it can, trying to erect a stage for a six-party talk; over there, Pyongyang is bombing the stage with a nuclear weapon.”

The thing is, China is losing most of the “six-party” players, because Korea has threatened to bomb them.

I mean, sure, MaCarthur got pulled back from using nukes by his president.  I am not sure we can say the same for any other “leader”.

What’s the budget like for Obama, anyway, Mr. Ryan? Is the war going to come down to China and Korea against everyone else, where we have to use nukes? I don’t think so.

China is going to move to the same side as everyone else, and when that happens North Korea will go ballistic, unless it can join with the South.

In that case, now we can handle them. We don’t have to worry about destroying one side with the other.

via With Friends Like These… – By Helen Gao | Foreign Policy.

Enduring Values

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I believe those were the words the guy in charge of Obama’s legacy used to describe the US military’s pivot towards, or what is now called, the “Indo-Pacific”.

The words used to describe the pivot was changed from “Asia-Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific”. The words were changed to highlight the most important partner in the area included in the pivot.

I believe the guy in charged used “enduring values” (if that was the correct quote) in his conversation about the  ”pivot”,  because a “pivot” with “enduring values” in its narrative has no change in momentum nor values.

The US military representing the values of the U.S.A isn’t turning towards the Pacific, because it never really left. All the US military needs to know is whose with them in this pivot.

In other words, in order for the US to pivot towards the Pacific, we don’t have to fight the momentum of changing values to get there. Our values are in the pivot, and they are highlighted in India.

So I guess the guy was basically saying “stuff it”, we are pivoting towards an area of the globe in which our values are the same as India’s and everyone else within the area of the Indo-Pacific Pivot.

For a nation such as the US, who are supposed to be sons of Abraham,  this is quite a big deal. For an area that owns most of our debt, it is a reassurance of the repaying of that debt.

I think this repaying of debt is going to surprize a bunch of people in the US, who thought nukes countered debt (rock over paper).

North Korea first.

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Historical Military Provocations Prove North and South Korea Tolerance

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In 2010, a South Korean Island known as Yeonpyeong was struck by dozens of North Korean artillery shells. Two South Korean soldiers were killed and more than a dozen persons were injured. The atrocity raised international brows waiting for South Korea to retaliate.

Tolerance between each other, maybe, but I believe the North and South Korea have been gaming each other for years. So the tolerance is between players, but not in the situation each player finds themselves in. Each player has different relationship to the common environment.

China has always had a love for North Korea’s ability to control their people. But after 60 years of war, North Korea hasn’t changed much, but China has. It is this change in China that makes the “proof”  in provocations no longer valid.

China is moving the center of gravity of the Military Industrial Governmental Complex (MIGC), once centered in the US, to Asia. What a MIGC centered in Asia needs most is war.

In a Complex and to get rid of entropy that is inherited in the creation of the weapons of war, war is needed to simplify the environment the old Complex is moving towards and the environment the new Complex is moving away from.

So what China needs first and foremost is a war that will once and for all tranfer the center of gravity to Asia.

But China doesn’t need a war that involves the center gravity of old (USA and its allies).

A war that involves the US or its allies will not help in the new alignment. The alignment needs to be completed with precision and accuracy. War that involves the US or its allies will prove very sloppy.

In fact, because the outcome of war is an unknown,  what China needs now is a war that will not include the US, nor South Korea. What China needs now is a war with North Korea. I believe China is building up towards that goal.

In contrast, what North Korea needs now is help from South Korea to keep China from taking over the Korean peninsula, and creating another Hong Kong in the process.

South Korea is very nationalist and becoming another Hong Kong is something they will not take without a fight.

What North Korea needs now is the skills of a master gamer, and unite the peninsula under the Korean brand. It is yet to be seen if the Kim dynasty will be able to provide those skills.

If I am correct and things are heating up like they have never before, then it will be hard to see what is happening, unless you are a master gamer.

This is something the US military has not shown any skills in of late, and probably should just pass on.

via Kerry Patton: Historical Military Provocations Prove North and South Korea Tolerance.

Boehner memo hails GOP ‘tactical plan’ against Obama as success

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He also complimented Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) “make life work” initiative, which is meant to showcase GOP ideas that will help working families.

But tactics are only successful if there is some kind of strategy behind them.

Strategy bridges the past and future by having a clear picture at both ends. Tactics, for any movement like the Republican Party, only works if there is a clear picture of where it has been and where it is going. Strategy supplies that picture, which tactics can’t. Tactics are short-term, so it is almost all past and no future.

If there is strategy behind the tactics that Boehner calls a success, then success depends on whose strategy the tactics are following. Is it the Republican strategy or Obama’s?

I think Boehner would have said so, if he thought the Republicans were following some kind of a winning strategy.

While the tactics Boehner underlines are successful, they might represent a losing strategy for the party that has labeled itself the “values” party.

Is it really family “values” to have a bill named “make life work”, on the floor of Congress? The title, if not the bill, seems to give more to Caesar than called for in a party claiming “family values”.

I mean the bill could be about how individuals should stop whining and pull themselves up by their boot straps and go to work. You know, make life work idiot!

Which is what a father would tell the young in the family.

But as The Daily Show said last night, can they do that with a warm smile?

In other words, does the Republican message come across as the rich telling the poor to “suck it up” (if that is even what the bill is about, because I don’t know the bill), or do they give it a human-type emotion.

So if these are not successful tactics for the Republicans are they successful for Obama?

Is it possible that these successful tactics of Boehner’s could be a part of Obama’s strategy to have the Republican name itself as a party in which work is your life, instead of highlighting what comes after work the family.

If this is Obama’s strategy, for the Republicans to name themselves the party of work instead of family, then perhaps Boehner is correct, they are successful tactics.

If this is the case, and the Republican Party is following the strategy of Obama, then I am not sure that the tactics of the Republican Party will be successful, for the Republican Party.

On the other hand, when I was young I thought that I didn’t want work to define me, but now as I grow old I am less sure. To me success now depends on how the society is structured, and how the culture fits that structure.

It is more obvious than ever to me that the U.S.A. is structured as the Right.

If the structure of your country matches the culture holding it up, then to me that means you have a successful country, a country successful in its past and future.

The Right, as a structure has a large normalizing force that controls the friction inside a society, and that normalizing force in America is becoming more corporate each year. I am beginning to believe that the culture in the USA is also beginning to match its structure.

I think there is a large push-back, but each year it gets harder for those wanting the U.S.A. to have a winning structure, either more as the Left or for God to be that normalizing force instead of Caesar.

Those with the losing strategy seems to be those pushing push against corporations (replacing God as the normalizing force) and those of the Right (replacing those on the Left without a normalizing force).

But then the Republican Party doesn’t apologize for being the party of Caesar or on the Right.

And there is no reason they should apologize  given BushII’s failed Crusade into the Middle East and the win by Obama as the structural leader, ha!

I remember watching a video out of Iraq which showed a US military commander in charge on the ground in Iraq rallying his troops with the slogan, “We are doing God’s work”.

I am sure the Persians said the same thing to the Greeks, as the Persians removed the Jews from Israel. Oh wait! That is exactly what they didn’t say.

It is what we said to the Chinese as the corporate Right removed Saddam from Iraq, and the Islamic Left replaced him.

Thanks Bush :)

Some kinda strategy, huh????

via Boehner memo hails GOP ‘tactical plan’ against Obama as success – The Hill’s On The Money.

What I Found Interesting This Week 2/2/2013

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Unfortunately, many farmers markets are duds.  The prices are too high, the selection is mediocre and many of the vendors sell store brought produce/products.  In contrast, real farmers markets are run by organizations that rigorously maintain standards and recruit/scout/visit participants (to increase supply, competition, and variety).  They hum with life, variety, and are price competitive.

Yes, and this is all because we don’t have a decentralized market, ho, hum.

Well “real farmer markets” are distributive networks that each needs the other.

So while Robb’s decentralized network decentralizes into nodes towards an edge, the distributive market has no outside edges and forms a center of gravity called a community.

Where this “center” forms is any ones guess, but Robb has no clue, because he is looking for an edge, and not a community. He still thinks he is a part of the cure, i.e., a resilient community, and not the problem, too much distribution and not enough decentralization, ha!

So I guess that is what a community organizer does, he organizes all the nodes into a community without edges.

via What I Found Interesting This Week 2/2/2013.

Unimaginable Statements and Signs of Surrender

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Brett Friedman said it best. “Can you imagine a USMC 4-Star ever saying “we’ll be unprepared’? Never”

Oh how we long for the days of the NeoCons, when what our generals said didn’t matter.

Perhaps Friedman should ask the General what we will be prepared for, because the General has obviously given that some great thought. That is what generals do; they think.

But more than just thinking, a general adds strategy to the thinking process and his/her strategy has two ends to think about and prepare for: the beginning of the end (which the General says we are not prepared) and the end of the end, which I am betting he is prepared for.

So either seek the advice of the general that tells you that “we’ll be unprepared”, or become a Republican :)

But on the other hand, if we somehow bite-the-bullet and Decide to Act according to how we are Oriented (we are a consumer economy) and pay for the debt that we have accrued in the world, perhaps we should take advantage of the environment that we have positioned ourselves in, and opt out.

We have positioned ourselves as a nation of great command, but little control. This is what the General is trying to tell you.

We are unable to fight a war against  a nation that is in control of what we want (cool electronic gadgets and games), while at the same time maintaining the demand for those products.

So we are unprepared for war.

At the same time, the advantage we have in the world is our ability  to move our culture in new directions, think  what Jazz, Blues, Rock and Roll, Rap, ect. has to offer.

This ability to create fast transits (OODA) is pissing many people off, and what the General is also  telling you is: we can’t afford to pay for this war against the generation of diversity while at the same time fighting a war against the generation of conformity.

This ability, to generate diversity in our cultures, upsets many people of many orientations.

The greatest Orientation that has been upset has been among our own culture–the Conservatives.

The Conservatives want to enforce conformity, to our past, because it is that Orientation that has been the most successful, in the past.

Unfortunately, the past is no more. We are a nation of command and what control the suppliers of our resources had over us is gone, in a mushroom cloud.

This ability of our culture to diversify does not set well for the party of our culture that demands control, i.e., Conservatives.

The Conservatives want to enforce the conformity of our past on the culture of those generations that are living in the future. These generations are called Liberals.

Liberals want to generate diversity that increase demands, unlike the culture of the Conservatives who want to decrease diversity, to conform to demand.

The problem being: the potential for both diversity and conformity is equal, and so the two structures, the left and Right are at war.

To generate diversity while at the same time enforce conformity will take some kind of strategy over the process, but I believe these two worlds can live together, it is doable.

It’s a game, and you all are invited.

via Information Dissemination: Unimaginable Statements and Signs of Surrender.

Soft Power, A Strategic Theory Perspective

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If we label the ideal commercial person as a “business manager” and the ideal military person as a “soldier”, we would label the ideal soft power institution employee as a “hippie” without the negative stereotypical characteristics.

Right on!

But more importantly, I think he brings up the point that, in today’s world, both hard power and soft power are basically the same culturally, with the structure being different.

Hard power is structure more like a 2×4, while soft power is more like a feather pillow. Most countries would rather get hit with a pillow than a 2×4, but no mater how you look at it, you’re still getting hit.

Seyditz89 says we need to change the culture of soft power, and I would not argue against this. I especially like the part where seyditz89 turns it over to the hippies.

However, power is power and when you start messing with it between countries there is a price to be paid, and the outcome of both forms of power just depends on who has the most energy to pay with.

So perhaps we should develop a different form of power.

Network wise, soft power runs in phases much like 3-phase power running an industrial motor.

The flow of currant that runs the motor not only alternates in direction but is carried on different degrees in waves at the changing of direction.

These “waves” of soft power come into the target country in the form of resources, with the hope of changing the way the motor moves.

Culturally wise, the more powerful country doesn’t want the motor to stop turning, it just doesn’t want to give it any more power, and it wants the less powerful country to act more like the more powerful country.

Changing how another nation of power acts is a big problem, especially when the more powerful nation has less energy. That is basically where the U.S.A. is at. The U.S.A. is a nation of little energy, but is able to, because of its culture, express that energy very quickly.

So the third form of power, which I shall call here and now hippie power, would run parallel to the nation less powerful and only connect perpendicular to the less powerful nation, much like our connection with Yemen today.

I am not sure this less love and more sex approach would be hippie approved,  but yeah, sex, drugs and rock and roll.

1 out of 3 is probably better than what our soft power is doing today.

H/T Zenpundit

via MilPub: Soft Power, A Strategic Theory Perspective.

Softpower vs Hardpower

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Let’s start with the concept of power itself. Nye’s definition agrees with the realist Weberian definition of power, that being “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be able to carry out their own will despite resistance”.

Soft Power is defined by Nye as:

“the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. When our policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of others, our soft power is enhanced.”

There is no coercion in Softpower? Ha, if that was so, Softpower would make things a lot easier, instead of more complex. No, plenty of coercion in Softpower, and we are making payments all the time.

Nye gets his math wrong, but pretty good article.

via MilPub: Soft Power, A Strategic Theory Perspective.