The Pete Quiñones Show - Pete Reads 'Coup D'état' by Edward N. Luttwak with Guests - Complete Part 2 of 2

Episode Date: October 5, 2025

5 Hours and 11 MinutesPG-13Here is part 2 of the complete recording of 'Coup D'état' by Edward N. Luttwak.Coup d'ÉtatPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on Twitter Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

Ready for huge savings, we'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. You catch them in the corner of your eye, distinctive by design. They move you, even before you drive.

The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services, Ireland Limited, subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply.

Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Great to see you back at Spex Savers. Okay. Could you read out the letters on the wall for me? Yep. D-E-A-L-S? Yeah, D-E-A-L-S. Deals. Oh, right. Yes, our Black Friday deals are I catching. But the letter chart's over here. Oh, sorry. At Speck Savers, we've got all sorts of unmissable Black Friday deals. Like up to 70 euro off one pair of designer glasses. Offer ends on 7th of December 2025. Conditions apply.

Ask in store for details. I want to welcome everyone back to part six of my reading of Kudaita by Edward Lutwak. John Fieldhouse is back and we're going to jump right in. Stop me anytime, John. Here we go. Neutralizing the police. The flags and uniforms and the military forces of different countries are very different. but their structure and organization tend to be similar because they reflect the universality of modern technology.

The tactical implications of weapons and ancillary equipment impose a certain uniformity on military organization. This has enabled us to study their infiltration in terms that are generally applicable. Police forces, however, are shaped by local, social and political conditions and are therefore very diverse. Police officers can be armed very heavily or not at all. They can be concentrated in mobile and hard-hitting units or dispersed in small groups. They can be controlled by the Ministry of Defense and thus have a military training and outlook or by the local community and be extremely civilian-minded. Though their structure is so diverse, police forces resemble each other and the purposes they serve.

The prevention and detection of crime and the maintenance of public order, which is the task of separate paramilitary forces in some countries where there are no such forces is secured by concentrating and deploying ordinary police taken from their other work. Police work also includes an intelligent element. Information is gathered informally by the entire police apparatus and their informers, but there will usually be a special section of the police whose only function is in this area. The intelligence aspect of police work will be effectively neutralized by our general defensive effort vis-à-vis the security services, which is discussed in the next section.

Paramilitary forces do not exist in the United Kingdom, where there are provisions for the army to act in support of the civil power, or in the United States, where the part-time soldiers of each state's National Guard can be called out instead, but such forces are extensively employed in many other countries. In France, for example, there is a civilian police force, the police national, but there is also a paramilitary force, the gendarmerie, that normally acts as the rural police. The gendarmerie is controlled by the Ministry of Defense, and its officers are integrated in the ranks of the armed forces. Its members receive light infantry training as well as police training.

It numbers about 90,000 men and women and is organized into departmental forces that are scattered in small groups all over the countryside. as well as mobile groups concentrated in large units, legions. We can ignore the departmental forces because they would probably be unable to intervene within the short time frame of a coup. But the mobile units, each of which consists of seven squadrons of truck chandarm and one armored car squadron represent a formidable force that would have to be neutralized or isolated. I was just going to say, yeah, there are a bunch of things that are kind of obsolete. or a lot of stuff that's obsolete in this section, but we talked about the first two times we discussed this chapter.

The mobile gendarmerie live in military-type barracks and are equipped with submachine guns and heavier infantry weapons. Their armored cars, 13-ton wheeled vehicles with 40-millimeter armor, can only be stopped with standard anti-tank weaponry. Officially, the gendarmerie, unlike the other two police forces, has no intelligence service, but during the Algerian war, a security section, was set up, and as bureaucratic organizations often do, has survived the demise of its original

function. The Police National, which carries out police work in population centers of more than 10,000 inhabitants, is largely composed of units of detectives and amass of ordinary police officers, but it also has a paramilitary force of its own, the Compagné, Republican de Security, CRS. It numbers about 13,500, trained and equipped like the mobile units of the gendarmerie, minus the armored cars. The CRS is staffed with personnel who have been carefully screened politically, and it is headed by an assistant director of the Ministry of the Interior. The police national also has an intelligence service that concentrates on the more sophisticated forms of crime and a counterintelligence service that also carries out political work and the

surveillance of aliens. Both intelligence organizations operate all over France. Yeah, France is a weird case where the two police forces duplicate themselves. You see that a lot in the former Soviet bloc, but it's a rare case of a Western European power that does that. And one of the reasons done for that is the police now, who are officially civilian, despite having the same rank structure, is a unionized force and therefore has been connected to leftist politics in France historically. where's the Jean-Dermeree come from the same population that would do the professional military. So they tended to be much more loyal or much more connected to the regular army, which in France, which has a history, a modern, recent history of coups.

That was always a big issue. So it's just one of the weird issues you deal with in France that you see in lots of other countries that you generally don't see in the, or excuse me, don't see the Western Europe or North America. That's really interesting. Thank you. All police work in the Department of the Daily. Lecena, the Paris area, is the exclusive province of the Prefecture de Police, now part of the Police National, which has been made internationally famous by one of the fictional inspectors, novelist Georges Simonins-Jules Magri.

The prefecture has influenced the organization of police forces in many countries in Southern Europe and the Middle East, and we will study it in greater detail than other French police forces. anatomy of a police force, the Paris Prefector. Is that the way it's pronounced Prefecture? I mean, I speak extremely little French, so I think. Okay. Okay.

It is our hope that the police of the capital city, which is the locale of a coup, will be less powerful than the Paris Prefecture. It consists of about 34,000 officers and is organized in several directorates of which the following concern us directly. The police municipal is the largest. directorate and controls the familiar uniform flicks with their largely symbolic pistols and their much-used trunchions. They are dispersed in 20 districts in the city and 26 suburban ones. Their standards of training and discipline have varied over the years, but their capacity for

individual brutality does not add up to an effective intervention capability. In the event of a major disturbance, they are deployed in columns of civilian-type buses that could be stopped by suitable roadblocks. Their training and mentality will probably probably make them neutrals if we can prevent their concentrated deployment. These are just the general standard patrol officers we think of. And I think the best American comparison would be like the New York Police Department if they just separated out patrol from detectives and all their specialty functions. The police judiciary is the Paris investigative police and one of the global pioneers of scientific detection.

Apart from the incidental intelligence aspect of their work, we can ignore this directorate. This is just like if they had pulled NYPD, you just put all their detectives under one command. C. The Intelligence Service, like its counterparts in the Police National is mainly concerned with sophisticated crime, drugs, vice, and high class gambling. But it also has a political section that carries out surveillance work nowadays focused on Islamic terrorism. As in the case of the other security agencies, we will cover the appropriate defensive tactics in the next section. Yeah, this is kind of like the national security part of the FBI. One of the issues, even in the West, right, most countries in the world other than the United States, will have something that's more or less a political police force slash domestic counterintelligence agency that's part of their standard law enforcement.

Aliens Director-Outs is a small group mainly concerned with the Bureau. bureaucratic routines of issuing and checking residence permits. It exercises general surveillance over transient foreigners. The fiches you fill in at the hotel are collected by the directorate, and over the more sensitive immigrant communities, its work will only affect us if we have some connection with foreign elements, particularly those foreign communities that have a history of political activity in its more violent forms. I can only wonder if they've grown since he revised this.

or if they've been eliminated altogether. Well, the EU is weird, right, because you don't have any internal borders, but thanks to airplanes, you can theoretically enter anywhere. Anyways, most domestic law enforcement agencies in the world have some kind of an immigration department that on top of whatever the national immigration agency is. So, yeah, when we talk about, you know, sanctuary cities and whether or not local cops should be allowed to enforce immigration laws, and it's like, you know, bullshit. That's what the entire world is. Places like Japan, it used to be every year if you had a

permanent residence permit, you actually had to go and meet with a detective where they sat down and confirmed all your stuff or else you would have your visas revoked. So yeah, the rest of the world is always enforced immigration laws, though Europe not so much since, you know, 2000 or so. That's actually 100% correct about Japan. I know a couple people who have lived there. Americans will there. E. Safety of the president is a directorate concern with a physical protection of the president, but it also carries out a preventative intelligence function. Following the repeated assassination attempts organized by the Organization of American States, OAS, and its affiliated organizations in the early 1960s, this section of the prefecture was reinforced with carefully screened personnel

taken from the entire security apparatus and a tradition of very careful personnel selection, The security system of the Elisei Palace would be a serious obstacle to its seizure during a coup. And this is true of most countries. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs. When the doors open, the deals go fast.

Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design. They move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon and Teramar.

Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Cooper and discover our latest offers. Cooper Design that moves Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply.

Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Whoever their executive security service and like the UK is a really weird example that the people who guard the royal family and guard the prime minister are actually part of the

London Metroopolitan police because Britain has never had a national police force. So, yeah, this is pretty standard for most of the world. Okay. And F, the Guard Republican, though controlled by the Prefector, this is part of the gendarmerie and is equipped with light infantry weapons and a variety of transport equipment. It provides the horse-helmeted and plumed presidential guard on ceremonial occasions, but its two regiments are hard-hitting mobile forces whose neutrally.

would be an essential requirement in the events of a coup. Yeah, I apologize for not muting myself earlier. Yeah, this unit is, again, it's part of the gendarmerie, even though it's controlled by the local prefecture. The best way to understand these is they're like the old guard or the Marine Corps regiment that both do presidential guard duties, ceremonial honor guard duties. And just like the U.S., both those units actually have a real life security function other than parades. but that's the primary duty is like parades. And anyways, very often if there's an emergency,

they can be mobilized for public order additional stuff. And again, because these are the gendarmerie, they're part of the regular military, that has historically been an issue in French politics. Because again, what was it, the attempted push against de Gaulle, where the paratroopers were actually near the president's residence at that time. The reason they finally surrendered is it was a unit of Jean-Thaintechreux.

arms that came out and surrounded them. Because those soldiers had pretty much made it clear that if it was civilian police, they had no problem killing civilian police, but they weren't willing to fight other soldiers who some of them had even served with in the past. So again, the French balance between

two police force exist for a reason. The existence of separate police organizations is one of the problems of neutralizing this part of the state security apparatus. In Britain, the division is largely territorial, and its purpose is give the local interest a measure of control over the police force.

But there are also specialized forces that reflect functional divisions. Apart from the county-based police, long since amalgamated into larger groups, there are the following independent police forces. The Admiralty Constabulary, Air Ministry Constabulary, Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary, five independent harbor police forces, British Transport Commission Police, civil aviation constabulary, Ministry of Defense Constabulary. Yeah, and again, because Britain, at least in England and Wales, right, most of the police are county or city-based except for these. And again, these are specialty things, a lot of it

has to do with the fact in these specialty agencies, they're allowed to carry weapons as a routine part of their duty. Everybody is a certified firearms officer because things like nuclear power plants and military bases, you need people with guns to guard. them. One of the things he doesn't really mention that has changed since then is, like, Scotland actually amalgamated all their police forces into one police force since then. And Northern Ireland, the Royal Circumstabular was replaced with the police service in Northern Ireland, which I don't think anybody understood that military people were going to pronounce that acronym is penis. So they've transferred their police services too. So, yeah, England and Wales proper.

they have this weird patchwork system. Though even on the back end, excuse me, most of their training has been consolidated. And the home secretary controls so much of how organizations are funded that they're not really local other than the cosmetics of their organization. All these police forces are strictly confined in their operations to the installations they protect. But similar organizations in other countries where Bureau, bureaucratic propensities are subject to weaker controls have shown a remarkable ability to grow and

diversify. Though the French police system is particularly extensive, its basic features are shared by police forces in most of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The paramilitary element is usually present in the form of a field force attached to the regular police or else in the form of armored car units. The riot control element is reproduced in the special squads of Middle Eastern police forces which can be very effective in spite of their small size. Whereas in most parts of Asia, a serious insurgency situation has been experienced. This common pattern has been distorted by the proliferation of ad hoc police forces that carry out combined internal security and administrative functions. South Vietnam was once the extreme example, with no fewer than five

different security organizations with police functions. If the British police system can be said to be divided into largely territorial units and the French one into largely functional ones. In the United States, the division is largely constitutional. Except for the specialized work of the police agencies attached to various departments of the federal government, only the FBI, the DEA, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives have nationwide jurisdictions, and then only for certain crimes legally defined as federal. Most ordinary police work is carried out by purely independent local forces maintained at the municipal, county, or state level. The fragmentation of the system means

that the police as such would have a very limited intervention potential in spite of its extensive stock of weaponry and communication equipment. There is, of course, the National Guard, but this has not so far been organized in a manner that would give it a real intervention capability. In America's riots, the Guard forces routinely fail to perform efficiently, even against untrained civilians. The strategy of it... I'm sorry. You have saying the National Guard.

With the exceptions and their military police units, virtually nobody has any kind of public order training. The strategy of the coup with respect to the police system of our target country will therefore have to be as diversified as its component parts. The paramilitary

element. Paramilitary forces are usually able to perform a military as well as a police function. This versatility has resulted in their rapid growth partly because they may be a genuinely economical way of improving the security system in general, and partly because funds are often easier to secure for them than for the regular police. An opposition party, or public opinion, which may resist an increase in the police budget, can often be persuaded to allocate funds for the Ministry of Defense, and

paramilitary forces are usually under its administrative control. In the newly independent countries, the paramilitary element of the police can be a very serious obstacle to the coup because, while the army is often a recent post-colonial development, the police and its paramilitary units are usually old established organizations. This means that the police can be larger than the army, and also sometimes superior in the quality of training and equipment. If this is the case, it will not be possible to control the paramilitary units by using the part of the army we have incorporated against them. fortunately governments have striven to increase the size of their armed forces integrate many countries in post-colonial settings. The unfavorable for us balance of strength between the army and the paramilitary police was usually reversed within a few years of independence.

This is perhaps one of the explanations for the sudden spate of coups in Africa in the course of 1966 to 1967, which came after a phase of very rapid expansion in the armed forces. It is interesting to note that while the ruthless oppression of the colonial powers was often carried out by means of a village constabulary with very with few military pretensions, the new era of freedom often required the creation of heavily armed paramilitary police forces. In Ghana, for example, the good. No, I was just saying this is just a really good example of what needs to be understood anytime the establishment left talks about colonialism and oppression. In Ghana, for example, the police system was expanded after independence in 1957 and armored car units were added to the already existing mobile police. The communication system of the police was made independent of civilian services, and the escort police, which used to be a fessed and barefooted force of amiable illiterates, was turned into an effective riot-breaking unit. If the paramilitary police is large, as compared to those units of the armed forces that we can incorporate, it will be necessary to repeat the whole.

analysis and infiltration procedure within it. We may indeed be able to concentrate on the paramilitary police and content ourselves with neutralizing the army by technical means. Normally, however, the balance of forces between the means of coercion of the state will not require this, and we will be able to isolate the police for the duration of the coup by using the army. The first step in our neutralization of these forces is to establish the size, deployment, and organization of the paramilitary police. This is usually easier than in the case of the army, because, unlike the latter, paramilitary forces are usually stationed in permanent barracks. Next, we will try to find out their degree of attachment to the present regime. But this will

not involve the sort of study in-depth we made of the army, and it will only be a matter of finding out about their corporate rather than individual outlook. The mentality of the paramilitary police may be bureaucratic, i.e. concerned with jobs and career, as in the case of the Italian publica securza and its sellere. You catch them in the corner of your eye, distinctive, by design, they move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plug-in hybrid range for Mentor, Leon, and Teramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trading boosters of up to 2000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves.

Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Ready for huge savings? Well mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. talking thousands of your favorite Lidl items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast.

Come see for yourself. The Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. Paramilitary units, if this is the case, a minimal degree of intervention can be expected. On the other hand, their mentality may be parallel to that of the Army, i.e., concerned with loyalty and honor, as well as jobs in his careers. or reflect a political association, as was the case of the Soviet Union's KGB, or Haiti's Tantan Makos of the Duvalier era. If the equipment, deployment, and mentality of the paramilitary police is such as to make them an effective intervention force,

we will have to control them in the same manner as the hardcore loyalist forces of the army. The ways and means of this forcible isolation will be discussed in Chapter 5. usually, however, we will find the paramilitary police force is essentially bureaucratic, and therefore, in spite of its impressive military bearing and equipment, it will not intervene against the armed support of a coup. I have been unable to find a single case in the last 20 years of a paramilitary police force that had actually defended its political masters during a coup, though there are several cases of their intervention on behalf of the coup.

Yeah, the Jandre Marie protecting the Gauls for the rare examples. The rural police. In poorer countries, this element of the police force is numerically the strongest. This is only to be expected since most of the population of such countries live in villages and works in agriculture. In spite of its large size, this part of the police will almost never have an intervention potential against a coup. They are often commanded by retired non-commissioned officers, fully integrated in the rural society in which they live, and even where there are provisions for their mobilization and concentrated use, they are unlikely to be assembled, equipped, and prepared in time to intervene against us. Whether the rural police officer is a guard champ-champetre with an ancient pistol inscribe

or a Middle Eastern Zaphtier who plays the village boss, he will hardly want to rush to a remote capital city to protect an equally remote government. The urban and national police. Though this part of the police force will be considerably less dispersed than the village-based rural police, its main components will be just as ineffective against the coup.

The personnel of the urban police will fall into three broad categories, crime detection and investigation, normal surveillance, and traffic duties. The detective element will be small, very bureaucratic-minded, and apart from its incidental intelligence aspect, it can be ignored by us.

The uniform police, which carries out all the usual surveillance duties, will be more numerous, but though they may be useful as a riot-breaking force when suitably concentrated, they are unlikely to act against armed opponents in a major political crisis. The municipal police, largely concerned with traffic duties, will usually be staffed by middle-aged men of retiring disposition with small and rusty pistols. There have been, however, exceptions such as the Spanish Policia Armada

and del trafico of the Franco regime whose personnel were politically screened and which were equipped with adequate transportation and telecommunications to intervene in major political disturbances. I mean, that makes sense. I mean, that's... You have to love a man who made sure

even his meter maids were loyal... was an elite loyal force ready to defeat the communists. I mean, it's... I have no... I'm not shocked at all to learn this, and I'd never learned this before, so... Yeah. Part of what goes along when cases like the Franco example is it's used in part as a way when you demobilize long-term professionals or you want to take, like you said, NCOs who would be retirement age, who you want to keep in the system some way. It becomes a place where you can put loyal people where they're not really out to pasture.

They're still doing work for community, but they're not, you know, just completely disconnected from the system. A detailed analysis of our target country's police system will probably reveal a problem, of course, composition. After dividing the police force into so-called hard and soft forces, we may find sizable hard subdivisions within the soft elements. Our brief survey has shown that only a small part of the police force is likely to intervene against us, and of this a yet smaller part is likely to do so with any enthusiasm. The natural inclination of the police will be to ride out the crisis and as individuals to avoid endangering their positions vis-à-vis their possible future employers. The coup may well be planned as a military operation, but it will not, unless partially or

totally unsuccessful, involve any actual fighting. Thus, the fact that the police are not heavily armed does not fundamentally explain their low intervention capability as compared to the army. The real difference between the two is in their degree of integration in the civil society. While the army can develop a corporate ideology and mentality that is divergent or even opposed to the civilian one, the police are usually too intimately involved in civilian life to do so. This can be either an advantage or an obstacle from our point of view. On the one hand, the eccentricity of the army will mean that a regime can retain its appeal in the closed world of the military barracks after losing it in society at large. This might interfere with our recruiting,

but it could work the other way, i.e., we may find that the army is fundamentally opposed to a government that much civilian opinion accepts. Recruiting our forces among the police will almost always be more difficult than in the army. First, the lower level of automatic discipline will mean that recruiting an officer may not only, may not bring over the officers men as well. Further, the fact that police live among the public will mean the internal dynamics generated in the closed world of a military unit would be dissipated in this more open environment and the snowball effect that would bring entire units over to us after a, after a limited degree of infiltration will not operate. All these factors point in the same direction,

the low degree of intervention capability for us, as well as against us, and the difficulty of incorporation both indicate that while the army should be penetrated, the police forces can be dealt with defensively after the coup. Neutralizing the security agencies. The security agencies of our target country can be numerically the smallest of the professional defenses of the state, but often also the most dangerous. Unlike the armed forces and the police, the security agencies will be actively trying to identify and defeat threats posed by groups such as ours.

Unlike the armed forces and police, their organizations, deployment, and personnel cannot usually be studied with precision from the outside, and even their existence may not be known to us. Almost every state has some sort of secret service. Many have several such organizations that operate both within and outside the national territory, and which we have so far described with the blanket term of security agencies.

Our first task is to try to identify them more precisely. Yeah, before you go on, I was just going to say this section is a good example of why any time there's a massive political opposition or something that looks poised to take over administration of a state, you see bureaucratic and rhetorical argument about why people are doing that. You know, anytime there's any effort by the Trump administration change anything with intelligence or, yeah, security agencies, they always accused him of wanting to be Hitler. Never mind that, you know, the left talks, you know, so much about how they've spread the EI programs through the CIA and other agencies. So, yeah, obviously we're probably not going to be doing a coup anytime to. But this, you know, gives us an important lens to look through just all the rhetoric that's associated with.

any kind of change in these organizations that we see right now. It is well known that the bureaucratic animal in its natural state has certain characteristic patterns of behavior. It grows in size and extends its sphere of action until checked by some outside force. This role is usually played by the financial bureaucracy, which fulfills its instincts by opposing the growth of all other bureaucratic organizations. Equally important as a limiting factor is the concerted pressure of individual bureaucracies, each of which is fighting to preserve and extend its territory. The cumulative effect of these pressures is to limit to some extent the growth of the bureaucracy

as a whole. Perhaps without them, all the inhabitants of developed countries would by now be employed by the state bureaucracy. These pressures operate weakly or not at all in the case of the security services. Their budgets are usually secret, so they cannot easily be scrutinized, let alone reduced. Other bureaucratic organizations cannot prevent them from public. poaching in their territories because their activities may go undetected and thus cannot be declared off limits. Finally, the relative prestige of undercover operations of all kinds allows them to break

rules other bureaucrats must obey and to operate in all areas of social activity. The results of this freedom is predictable. In many countries, security agencies have grown in a more dynamic and disorderly fashion than the rest of the bureaucracy and tend to have overlapping spheres of activity. Before a zoologist studies animals, he or she classifies them and tries to relate them to the nearest known species. We will not follow this procedure both in functional terms, which are generally applicable to all countries, and in organizational terms, which are peculiar to each one. The Pure Intelligence Function. This classification covers the collection and analysis of published and unpublished information of all kinds, and, because of the

high degree of specialized knowledge often required, many different bodies can enter into this field, which is the most crowded of the whole sector. Tactical military intelligence, which answers the question, what is the opposition doing, may be collected by separate agencies working for the separate branches of the armed forces. In traditionally seafaring nations, naval intelligence is often the largest and most developed service. Strategic information, which answers the question, what is the opposition planning, may be the province of separate and competing agencies run by the general staff. The defense ministry and the ministry in charge of foreign affairs, scientific information may be collected by the administrative entity in charge of

science and also by specialized bodies in charge of particular sectors, including atomic energy, aeronautics, and telecommunications. ESB transformed how the country powered itself once, and now we're doing it again. Working with businesses all across Ireland, helping them reduce their energy costs, reach their sustainability goals, and future-proof their operations. Because this is not just for us.

It's for future us. To find out more, contact our smart energy services team at ESB.aE forward slash smart energy. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November. 28 to 30th because the Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear.

From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. Economic intelligence is one of the worst areas of duplication with demographic energy and agriculture authorities operating alongside the, entity in charge of economic affairs in general. Political intelligence may be handled by the Foreign Affairs Ministry

openly through the diplomatic service and also covertly by a separate agency. The counterintelligence function. This covers the prevention of the activities listed above and may be carried out by both generalized and specialized bodies. The military may run their own agency and the police of each branch of the armed forces may do the same. The Ministry of Interior will almost always have a spy-catching service, like the Secret Service, popularly MI5 of the British Home Office, and particular bodies will have a service to protect their

installations, but these rarely go beyond the ordinary police stage. From our point of view, this sector will be the most important. We may, if we fail to preserve our security position, come into contact with, A, the police agencies, such as special branch in the United Kingdom or the FBI in the United States, B, the separate ministerial body, or C, the military agencies. Much of our planning infiltration work will be indistinguishable from that which could be carried out by foreign intelligence service. Therefore, it will enter into the territory of the counterintelligence agencies. Which is why they talk about us as if we are the KGB.

The counter-espionage function. This is the the most subtle and sophisticated of all the functions. It covers deliberate contacts with opposition intelligence services in order to feed them, disinformation, and penetrate, or even disrupt their organization. It is unlikely that more than one agency carries out this work because it requires an extremely precise control over operations. The agency may be a subsection of any of those mentioned above, but in order to function efficiently, it must be able to exercise some form of control over all competing agencies. especially over counterintelligence, which relates to counter espionage as a butcher does to a surgeon.

This is one of the routine complaints about the United States. We don't necessarily do counterintelligence, counter espionage very well, to the point that the CIA routinely stumbles over the FBI and the different military services. Internal political security. This is another sensitive area from our point of view. Its specific function is to prevention, of exactly what we aim to do, overthrow the government. In many countries, there is a political police with both uniformed and covert agents, and it may be controlled by the bureaucracy of

the Ministry of the Interior or by the interpolitical leadership, either directly or in one-party states through the party. Elsewhere, in more or less democratic regimes, the police have a political department, as in France, Italy, and Germany, and its primary function is the surveillance of extremist groups. In military dictatorships, the territory of military intelligence often extends to this area. In some countries, the agency in charge of the physical protection of the higher leadership may be running an information service as well as providing the bodyguards. These exist in basically all modern states don't think just because we're in the West, they don't have them. You know, Germany, famously, the federal government along with all the states

have counterintelligence agencies that basically exist. The content of neo-Nazi never mind the last ones are pushing a hundred so yeah these exist everywhere even though they're not advertised and it doesn't seem like something Western democracy would have internal intelligence this function is carried out by the information services attached to the police and paramilitary forces of the state thus in Italy apart from the police publica sukera aza which has a political squad the paramilitary carabine Biniiardinari. It just means carbon soldiers. Carbonary. Carbinary.

Has an internal security information service that is also responsible for military counterintelligence, but primarily operates internally, these days mostly against Islamic terrorism. Our behavior in the midst of this bureaucratic jungle will be purely defensive, unless we have a direct line to one or another of the security agencies. If that is the case, a security agency concern would provide an ideal cover for all our activities. Failing such a fortunate coincidence, we will not try to create a direct line by infiltrating any security service because if we do so, there will be the very great danger that they will use any contact in order to infiltrate us. This is a standard procedure for the security services to follow, and the elementary defensive techniques used when infiltrating the armed forces cut-out one-way communication will probably fail to work in their case. In order to run a secure

operation, we will follow rules that derive from the basic assumption that all information about our activities is a source of danger as soon as it exists outside the minds of our inner group. From this, all the standard procedures emerged. No information will be communicated except verbally. No information will be communicated except on a need-to-know basis. All communication links from inner to affiliated members must be on a one-way basis. No activity should be carried out by an inner member if an outer member can do the job. These rules are simple and well known. The problem is to keep to them under the pressure of work and emotions it generates. The most sensitive of our activities will be the approach and persuasion of new affiliates to the coup, and the nature of the

security agencies can add an extra measure of danger. In many countries, some of the security agencies are hidden with in totally unexciting administrative bodies, where, as in the case of the U.S. Treasury Secret Service, this reflects an administrative convenience. The fact is well known. Elsewhere, however, the department within a department system is deliberate. Consequently, we may unwittingly try to infiltrate a safe department and discover that we are dealing with a security agency. All we can do is to list some of the places where it seems natural for security services to exist, census and cartography services, central bank anti-counterfeiting agencies, post office departments, press bureaus, customs and immigration departments, and the taxation authorities.

It must not be thought, however, that our entire operation will automatically collapse if it is penetrated by a security agency. Just on the note about security agencies being stuffed inside of, you know, normal agencies, one of the weirdest examples I can think of is, at one point, Swiss intelligence agency was run by their post office. Well, that makes sense. I mean, nobody would expect that. Yeah, and if it's a country that has universal

manhood conscription, if everybody's a soldier, it's not hard to find competent people with, you know, that kind of leadership to be in another agency. That makes sense. If we have followed the security procedures, the chances are that only a small part of our total effort will be identified, and therefore its ultimate purpose, may not be discovered. Even if it is discovered that a coup is being planned, the security agency

may wait before taking any action in order to capture all the planners, and this could be too late. As soon as our teams are on the road actually executing the coup, it will be too late for the security services to oppose us on the information side, while their fighting power will usually be unimportant as compared to the army units we have incorporated. Finally, political security agencies are necessarily sensitive to political trends, and they may decide to join the group planning a coup if they know that it is well organized and ready to seize power. All right. That's the end of chapter three.

That was a really painful chapter. Well, thanks for joining me on this one. I really appreciate it, because I know you have to run. So, yeah. Yeah, take care of yourself. Thanks. Thank you again. I appreciate it.

Later. Bye. I want to welcome everyone to part seven of my reading of Kudaita by Edward Lutwak. Christopher Sandbatch is back. How are you doing, Mr. Sandbatch? Pretty good. It's like I'm like the, I've been this way since the beginning of time almost. I'm like the Warren Zvon of like the right wing ecosystem.

He used to go to Letterman and like he would play on Letterman when Paul Schaefer would like one at the night off or something. You can't get anybody else. Go get Sandbache. That's funny. You were my specific choice for this. All right. So, all right. I'm going to start reading chapter four. Cut me off at any time to comment however you wish. Ready? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Chapter four, the planning of the coup d'etat. Even barricades, apparently a mechanical element of the uprising are of significance. in reality above all as a moral force.

Lev Davidovich, Bronstein. Otherwise known as Leon Trotsky. He took the name of the warden of the jail he was sent to in Siberia, if I remember currently. Is that how that, like, all of the old Bolsheviks had, like, they had, like, they had Twitter handles, you know, basically. Well, there was a reason. Yeah, I forgot Trotsky was one of them.

I forgot like I forgot that wasn't his real name. All right. ESB transformed how the country powered itself once. And now we're doing it again. Working with businesses all across Ireland, helping them reduce their energy costs, reach their sustainability goals, and future-proof their operations.

Because this is not just for us. It's for future us. To find out more, contact our Smart Energy Services team at ESB.aE forward slash smart energy. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back.

We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Little more to value.

In the early morning of April 23rd, 1961, elements of the first Foreign Legion parachute regiment seized the key points of the city of Algiers in the name of General Maurice Zesachalé, Andre Zeller, Edmund Jujah, and Raoul Salon. The four generals, because of their personal prestige and their position in the French hierarchy, quickly asserted their control over the local military command

and started to extend their authority over all the armed forces in Algeria. At this time, De Gaulle's government was in the process of opening negotiations with the Algerian nationalists, and the generals were determined to replace him with a leader who would carry the war to a victorious conclusion. The French armed forces in Algeria were much more powerful than those stationed in France and Germany, and the four generals were hopeful that, once their allegiance was assured, they would find it easy to take effective control of the French government. After all, D'Aul himself had... Wait, hold on.

Now, okay, I was the only to get to there. Because I feel like people might need to know what the hell is going on in France right now. Because this seems like awfully late in the timeline for, like, you know, quadrumvards of generals to be forming in the African provinces. And which is what's happening here, you know? And it's the, and it's, this is France's form of, this is France's own personal struggle with, with decolonization that's playing out in front of us right now. And so what's happening is that home support in France because of, really, because of the rise of an intellectual movement called the new left and student, and largely driven in the back of student activism and, you know,

whatever those influences are, you can think of how you, you, figure out what they are yourself. But there's a massive anti-colonial movement afoot in, you know, France himself. And Charles de Gaulle is in charge of the country. But, you know, he's like, his return to power is incredibly dramatic. And we're about to hear that story. But just to let, just to let everybody know that things like this is a Western country in the 1960s. Yeah, France was really wild for a while. And this is their, this is their decolonization event that happens. There's a movie based on this. What's the name of it?

I can't remember. Algearia or something. Oh, Battle of Algiers. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm writing that down. Oh, okay.

All right. Onward. After all, DeGall himself had come to power after a similar episode in May 1558, and there seemed to be no obstacle to a successful second edition of the famous Today, My. When the four generals made their declaration over Algiers' radio, the first 14th and 18th colonial parachute regiments rallied to the coup.

A few infantry units, some of the Marines, and much of the Air Force remained loyal to de Gaul, as in May 1958 they had remained loyal to the Fourth Republic, but most of the armed forces in Algeria were a tenti stay. Wait and see is the attitude that usually favors a coup, and when General Henri de Poudi withdrew his headquarters in Algeria from Oran to Lemsen to avoid having to choose between fighting and joining the coup. He was objectively favoring the coup. The four generals seemed to be on the verge of victory. The determined Piednoir population of Algeria was 100% behind them. The powerful parachute units gave them a hard-hitting force of intervention, and the bulk

of the armed forces were either for them or neutral. Even the forces loyal to DeGal's government did nothing to actively oppose the coup. All right. So, like, let's talk about what happened here real quick. So, like, what he's done here, so this is Lutvok. He's setting up the game conditions that he's going to be playing around one for the rest of this chapter. He's talking about this is the point in the flowchart. It's kind of joky. He's trolling you a little bit that it comes so late in the actual, and so late in the actual.

and so late in the actual book, you would think maybe the chapter where it says, so do you need to plan a coup is maybe the first chapter, but no, it's the fourth one here. And this is the real, the two, the game situation he's setting up here for us is he's given us a classical setup. Okay, this is like, you know, imagine the chess game. He's describing a chess game for us. According to all previous and at the time, according to at the time, according to all previous, previous classical formula, you know, formulations of politics, you have enough information right here to determine whether or not you should do a coup. Okay. And so he's, and for the purposes of opening of his like opening barrage in this chapter, he's chosen to set out two separate instances of this like terribly classical again. Like I used the phrase quadrumper for reason. This has been described to us, like Gibbon describes the down decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

These are Roman conditions are in play. Okay. And he's like setting up this idea. So he's setting up this equivalence here. So if you're these four generals, and again, the political conditions here are there's movement at home in favor of decolonizing, but the like the French hard right. And this is where like the actual new French hard right has kind of been born. But the French hard right is most of the military structure. And the military structure in France is way bigger politically than most people probably think it is.

And they have chosen to take a pro-imperial stance. And they've actually done a coup in Algeria. So this is what's going on. They're trying and their play is this thing that happened in 1958 that brought Charles de Gaul back to power. You know, DeGall had been in power in World War II. and he's out for a while, and he gets brought back to power in this very similar, like, sort of situation, you know, and so the thing, so what's the Lufat is here saying? He's like, he's like, okay, so these situations look similar enough on their face that this coup probably should have worked, you know? All right, but, okay, now I'll butt back out.

No problem. All right. While the leaders of the coups started to gather support, the French defense minister was on a visit of Morocco, Maurice Pappon, the head of the Paris Police, was on vacation. Michel de Beix, the prime minister and chief firefighter of the regime, was ill, and DeGal himself was entertaining the visiting president of Senegal, Leopold Cedar and Sen-Gore. Other ministers were on visits to Algiers itself and were promptly captured and held in confinement, together with other representatives of the president.

Everything pointed to an early victory of the coup, and yet, a few days later, General Chalet was being flown to Paris for eventual trial and imprisonment. Salon and the others were fleeing to the interior on their way to exile and capture, and the first Foreign Legion Parachute Regiment drove back to their barracks singing Edith Piaz, no, I regret nothing, though their officers were under arrest and their unit was to be disbanded. I had nothing to add to that except just like to just pause for a minute to admire how metal that sentence is like that whole paragraph is like like i i can't stand when people get like

get really pissy about france i'm like france does the most insane shit imaginable all right yeah when people start talking about oh for yeah i bought a french i bought a french i bought a french war rifle only dropped once it's like yeah okay yeah keep going yeah all right why did the coup fail perhaps the main reason was that the four jrude generals had utterly neglected the political forces and had allowed the immediate power of the armed forces to obscure the somewhat less immediate but ultimately decisive role that they could play. In the Gaulist coup of May 1958, the action in the military and the population of Algiers had been supported by the Gaulist infiltration of the civil service and by the steady corrosion

of the will of other political groups to oppose the dissolution of the Fourth Republic. This time, the generals had simply ignored. civilians. Tagal went on television and asked for help from the population at large. Francais, Francais, ad de Mois. Deborah, who followed, Debert, who followed him on the screen, was more specific. Go to the airports, convince the soldiers who are misled. He also started to arm a militia drawn from the Gaulist party. More important, the trade union organizations, the communists, CGT, the Christian Democrats, CFTC, and the force ovrier all rallied around the government, while most political parties did the same.

The left-wing Catholic movement started to organize sit-down strikes among the national servicemen in Algeria, and in general, most organized forces of French society intervened and refused to accept the authority of the coup. All right, so like here what's going on, wait, yeah, here what's going on is, like, he's introducing, we've, okay, so we've established this coup doesn't work. It's like, okay, what was the tell? Okay. And he says, all right, this is a very, like, in this style of scholarship, this is a really

it does. It goes all the way back to Machia Valley, actually. It's like, well, I'll tell you what. Here's what I didn't tell you already. And then surrenders another piece of information. And he goes, all right, so we know that there was infiltration on the part of the de Gaulist in 1958. And these four generals have just ignored that conclusion, you know.

Okay. the thing that we're meant to the thing that's meant to happen here is we're meant to be totally actually snapped out of what would be considered classical analysis at this point okay so this is like those rules don't work anymore and this is actually this is one of the reasons luke's been able to get away with being such a rock star is because he represents this turn in this field at a time when this is becoming a dominant paradigm across like any sort of like intellectual view, like the rise of game theory and uncertainty, the big thing of the, the biggest thing in the 20th century at this point say. Up until now, we've looked at, you know,

we've looked at everything in terms of like some sort of Newtonian mechanical system, but we actually need a relative discipline. Okay, you know, because, okay, these conditions are not objective. There's stuff, there is stuff that are what you call. ESB transformed how the country powered itself once and now we're doing it again working with businesses all across Ireland helping them reduce their energy costs reach their sustainability goals

and future-proof their operations because this is not just for us it's for future us to find out more contact our smart energy services team at ESB.com slash smart energy You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design.

They move you, even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Cooper. Design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from

Volkswagen Financial Services, Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Unknown unknowns is what Luke Vox friend and compatriot Donald Rumsfeld would later call them. So he's introducing the unknown unknowns and he's telling us now. It's like, okay, well, actually this civilian population that is so scoring so frequently,

it does actually matter and this is how okay I'm sorry I'll put that no apology necessary we need we need the we need the commentary on this yeah it's heavy it's heavy this is a really heavy and actually what's really interesting is you know a lot of times you could there's a tendency to want to read these books like they're like they're just military manuals or something like this but this is actually one of these chapters you can translate over directly into who thought very well. Like at that end, this is sort of like one of these art of war style books that like

investors will tell you is adaptable across domains because they're so methodologically flexible here. And he's doing a lot of really fancy stuff really fast. And, you know, just teasing it out. It's helpful with some people. Yeah. Yep. The effect of this refusal was decisive.

The larger part of the weight and sea element in the armed forces stopped waiting and declared its support for de Gaul, and this was the end of the coup. We will only be able to avoid a repetition of the crucial era made by the generals if we can neutralize the political forces as effectively as the military ones. Immediate political power is always concentrated in the country's government, but in every country and under all political systems, there will be groups outside the government and even outside formal politics, which also have political power.

their source of strength can be their ability to influence particular groups of voters, as in democratic societies, or their control over certain organizations important to the country's political life. Whether these groups, which we have called the political forces, are pressure groups, political parties, or other associations, does not greatly matter. What is of importance is their ability to participate in the formation of governments, and later, to influence the decision of those governments. The nature of the forces. Yeah. Yeah. So the group, when he's talking here, again, we have to remember Lufax as a neocon. So you're like listening.

This is like confessions of a neocon hitman is like really what this book is, you know, to one extent or another. And with Leupeg is writing here, he's talking really out of a British context. He's speaking to an American audience or he's addressing himself to Americans in some way. But really he's talking about the, he's talking. about the British colonial experience in like it's very late stages, especially in the Middle East. We're going to get it for just to set everything up. This is what we're really going to get into here. This is when he's referring to this aberative form of empire now that, you know, he was,

he was able to make classical pronouncements and classical allusions to the, you know, sort of French conditions because the French were doing these quadrufurt things. well into the late 20th century. Now we're going into a weirder place. And this is the space that is the British Empire, which has this kind of incredibly aberrant historical development complex that makes it a little more complicated. And this is a very normal thing to do in this tradition.

Habermas famously does it as well. And Habermas is one of these guys that's in with Luke Packer. Hebron has always call it the special case of the British Empire. The nature of the force is important in the political life of a particular country. will reflect the structure of its society and economy, and it will also depend on the particular context of decision-making. See Table 4-1 for an American example. If, for example, we were asked to list the most important forces in British political life,

we could produce the following rather conventional list. The major political parties, the regional parties, the major unions, the Confederation of British Industry, the senior civil service academic complex, the city and its corporations, and the press. It's worth pointing out here that when he uses this, he's falling back on the bridge. The British example is actually simpler than the American.

Like this is like Britain in 1961. These are relatively big categories. He's drawn some pretty large Markov blanket. He has the pit political parties. The major unions, the Confederation of British industry, these seem hokey now. But this is a time like what you go look at the American room, way more complicated.

But this is a time of the Confederation of British industry. It's still a thing that exists, which is kind of interesting to note. There's no such structure in the American system. But yeah, go ahead. ESB transformed how the country powered itself once. And now we're doing it again. Working with businesses all across Ireland, helping them reduce their energy costs,

reach their sustainability goals, and future proves. their operations. Because this is not just for us, it's for future us. To find out more, contact our Smart Energy Services team at ESB.aE forward slash Smart Energy. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design. They move you even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range

for Mentor, Leon and Teramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services, Ireland Limited, subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited, trading as Cooper Financial Services,

is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. What does he say here about the American system? He says, officially in America, the President and White House staff, the Department of State, the Pentagon, the CIA, a supplier of information, the key congressional committees, unofficial, politicians with significant Jewish populations in these naturally follow a visible pro-Israel line on congressional voting and make appropriate speeches, pro-Zionist organizations of American jury, anti-Zionist organizations, including those with a Jewish identity. That's a great one. Thank you, thanks and lobbies. You have to remember this book is fun. He's having fun with it.

You know, he's pissed off at somebody. And the last one, he says, think tanks and lobbies with a special interest in Arab or Middle East studies. They usually identify with Arab views and seek a sympathetic hearing of Arab claims. Now, dude, you know this right here. Okay, I just insert a sandbag just note. That list that he just gives you looking, people are always asking me with the core of sandbatches. That last one is probably one of the key, if such a thing exists, Sandbatch's points,

think tanks and lobbies, okay, with, you know, special interests in Arab or Middle Eastern studies, I just went on the OGC podcast and did the history of Stanford University because that is one thing that's really unique to American political systems is how important specific industry, specific universities and think tanks are in specific fields. So it makes us weird. There's like complicated subdomains and everything. But yeah, keep going. Back to the British. But if we were asked to isolate the groups that would matter in foreign policy decision about, say, the Middle East, we would come up with quite a different list. The two major British and part British oil companies, the foreign office academic Arabist group, British defense industry exporters.

Yeah. So like what he's talking about here? If you'd like just a again to reorient there's a piece on my blog about this actually where i called the only two empires that have ever mattered it's about british and british and russian machinations that were going on in the late 20th century in you know iran mostly but that's what he's talking about here and this is where this is this is the origin of the american boondagel in the middle east is this is the two major british and part british oh it's just about bp who is like running coups out of iran okay so like What's sort of happened. What we're talking about here is like, okay, we had this list of things that everybody recognizes, like, in Juergen Habermas, you know, in his like, you know, classical little Frankfurt, you know, Frankfurt school, everybody's happy and we have a Republic of Letters World.

That first list of things is what can take is what's going on in the colonies and the colony in the NIMBY's in the NIMBY's mind. That's what it looks like. And the second list of people that gets left off of it. That's a group of people. that he's doing untold horrible shit. And he's also, this is also, in a sense, you have to read this book as his resume to those groups,

asking them to hire him. So there's just, you know, I mean, everything that went down with Iran, I mean, you can go before BP went there. I mean,

the Reuters family was, was given mines with precious minerals there to watch over. And while they had, a while they have an international press while they own the international press so they can basically control anything but they're also controlling these mineral these rich mineral deposits all over the Middle East and especially in Iran it's it's it's that history is nuts I think it's a lot with Lawrence of Arabia but also like

the great train robbery at the same time all right in a sophisticated society with its complex industrial and social structure, there are hundreds of organizations that, regardless of their primary purpose, also act as pressure groups and attempt to influence political decisions in a manner that serves their members' interests. These organizations will reflect in their divergent attitudes the diversity of a complex society. In economically backward countries, however, the structure of society is simpler, and any conflict of interests, though just as strong, is played out in a much smaller arena and with fewer participants. In sub-Saharan Africa, with few exceptions, religious groups are generally fragmented and apolitical,

and where the local business community is still relatively small and weak, the major political forces are limited to a few groupings. tribal and other ethnic groups, trade unions, students and graduates associations, civil service officials and officers of the armed forces, the activists of the ruling political party. It's kind of funny here. He's low, low-key trolling. Again, he's trolling a specific audience here. He's like pointing out, he's like, actually these countries, these countries you call economically backwards are the ones that more resemble the classical sphere that you're like always stammering on about. It was just kind of funny. Also, he's highlighting these five things as African, African,

sub-Saharan Africans, and it's basically every central American country as well. Yes, yeah. In much of West Africa, one would have to add the local market traders association and in immediate sub-Saharan areas, the traditional Muslim leadership structure. In Asia, religious groups and their leaders would have to be added to the list, and in some countries, such as Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and Hong Kong, the local business class will be of importance.

Missing from all the lists are the foreign business interests which may play an important role, but which represent a special problem already dealt with in Chapter 2. Whatever groups dominate the political scene of our country in normal times, the special circumstances of the coup will mean that only a few elements among them will be important to us. Political forces can intervene against the coup in two ways. A, they can rally and deploy the masses or some part of them against the new government. Or B, they can manipulate technical facilities under their control in order to oppose the consolidation of our power. When he says manipulate technical facilities, what jumps into your mind there as examples?

Well, I mean, the obvious one is just talking about using the way, a really good example of the way, again, whether or not you believe they are is another thing. But the media in this country right now believes they're responding to a coup in the form of Donald Trump. And the way they have behaved the last couple of weeks is an excellent example of technical facilities under the control. of the regime. Like they've been spinning absolutely off the charts and saying shit just because it's an institution that they have control of and perceive it as a weapon that can be used right now. It's the most obvious example of them. The action of individual political, religious, ethnic, and intellectual leaders who could use the framework of their party or community against us is an example of the first kind of intervention,

A strike of the staff of the radio and television services is an example of the second. A general strike would, in effect, combine both kinds of intervention. Neutralizing the political forces one. General. Politics like economics has its infrastructure. Just as industry and commerce require a background of facilities such as roads, ports, and energy sources, direct political action requires certain technical facilities. Now it's really important, this is a way,

this is a really important sentence right here, because this is what he's doing something here that, I mean, when you talk about what I was talking earlier, about getting out of the classical world entirely, this is what he's doing here. He's saying all of that stuff, all that theory. He's like, no, and he's like, these people have like at the, when you,

the coup is where you, where the rubber actually meets the road. These people have named houses and are, like real existing entities that have variables a whole different set of variables than you know like then then theoretical ones do is no they no like no like really matters anymore we need or what we need are roads ports and energy sources and this is like you know this is what you know you neutralize political force with material control is what we're about to get into the mobilization of french public opinion that took place during the attempted coup in algiers and was the principal cause of its failure, could not have taken place without the use of a

whole range of technical facilities. The government appealed to public opinion by means of the mass telecommunications media, chiefly the radio and television services. Today, of course, it would primarily use social media, the trade unions, and other organized bodies coordinated the agitation of their members by means of their network of branches, connected to the central headquarters by means of the public telecommunications facilities. Finally, the mass demonstrations could not have taken place without the use of public and private transport. Our general neutralization of the political forces will be conducted in terms of this infrastructure. We will seize and hold such facilities as we require for our own purposes, while temporarily putting the others

out of action. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 3. 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. You catch them in the corner of your eye.

Distinctive, by design, they move you even before you drive. new Cooper plugin hybrid range for Mentor, Leon and Terramar. Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited, subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply. Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited, trading as Cooper Financial Services is

regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. If the means of communication and the transport system are under our control or at any rate do not function, the potential threat posed by the political forces will be largely neutralized. The leaders of the pre-coup government will be arrested since they are part of the infrastructure, and they would probably be the major sources of inspiration of any opposition to the coup. Okay, this is going to just stop and point out again, how actually aggressive this is. Okay, this is one of the things that makes the Lute White. The Luce the Lutvac game incredibly famous. So again, we're continuing to discard sort of classical thinking.

Classical thinking may, the game of classical thinking might put you in a position where you say, okay, we need to either concentrate on destroying, on disabling opposition architecture or building our own architecture. And he flips this game over and says, no, you actually have to attack. on two prongs you have to destroy that you have to destroy your incapacitate the airs but also seize as much of it for you as you possibly can so like you know this is incredible he's he's prescribing attack harder than anyone has ever suggested attack before even but even someone like napoleon would not have would would not have

done this regularly okay let me see where was i okay we will neutralize some political forces in particular by identifying and isolating their leadership and by disrupting their organizations. This will only be necessary for those forces sufficiently resilient and sufficiently militant to intervene against us, even though the infrastructure has been neutralized. Both forms of neutralization will involve the selection of certain objectives that will be seized or put out of action by teams formed out of those forces of the state, which we have fully subverted or, in our terminology, incorporated. Yeah, can't help it chuckle.

Unless our target country is particularly small and its physical and political structure is particularly simple, its system of government will be complex, its physical facilities will be extensive, and its political forces will be many in number, while their intervention capabilities will be difficult to forecast. we will therefore start by analyzing the governmental leadership in order to determine which personalities must be isolated for the duration of the active phase of the coup and which can be safely ignored. You see how procedural this all is? Like you see this is what we're doing. Is this like all this is building a, it's building a program is what it is, you know.

Right. And he's using terms like isolated or, you know, a personality must be isolated or, you know, a personality must be isolated or, can be safely ignored. Just that's a huge contrast there, especially when you know what isolated means. Yeah. Next, we will study the physical facilities and select those most likely to be relevant during the coup in order to plan their seizure or neutralization. Finally, I mean, the seizure or neutralization, I mean, neutralization could mean a lot of things

right there. Yeah, he's still going to blowing up a natural gas tank in the parking garage. So, like, everything you see happening in Gaza is because both sides have a copy of this book, you know. Finally, we will investigate the nature of those political forces that could still retain a degree of intervention capability after our general measures have been implemented in order to prepare for their individual neutralization. personalities in the government. However bloodless our coup, however progressive and liberal our aims, we will still have to arrest certain individuals during and immediately after its execution. Of these, the most important group will be formed by the leading figures of the pre-coup regime,

or, in other words, the leaders of the government and their close associates, whether they are formally politicians or not. The members of a cabinet will form a fairly large group from 10 to 50 people, adding their associates and intimate advisors who could organize opposition against us. We could easily reach a figure four or five times that number. Apart from being uncomfortably large, this will also be an especially determined and dangerous group. The personal repute, presence, and authority of its members might enable them to rally against us the disorganized forces of the state or the unorganized masses. It could also enable them to impose their will on the team sent to capture them,

turning their would-be captors into their allies. General Calais, for example, was regarded as the patron by the NCOs of the French army in Algeria, and even after the total failure of his attempted coup, the Paris government could not entrust him to a military escort on his way to France and arrest. The government instead had to use the CRS, whose members had never experienced his personal authority. After all, if a young soldier acting outside his familiar role is facing a political personality whose whole behavior is calculated to make people obey him, it is difficult to be absolutely certain that he will carry out his orders,

and not the counter orders he may be given. This one seems This all seems pretty pretty boilerplate. It's like, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. The large number of separate targets, along with the possibility of radiation effects, indicates that the team sent to arrest them

should be large and particularly well chosen. Since our resources will be limited, we will have to concentrate our efforts on the most important figures within the group, leaving the others to be picked up later when our means will have been expanded by the allegiance of the wait and see element. We cannot arrest all those who may constitute an eventual danger,

but we must make sure that we do arrest the really dangerous figures, that is, the key figures within the leadership, who may or may not be the first in the formal order of precedence. The formal structure of most modern governments falls into two broad categories. The presidential type in which the head of state is also the main decision-maker, as in the United States, France, the Russian Federation, and most African states, and the prime ministerial type where the head of the state has largely symbolic or ceremonial duties, and the real decision-making duties are carried at a theoretically lower level,

as in Britain, India, and most of Europe. A third alternative form. Just to point out what he's doing here now is actually he's prescribing a network, attack. This is a good thing. He's one of the, he works with Rand Corporation. This is like one of the things that they really pioneer is all that social media research that's like finally like trickled down to the cat lady demographic. They like were the pioneers of it in the late 1960s. And so essentially what they're talking about like you, we just we just pointed out this is the sampling set problem. We just pointed out that there's going to be, there's like a thousand people that you have to nail down in like Djibouti if you want to do a coup there. And. And. like unfortunately they're also going to be the thousand most difficult people to get so like your chances realistically or it's like this like trying to sample this like trying to get a good sample with pennsylvania voters and you know for a 2024 for the 2024 election we don't have any way of knowing what the hell is going on out there we don't have really good sources of information

but like we do know that we have enough that we can maybe figure out which nodes we can at discreetly to minimize the probability of the others being able to form, you know, to act as a coherent network. So that's the game theory that he's setting up here. A third alternative form, which is not a structure at all, but rather a denial of one, is the strongman form of government. The strong man may not be a top minister and may hold no official position at all, but actually rules by using the formal body of politicians as a scream. This type of regime evolves when the fabric of the state has been weakened to such an extent that only the actual leader of some part of the armed forces or police can control the situation and remain in power. A person even

minimally acceptable as a political leader can take over the formal post as well, becoming the visible head of the government. Nasser in Egypt, Reza Shah, the father of or the present Shah of Persia, both accomplished this after a short period of transition, but there can sometimes be racial or religious reasons that bar the strong man from an official position. The man who controls the bayonets may be totally unacceptable as a public figure, but he can still rule indirectly by manipulating the official leaders he keeps under control by the ultimate sanction of force.

This charge you're about to read was one of the more confusing charts that I've actually like with that. Every once in a while I'll run across one and I'm going to know if I'm going to read this chart. People can if people can pick up the book and read it. I don't think it helps us. It's screenshot it.

Yeah, it's just his shorthand herself. 17th century, England. I'm kind of courage. All right. When in early 1966, the Syrian government of the moderate wing of the Bath Party headed by Michel Aflach, Salabitzar and the army leader Hafiz was overthrown by an extreme left faction of the party.

The new leadership found out that though it controlled the army and the country, it could not rule openly. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you. Even before you drive. The new Cooper plug-in hybrid range for Mentor, Leon, and Teramar.

Now with flexible PCP finance. and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers. Coopera. Design that moves. Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited, subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply.

Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited, trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th Because the Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Lidl items, all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast.

Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. The army officers who led this latest coup were too young, too unknown, and above all, they were Al-Owites. Sala Jadid, their leader. leader was a dark brooding figure who inspired fear and hatred among the small part of the public that knew of him. And of all the communities of Syria, the Alawites were among the least prestigious. In colonial times, the French had recruited most of their forces of repression.

The Trope Specially de Levant from the minority communities, chiefly the Alawites, and they had given the Alawite area in northern Syria a form of autonomy and order, So the nationalist claimed to break up Syrian national unity. After independence, the Sunni majority community regarded the Alawites as renegades and public opinion would only have accepted an Alawite head of state with difficulty. Dude, I can ask you a question. What is an Aalite? I don't even know. This is like a perfect time for, does anybody know?

Okay, so it's, yeah, no one knows. It's really odd. They're technically Muslim who seem to be closer to Christianity than they are Judaism. Okay, so they're like syncretics of some sort. Yeah. It's a religious group, not an ethnic group. Okay. Yeah, it's what's his name?

I mean, Assad is an al-a-white. Yeah, yeah. But he's actually really good in his country about protecting Christians and Jews. so it's yeah that makes sense i just didn't know what one is i'm like is it like oh it's just it's been a placeholder in my head like when he's a little graft guy it's like okay i know he's an al-o-like but i don't know what the hell that is i looked it up once and it was confusing to me it's like trying to look uh trying to look up the um what's that spiritual sect of Islam Sufi Sufi yeah you have yeah it's like i i don't know what i don't know what's going on

I just, I'd have to read, I'd have to read a book about it instead of looking at like Wikipedia and a couple articles. Yeah. And maybe, I probably still wouldn't understand. All right. Saladadad overcame this problem by appointing a full set of cabinet ministers carefully chosen so as to balance the various communities while retaining the real decision-making power within a separate body, the National Revolutionary Council, headed by himself. Thus, though Syria had a president, Nehese, Nuruddin al-Atsasi, a prime minister, Yusef Zwayan, and a foreign minister, Ibrahim Maku. All major political decisions were made by Jadid.

The ministers would go on state visits, make the public speeches, and appear in all ceremonial occasions, but power was not in their hands. The Assad's father and son followed this model faithfully, placing Sunis in the nominally important positions, but keeping the key positions for Alloites, Drews, and Ismailis. I don't know what these groups are. I don't know what those three are. I've never looked up Alloites. I've never bothered looking up Drew's. Isomalis sounds, that sounds like a slur.

But again, the good thing is that as long as you can follow the like language that he's using, he could be using the Dungeons and Dragons game as an example. And that's kind of how I'm reading it. I'm like, oh, Drew's, yeah, of course, yeah. Neutral good. The sometimes socialist countries were formerly ruled by party governments, but they tended to break down into one of two other types. In its original form, real political power was concentrated in the hands of the central

committee and some other higher party council. Once the purely ceremonial figures have been excluded, the number of people still to be dealt with will be reduced, and by applying our time span criterion, we can reduce their numbers still further. The Minister of Economic Planning may be a crucial figure in the government. His position as a technocrat may be unassailable, but he may be unable to rally public opinion against us

to assert his authority over the armed forces. This is why the same reason. Who is that German guy, the one the nazi the architect nazi the hell is the same the one that came to read all those wrote all those books he was the really like the the like senior nazi minister was a yeah yeah Albert Albert spear yeah this is like what they're talking about with them he's like yeah this guy's and again i like to talk about this all the time i use this i do exactly what he's doing here all the time all those articles i write about like dimensionalization

and that sort of thing. I have another one coming out about exactly this right now. It's like, when you're modeling this situation in your head to make this decision, should you do a coup? Remember that it's not just, you don't just have space to take, to take into consideration. You have time as well. So it's like, okay, you don't want to spend a lot of time chasing down Albert Spear that's still got, if Himmler is still on the board.

So you need to be strategic about who you take out, you know, what's going on here. And, you know, the time span, the time span this is happening in, Albert Spear is not that important. I didn't go write books in English. I'm trying to remember where I was. I'll just start from the beginning of the paragraph. Once a purely ceremonial figures have been excluded, the number of people still to be dealt with will be reduced. And by applying our time span criterion, we can reduce the number still further. The Minister of Economic Planning may be a crucial figure in the government.

his position as a technocrat may be unassailable, but he may be unable to rally public opinion against us or to assert his authority over the armed forces. The dramatic nature of the coup will reduce political life to its ultimate rationale, sheer force, and we will concentrate on these figures in the government who could deploy it. The obvious personalities, therefore, will be,

A, the minister of the interior and his associates who control the police force. B, the Minister of Defense and his associates who control the armed forces. C, the party leaders, if there is a party militia. D, the Prime Minister or other central figure who coordinates all these. We must remember that, for various reasons, figures in the government may not always be what they appear to be. We may discover that the apparently innocuous Minister of Education controls an important student's militia, or the Minister of Labor, a powerful workers militia.

More important, the effective power may be held by an inner association of a particular group of ministers who, between them, control the means of coercion of the state. Thus, the government of Czechoslovakia between the elections of May 1946 and the final communist takeover in February 1948 was a coalition of all Democratic parties, but the communist ministers within it effectively monopolized the control of the means of coercion, the police, and the security service. The existence of a group of associates whose alliance transcends the formal order of government is illustrated in figure 4.2. In this particular case, out of the 18 or so members of the

government, the Prime Minister, the Ministers of Defense, Labor, and Education, and the undersecretaries of state for the Army and police actually hold the reins of power, though, of course, they need not be especially cohesive at any particular time. The process of selection so far discussed should result in the classification of the personalities of the pre-Coup regime into three categories. You have this chart as president, head of state prime minister, minister, defense, and then it's just showing, it's spreading out and showing who the minister of education, possibly, what is it, possibly, who is it possibly, who. who they could. Yeah, and it's worth pointing out here. This is not meant to be deterministic chart here.

And I think a lot of political movements with this is an important, this is one of the art of war lessons. Because when you're looking at a chart like this, you have to remember that chart may not reflect the chart that you would need to build. So he's like sort of giving you an example of a workflow, but you don't, you would be very,

You may not necessarily be taken under advisement to repeat his exactly. You have to go, your situation on the ground is going to change. But it's like, you know, yeah, an essential, you know, so you have to establish a work. It's a really, what he's talking about here is establishing the workflow. Is it from in the most boiled down possible way? And he's like, you have to have a system for figuring out whenever this. It's be a trustless system to as be a fail proofs.

It would be a very simple machine that, you know, triages and eliminates and or neutralizes these figures. Okay. All right. The ceremonial figures, they will not be arrested. If the head of state is generally popular, he or she should be used as a symbol of continuity, who will help us to establish our legitimacy, provided he or she can safely, can be safely manipulated and made to play this role.

The other lesser ceremonial figures can simply be ignored. The inner council and the controllers of the means of coercion. This small group must be sequestered and held in isolation until our authority is safely established. Apart from the service ministers, etc., any government leader who is personally particularly popular should be included in this category. The other ministers and top civil servants. This larger group should be subdivided into priority groups to be dealt with as, and when our resources expand or become available when other more urgent tasks have been carried out. Personality outside the government.

The political weight of an individual in any large-scale political community will usually only be important within the framework of an organization which he heads or manipulates. It is sometimes possible for an individual to achieve political importance by becoming identified with an ideology or an attitude in which some significant part of the public believes. Kosut, the leader of the Hungarian nationalist movement in the 1848-1849 revolution, was a poet by profession and had no party machine behind him. But he did have considerable power because the masses, in the cities at any rate, identified his person with Hungarian nationalism.

And, you know, it's wild. I was literally, I think, so similarly to Leukok, whenever he started this. that I was thinking, we're going to go grab Kosks, the very example here. But this is a good one of these things that is very cool, you know, that he's doing here is that he's establishing. And if you look at the name of the section, this is personality. He's not talking about, he doesn't say persons.

He talks about personalities, which is this more abstract thing that's harder to nail down. You know, this is why Coos tend to be so brutal. And this is why it is because you have to not, only, you not only have to kill the person, you have to kill them brutally that the personality dies as well. So we're, and we're theorizing about this more abstract thing called the persona than we are about persons themselves that have a lot more interesting characteristics that we probably don't have time to get into, but that is just something I absolutely had to point out.

Gandhi, who operated largely outside the Congress party machine, also achieved personal power because too many Indians he was the, too many Indians, he was the embodiment of nationalism. The remoteness of the examples indicates that such figures are very rare, and if we do have them in our target area, they should be treated as ceremonial figures. Physical facilities. Mass media. regardless of the pervasive reach of interpersonal social media and of the internet in general, unless blocked by effective firewalls, control over the mass media emanating from the political center, will still be our most important weapon in establishing our authority after the coup. The seizure of the main means of mass communication will thus be a task of crucial importance.

One, though only one, of the causes of the failure of the Greek king's counter-cue in late 19, was this inability to communicate with the masses, literally, and otherwise. When Radio Larissa broadcast the king's message, radio Larissa broadcast the king's message, it only reached a fraction of the population. The transmitter was weak in the wavelength unusual. Instead of the booming voice of authority, the declaration took the form of a weak appeal for help. We must not make a similar mistake. he points out here

you want to say something no just giggling he's just he's a funny guy he's a funny guy yeah he has a table a short table here mass communications in the middle east and north Africa mid-1967 estimated circulation of daily newspapers 1.5 million estimated number

of television sets 1 million estimated number of radio sets 7 million because of the short time frame for the coup and because of the likely social background of our target country, the press need not be a primary target. We will establish our authority over it after the coup, as with other aspects of the nation's life. Inevitably, the press can only play a marginal role in countries where illiteracy is widespread,

and in any case, it is the radio and television services that are mainly associated with the voice of the government. The approximate comparative data for the Arab world in Table 4.3 illustrates the importance of different media in one part of the third world. Even these figures understated the contemporary importance of radios and television sets because while the press figures refer to circulation, i.e. estimated number of readers, rather than copies sold, the radios and television sets reach a much wider public, even among the poorest groups, since every cafe has one. And anyone who's traveled in a country knows exactly what that last sentence.

He's been traveled in a poor country. He's being incredibly romantic here as well. This is like like what James. He's like conjuring up some like like James Bond tier exoticism. And it works for nobody. This is the reason. Nobody can do this like him. He's the only guy.

In fact, is the guy for that. I've been in some really, some really nice cafes and really poor countries. And it really is a romantic. There really is a romanticism to them. Yeah. especially during the winter in Eastern Europe.

Oh, man. There are two problems associated with the radio and television facilities from our point of view. A, there will often be many different broadcasting services and associated facilities, and B, they are particularly difficult to seize. In some countries where the internal security position is precarious, the governmental radio is heavily guarded, but even where there is not the case. These facilities are difficult to seize because their staff have a uniquely extensive way of raising the alarm. As for the duplication of broadcasting facilities, even Haiti, a very small

and extremely backward country, had 18 different radio stations even back in 1967 and they were controlled by independent networks. I bet that is at a date. I doubt they have 18 right now. Our objective is not merely to control, but also to monopolize the flow of information. Therefore, we must deal with every single facility. This would be difficult and would also lead to a dispersal of our forces if we tried to seize and hold every facility. Our strategy will therefore be to seize and hold just one facility, the one most closely associated with the voice of authority while neutralizing the others. This is best done with a cooperation of some technical member of their staff who would be able to sabotage a facility from the inside. A single cooperative technician will be able to temporarily put out of action a radio station that would otherwise require a full-scale assault team.

If we are unable to recruit an internal saboteur, the next best alternative will be external sabotage. There is no need to cause any extensive damage since it will use. usually be possible to remove or destroy a small but essential part of the transmitter, or transmitters, thus effectively neutralized in the facility. The one broadcasting facility, which we do have to seize and hold, will present a special problem. On the one hand, our need for the facility is absolute. On the other, because it is such an obvious target.

The governmental forces will certainly. Yeah. You have to attack the Dead Star. is what happened. They know that's the thing. All the rest of this is just talk around that. We know that's the thing you've got to get, you know. This means that the team assigned to this target will have to be adequately staffed and equipped

and in order to obviate the need for the cooperation of the facility's personnel should also include a skeleton technical staff. Appendix B on the military aspects of the coup deals inter alia with the, composition of the various teams. Telecommunications. In spite of the advent of the internet and social media, technical progress has on balance evolved in our favor because all the communications between our own teams can be carried out by cheap, reliable,

and secure two-way radios now universally available. We must, however, deny the opposition the use of their own communication systems. By doing so, we will paralyze their reaction and prevent them from deploying against such forces as they still control. As figure 4.3 shows, the neutralization of the telecommunication facilities will be complicated by their multiplicity, and it will be essential to achieve full coverage. Only power cuts can reduce internet communications, and that too only gradually,

though any specific social network can be blocked. The left socialist revolutionary coup against the Bolshevich, in July 1918 failed partly because it failed to comprehend the need for monopoly of all telecommunications. The left socialist revolutionaries had infiltrated a group of the Checa, the main instrument of Bolshevik power, and various army detachments. With these, they arrested the head of the Checa, Felix Zirinsky, and seized many public buildings and the Moscow Telegraph Office. They failed, however, to seize the telephone office as the telegraph. The telegraphed, the telegraphed. I'm sorry, they seized the public buildings, as many public buildings and the Moscow telegraph office.

They failed, however, to seize the telephone office as well. And while they were sending cables all over Russia asking for generalized political support, Lenin used the telephone service to mobilize as fighting forces. With these, the coup was quickly crushed. This, people are just going to have to go, going to have to look at this chart themselves. I spend all day looking at charts that look exactly like that. And I was like, oh, man, I'm not at work right now. I can't do it.

Internal security authorities are aware of the need for efficient communications and apart from the facilities illustrated in figure 4.3, there may also be independent networks for the exclusive use of the security forces. The French gendarmerie has a system of regional links, which bypasses the public telephone and cable wires, and even in smaller countries such as Ghana, the police force has long had a fully independent system. In the United States, there is no national police,

nor a national police network as such, but the Department of Defense maintains a nationwide and international system that is largely a single network in the world and connects every U.S. military installation with every other throughout the world. We cannot, of course, hope to seize every two-way set in the hands of the police and the military authorities, but we should neutralize by external or internal sabotage those facilities which can be identified and located. There's no need to seize and hold any of these facilities.

Therefore, it will simply be a matter of penetrating the central organization of each communication system for the brief period required to sabotage this operations. though again internal sabotage will be easier and safer. Let's leave it right there. We're right at about an hour. We'll come up city entry. One of the things that just always amazes me is how, I don't know how good of a sample I am,

but like sometimes never, like I said, he and I think so similarly that, like I was like, okay, we're going to talk about Kosas now. Of course he didn't immediately did. But the way, I'm not sure how exposed, like, even most, like, sort of non-normy audiences are to this sort of thinking. I think at this point it's pretty saturated, you know. But, like, I, some of the stuff that he talks about now, like, he's in this last section, he's essentially describing cyber attacks. It's like, you need to, like, the ideal situation is you just disrupt communications for two hours.

You know, you push some bad code to, you know, to cloud fare and, but boom, the whole thing's over. And then everything is right back to normal, you know. It's interesting that, you know, he's so famous for writing this. Because that's so foundational to me. Just like, okay, yeah, that's the way. That's the way you do that. Yeah, I mean, I still, yeah, yeah, I still think that like most people, most people would try to read this. So we go right over their head.

Yeah, I think they, I'm all about, all about trying to like multi-dimensional thinking. This is really what Luke back is talking. And like I said, this is one of the chapters you can apply to a lot of things. You just think about things like, okay, what to make? Instead of like how, you know, let's say like, what do I need to do to like, what do I need to do to make money or whatever? You think of it like, okay. What dimensions do I have control of currently that can be rearranged to, you? like to produce, you know, profit.

There's like little mind tricks that you can do with yourself. And like he's introducing people to this kind of thinking in this book. It's about, you know, nominally running a coup as well. It's one of the didactic dimensions of it. And that's the coolest one, I think. And so, yeah, this has been fun. Cool.

Well, I'm, I still have a lot more to read. Hopefully you can come back and pick up some more and share some knowledge with us. Oh, yeah. Well, plug your stuff again. I'm pretty sure I put it in the show notes of the last thing and I'll make sure to do that again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, right now I think I just have the substack, but I think I'm like I might, I'm going to have some more interesting stuff coming out. I'm actually going to start doing, look, the weird thing.

I'm going to start doing like kind of some basic, but maybe not so basic because they're just going to be additive in a lot of ways. I'm going to start doing some some digital humanities like. AI natural language processing projects and show, you know, show do some informatics about them. And you know the reason why, and I'll say it on this show is because I was learning all this stuff and I get absolutely sick of dealing with like YouTube videos by people who's dialect I can't understand. So I'm like, let's just get like a video where there's like a white dude just being a normal white dude talking about how to do some of this stuff. People might be interested in. You know, like I'm going to call it like AI for

shuds or something like that. It'll be cool. You don't want to listen to no more AI. Talked like this? Yeah, you know, I used to teach geography. I used to teach geometry to, I mean, kids at a, it was actually kids at a really good school. But the way I would teach geometry to them, though, is like nothing but word problems. So I'd be like, so this is how we're going to figure out how many times the British, the English archers at Agincourt could have shot before the French.

nights you know get to them and that sort of like I go do stuff like that we're going to look at like I have this really juicy data set of sales at the New Orleans slave market that I've been like wanting to crack open for years it's just been like sitting in my cellar I think it's one of the ones I'm gonna look at so if you like that kind I don't know I don't know how much people like the graph content from me but like this is a great because it's all I've been talking about for the last hour this is a great place to plug that so I mean to do that as well I think No problem. All right, Christopher.

Thank you. Have a good night. All right, you too. I want to welcome everyone back to part eight of my reading of Kudaita by Edward Lut-Wak. John Fieldhouse is back. How are you doing, John? Doing well, sir. All right.

I'm going to get into it. Just start reading. Sandy and I left off at city entry exit road links. So here we go. During the active phase of the coup, the unexpected arrival of even a small contention of loyalist or uninfiltrated forces could seriously endanger our whole effort. When a government discovers that troops of its own armed forces are taking part in a coup in the capital city, its logical reaction may be to call on troop stationed elsewhere, in the hope that the infiltration of the armed forces is limited to those in the capital city. as it is not easy to infiltrate forces in the entire national territory, the government's hope may not be unfounded. We will attack the mechanism that could lead to the arrival of loyalist troops in the capital city at each separate level.

We will arrest those who would call them in. We will disrupt the telecommunications needed to reach them, and we will also try to isolate identified loyalist forces by direct, though purely defensive, military means. we must also prevent the intervention of these forces by controlling the last level, the perimeter of the capital city, and scene of the coup. There's a figure here, physical targets of the coup. Check it out on the video. If the law, go ahead. No, nothing.

I was just going to say the biggest issue is something like this. It's just controlling main choke points there. You don't have to control every inch of the roads if you can control the choke points. If the Loyalist forces are to intervene in time, they will have to move rapidly. This will require the use of either the major roads or alternatively air transport. If we can set up efficient defensive roadblocks at the appropriate places, we should be able to deny their entry into the capital city for the short period required. That is, until we have established ourselves as the government and received the allegiance

of the bulk of the state bureaucracy and military forces. Thus, by the time the forces of intervention have reached the scene of the action, they will be isolated band of rebels. The most suitable places to block a road with a small number of men and limited equipment, as well as the techniques and implications of such, are discussed in Appendix B and also in Chapter 5, where we deal with the direct neutralization of the identifying loyalist forces. Figure 4.4 illustrates the locations that would be chosen in a particular synthetic example. But our control of the physical access to the capital city will also serve other purposes. It will be one of the ways in which we will establish the physical presence of the new regime, and it will also allow us to prevent the escape of government leaders and other personalities we have been unable to arrest. One of the dangers we will face will be the revitalization of counter-coup, opposition,

which could result if a major governmental figure escapes from the capital city and joins loyalist elements outside it. After all the efforts we have made to neutralize such forces by internal means and by interference with their transport and communications, our whole work could be endangered. The loyalist forces could fail to reach the capital, but the political leadership could reach them. The means at our disposal will not be sufficient to hermetically seal the entire capital city, though, of course, much will depend on its location and spatial spread. Brasilia, though open on all sides, would be easy to seal off simply by closing the airport because distances preclude rapid road movements from two other major centers of the country. Helsinki, on the other hand, would be spatially convenient because, though not remote

from the rest of the country, it is surrounded by the sea and lake so that a number of roadblocks would effectively seal it. Focal traffic points. The site of tanks in the main squares of the capital city has become a symbol of the coup, but is also an expression of a very real practical requirement, the need to establish a physical presence in the center of the political activity. Every capital city has an area that is the local equivalent of Whitehall in the United Kingdom or Pennsylvania Avenue blocks near the White House in the United States,

where the main political administrative facilities are concentrated. We will select and defend certain positions around and within this area, and by doing so, we will achieve a variety of aims. A, the positions will form a ring around the main area within which our active teams will operate so as to protect them from any hostile forces that may have penetrated the capital city. B, they will assist in establishing our authority by giving visual evidence of our power. And C, they will filter movement to and from the area, thus enabling us to, capture those whom we have been unable to arrest directly. Another figure with showing how you would do that in this looks like a pretty urban area or it's designed to be.

It looks like there's an airport right here on the outskirts. Yeah. A coastal city. Yeah. Which many most capitals in the world are. Yep. In order to achieve these difficult. objectives, our blocking positions must be individually strong, otherwise they will tempt any extent

loyalist forces into a counterattack. In any case, unless adequately staff, they will be unable to act as efficient filters to individual movements. We must, therefore, resist the temptation to secure every important location by blocking positions that are individually weak. As only a few of the possible locations will, in fact, be covered, it is essential to select them with special care. focal traffic points will be easier to select in a coastal or riverine city where a definite shape has been imposed on the capital city and on the traffic flows within it. This is illustrated in figure 4.5. In each particular case, the area which is the center of political and bureaucratic activity will be well known to the local inhabitants. Therefore, it will be a matter of selecting a perimeter of straight and fairly broad streets as the intersection of which we will establish our blocking positions. The avenues and boulevards of Paris are ideal from this point of view.

Airports and other transport facilities. One of the classic moves in the period immediately following the coup is the closure of airports and the cancellation of all flights. This is part of the general tactic which aims at freezing the situation by preventing the uncontrolled flow of people information. There will also be other, more specific objectives. By closing the airport, we will prevent the escape of those governmental leaders whom we have been unable to arrest.

We will also prevent any inflow of loyalist forces into the area of the capital city. Because of the short time frame in which the coup takes place, air transport will be a very great importance. Either we or the government could tip the balance of forces by flying in quite small contingents of our respective supporters. The size of the forces that can be moved by air

may well be very small, but in the context of the delicate balance of the active phase of the coup, They could still play a decisive role. Air transport is, however, very vulnerable insofar as it still relies on long and interrupted landing strips. Therefore, if at all possible, we should avoid having to rely on it. To the extent that we are independent of support arriving by air, we should prevent the use of all airfields in and around the area of the capital city. Some of these airfields will be military ones, but even if they are not, they may still be heavily guarded.

This could be a serious obstacle if the government still controls significant military forces outside the capital city and if transport planes are available to bring them in. Seizing a defended airfield will certainly be difficult, but denying the use of one is very easy. A few vehicles parked on the runway either by covert means or with a little cooperation from the inside and covered by a small fire team to prevent them from being moved will suffice to neutralize an entire airport. a few warning shots from suitable positions could also prevent any landings taking place. It's just a great point. I mean, force is less important than the ability to implement force. Yes. Most people don't understand the difference between force and violence. And there are distinct differences when used properly and when used strategically. And like he said, if you partner.

something on the runway, the runway is out of use, which is even better than blowing it up, because now you can use it in the future. Other organized forms of transport will only rarely be important in monitored conditions. In many undeveloped countries, railways play a very marginal role in the transport structure. Even where they are important economically, they will often be removed from the main population centers, having been built to connect mines and plantations with deep sea ports as part of the colonial export economy rather than as links between the main population centers. In Europe and those parts of Latin America, where this is not the case, railways will still be

unimportant from our point of view because of the time element. In any case, railways are extremely easy to neutralize. In the 1926 coup in Poland staged by Joseph Pilsutsky, Joseph Palsutsky. Pilsutsky, thank you. A great deal of the action. action revolved around the railway system, but rail-borne troops never arrived in time to decide the issue. Both sides found it easy to prevent the other's movements, though not to ensure their own, where, as in Ethiopia, the railways are important, or rather the single Addis Ababa Jabudi railway line is important. Technical neutralization should be used. Yeah, the big problem with the railway is, you know, anywhere along the line. somebody can take it out of action by just taking a couple of links out and nobody in the world

has enough personnel to guard every single inch of railway. Yeah, and also, well, the good thing about doing that, too, is it's not hard to rebuild build. I mean, if you start taking out runways, it's a lot easier to put rail back in than it is to rebuild a runway. Yeah, and a lot of times you don't even have to take off or take out pieces of railway. you just have to, there are technical means for blocking certain areas. And if you control those key choke points, you know, you control everything.

Yep. Railways rely on a technical chain system par excellence, and if a single section of rail or signals is sabotaged, the whole system will temporarily stop. The gap between two sections of rail is easily crossed, but probably there will be no rolling stock on the other side. Public buildings. The need to provide the bureaucracy and the masses with visual evidence of the reality and power of the coup is one of the continuing elements in our analysis. Otherwise, this will be the least defined and coherent of our groups of targets.

The buildings we will have to seize include the residences of these government leaders whom we have selected for arrest, and those buildings that house facilities we require, such as the radio television building. In the first case, it will be a matter of a brief penetration to achieve capture or arrest. In the second, however, we will have to seize and occupy the building, and perhaps resist attempts to make made to recapture it. But there will be other official buildings we will also have to occupy or, at any rate, control the access to. Those can only be loosely defined as those buildings whose possession is associated with the possession of political power. So things like the Internal Security Forces, the Ministry of Interior. Most countries have some form of elected assembly, a parliament, or its local,

equivalent, but in many of them political power emanates from the palace of the president or other ruler or the central committee of the party. We should not be deceived by constitutional fictions. And after spending so much effort distinguishing between effective political power and its symbols, we will not make the mistake of using our scarce resources on the latter. Yeah, one of the best example of this in the recent past is Liberia. Because Liberia, when it was actually still controlled by the American-Oiberians, the actual descendants of American slaves who are sent back there. Yeah, they had a constitutional government, which was essentially copied off of the United States. But the reality is a huge amount of the power in the country

was exercised through the Grand Lodge of the Freemasons, which we all immediately would question that as a conspiracy theory. But the reality is it worked as the fraternity for America of Liberians that could be kept away from outside view of the rest of the world. So capturing that building and eliminating its ability to be used was essential for natives in order to take away. Yeah, take away the organizing ability of the American Liberians. Nevertheless, there will be certain symbolic buildings which could play an important role in the crucial transitional phase of the coup. Their possession by one side or the other will act as a signal to the masses in the rank and follow the bureaucracy in the confused period, where it is unclear which side is in control.

Does that sound like something that they, like Alcazar and Toledo, why Franco was so hell-bentz on making sure that it was preserved? Yeah, I mean, that's definitely part of it, right? I mean, you know, the worst place to probably get political quotes from is Game of Thrones, but was it Tyrion used to always say political power, you know, exists where people believe it exists. So, yeah. Our possession of those symbols will then give us the election.

allegiance of those who were waiting to choose one side or the other. Thus, though useless indirect material terms, it may be worthwhile to seize those buildings which have a symbolic value. In the Ghana coup of 1966, that brought down the Kuma regime, the very efficient and practical-minded leaders of the coup felt it necessary to fight their way into the presidential residence, Flagstaff House, though it contained neither Kumar himself nor any important technical facilities. They realized that though it was an empty symbol par excellence, its possession was essential to secure the support of the Akra masses who naturally associated the control of political power with that particular building. Fortunately, by the very nature of such symbols, there will be one or at most two

such symbolic buildings whose possessions will be an essential requirement. apart from the purely symbolic buildings, there will be others whose possession is highly desirable. These are the administrative headquarters of the Army, Police, and Security Services. Thus, in each case, the group of targets will include the following. A. The seat of effective political power. This could be the Royal or Presidential Palace or the building of the elected assembly or of the party president. Presidium. Presidium.

Presidium. or central committee. Yeah, in the case of the modern world, usually you can identify that place because it has the most communications running in and out of it, which obviously won't necessarily be visible to the public as a whole,

but in the planning stage, you're going to see that through a variety of things, just like electromagnetic traffic or, you know, who's wired the most into the communications network. The main administrative buildings, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of the Interior,

police and military headquarters, if separate. C, symbolic buildings. Often the appropriate building will fall into one or another of the classifications above, where, however, there is a cultural lag between the development of the country's political life and the traditional attitudes. The masses will still associate political power with an obsolete building. The coup will be practically over in its active phase by the time the citizenry wakes up and starts to investigate the possession of building symbolic or otherwise. We can therefore postpone the occupation of some of these targets to the later stages. Since in direct practical terms, other targets will be more important or at any rate more urgent,

the best way of dealing with the symbolic and administrative targets will be to use them as assembly points for those teams which have already completed their primary mission. Yeah, part of why it's important to point this out is because, again, an act of coup is going to minimize the amount of communications that are done in the red, right? The amount of communications that the opposition of the public can see. So using a symbolic building as a rallying point after you've accomplished one phase is a great way to, you know, minimize communications beforehand and during it when you're actively, you know, doing things and you don't want, your communications are still in danger of being intercepted. It's a way of, you know,

setting a pre-made rallying point where people are going to show up as soon as they've accomplished their earlier phase, their earlier missions, and you can go and assign them to future missions, again, without compromising yourself or without doing your communications in some place where the enemy can intercept. New heading. Neutralizing the political forces to particular groups. Which organized groups will be sufficiently strong to oppose us, even if the voice of the government is silent and the capital city is visibly in our hands.

Not many, but we must remember that even one well-organized demonstration or a well-timed strike could pose a serious threat to the coup in a delicate transitional phase. And so it is essential to identify such groups and, once identified, to neutralize them before the coup. Once it is known that a coup has taken place, the leaders of the militant organization or organizations concerned will immediately prepare for action. They themselves will then be more difficult to arrest, and their organizations will be halfway underground. In countries where political conflict is limited to the verbal dimension,

this kind of dramatic and rapid response to political change will be unknown. But elsewhere where political conflicts can be violent, where all organized forces, whether primarily political or not, can be drawn into them, this type of response is more or less automatic. Islamist militias in the Middle East and trade union movements in southern Europe have little in common except, A, their ability to respond to this way, and B, that even without the weaponry that some of them have, they could be a real threat to the coup. We will conduct our

analysis in terms of those three types of political forces because their feature will largely subsume those of other kinds of organized groups, which may be relevant in particular countries. In the United States or the United Kingdom, for example, where neither trade unions nor nor religious groups nor political parties are sufficiently militant to oppose a coup after it has seized its initial targets. The groups which may have this capability, such as paramilitary movements of the paranoid right, will be organized in a manner that includes features of all three. It feels good to be a hero in their story. One of the points we must bear in mind is that not all the organized groups considered important

and normal political life will also be important in the highly restricted and spasmodic politics of the coup. Conversely, groups which in ordinary political life are of little, are of very limited importance, could emerge as real threats. If, for example, we fail to neutralize the organization of, say, the National Rifle Association in the United States or the National Union of Students in the United Kingdom, Their reaction, however ineffectual per se, could still endanger the coup by slowing down the process of political stabilization and as much as they could provoke conflicts that might reopen the whole issue. Other more prudent groups would then re-examine the possibility of challenging our position while the use of violence to stop the agitation of the groups we have overlooked could lead to further opposition since the side effects of the violence would increase the awareness of and hostility to the coup. the easiest way to get the National Rifle Association to stand down in the event of a coup is just like start spouting boomerisms.

Yeah. Or throw some boomer slogans at them. Yeah. Or incorporate them in some way. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're going to have to convince them that this is, you know, the solution to 1984 or 1776 or some shit like that. Yeah. And then you can always hypothetically

call for them to assemble in different places, and you can neutralize them just by giving them tasks that are outside of the city. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Yeah, I hear you. Yeah. No, no, I agree. I'm just,

I started thinking what those tasks might be, and I started laughing. Yeah, well, make them guard inland ports, just because the Corps of Engineers stopped dredging most inland waterways in the U.S. like 20 or 30 years ago, so a lot of them can't really be used anymore. So it looks important, but, you know, they're not really used for anything.

Finally, there are certain political forces which must not be neutralized, apart from those groups that have agreed to support us. These are those groups that are generally regarded as extremists, but whose effective powers are limited. By allowing them, nice to be included, by allowing them a certain freedom of action, we will give them an opportunity to oppose us, and their opposition will have two. favorable byproducts. We will be able to gain the support of those political forces which fear them more than us. We will be able to step forward and fight other groups after having associated with them

them with the extremists in question. This can, however, be a dangerous game to play in the confused and dramatic situation of the coup. The extremists could gain in power and political support, and it is possible that the time we have allowed them to discredit the opposition will work in their favor. Religious organizations. In economically developed countries, religious organizations no longer have much political power, though they may still be important social force. I would immediately mean NGOs. I mean, they're, yeah. I'm sorry, you were saying, sir. No, I was just saying he says that they no longer have much political power. Well, the ones that do want political power now just become NGOs.

Yeah. And they do, and they actually do have, you know, some political power. Yeah. And there's also a reason why the, I think the establishment left is so fearful of the Mormons. You know, we may have serious theological criticisms of them and find them rather milk toast. But it's easy to conceive how in a circumstance like this they could be an important counterforce. The leaders of religious groups can be influential in social and to a degree political life, but the allegiance to the believers is rarely expressed by direct and forceful action in the political field.

In economically backward countries and in those whose development is limited or very recent, it is otherwise. Where the newer technology of humans has only been recently applied, or not at all, the older technology of God is still of paramount importance. Only somebody of one specific ethnic sectarian group could make that claim. This can be a source of very important. considerable political power to the organizations identified with the appropriate beliefs and able to channel the sentiment of the believers. Leaving aside local cults, which are too fragmented to be important in terms of national politics, and which, in any case, tend to be a political, we see that even universal

religions will differ in their degree of political involvement. The role of the Catholic Church in Italy since the Second World War illustrates the power that can be accumulated by a well-organized religious group, even when operating in circumstances considered unfavorable from the religious point of view. Though most male Italians seldom or never go to church, Italian women are keen and regular churchgoers. Italy being a democratic country where women have the vote, it is obvious that if the organized church is willing to direct its followers to vote for a particular party, that party will gain the bulk of the women's vote before it even opens its electoral campaigns. Until the late 1960s, the church was generally willing to give such specific directions,

and one particular party used to benefit the D.C. Aided by its assured majority of the female vote, the D.C. ruled Italy, alone in various coalitions from 1948 until its 1990-191 collapse under the attack of investigative magistrates. Corruption accumulates when there is no alter. alternation of moderate ruling party is long precluded in Italy by the weight of the Communist Party. Corruption accumulates when there is no alternates of moderate ruling parties. They could have lecued, but... That would be one of many cases, probably, of that. I think we've seen in the last two years that in the UK, that's very much a case with the conservatives, the Tories.

And it did so largely because of the support it received from the Catholic Church. It is hardly surprising then that the church was able to dominate the D.C. And that through the D.C. it influenced every aspect of Italian national life. After 1991, however, Italy discovered that no other political grouping could replicate the D.C.'s successes in steering the Italian economy. The post-D.C. technocrats made the fatal mistake of taking the muddled Italian economy into the all-too-clear waters of the euro. After 1994, Berlusconi arrived to teach the Italians that there was something worse than corruption, i.e. institutional paralysis to persist while the supreme

leader looks after his own business and his own fund-filled personal life. Hence, Italy underwent the socially tragic consequences of prolonged economic stagnation and chronic youth unemployment, which post-Burlusconi leaders have failed to remedy as of 2015. This sentence reads like it's written by somebody who's extremely jealous. Or, I mean, was Berlusconi-Petouin? particularly critical of a certain group. Yeah, and again, I don't know enough about Italian politics to make any judgment one way or the other. But just wait five minutes and it'll change, so. This is no vague influence exercised on a plane of generalized authority, but rather a constant supervision of political activity,

conducted at the provincial level by the bishops and at the national level by the Pope and his associates. It's really weird that Litwak is just going on about the Catholic Church. I have no idea why he would bring them up. At each level of the state bureaucracy, the church directly or indirectly exercises its influence on civil service jobs and promotions, on the allocation of investment funds, and of the various kinds of government grants, on administrative decisions dealing with zoning and building regulations. This influence has brought it rearwards.

While the facilities of the state bureaucracy have steadily deteriorated compared with the dynamic private and semi-state sector, the Catholic Church's educational and religious facilities have steadily expanded. Money to build and the permissions required to do so have never been lacking. On that note, I think one of the interesting looks just at the role of the Italian, Yeah, the Catholic Church and Italian politics. These of all things, that HBO series, the Young Pope and the New Pope, is that they actually look explicitly at the kind of damage to the internal status quo of the Italian states,

that Italian state that an actual conservative pope could actually wreak on them. I need to watch those. I haven't watched them. You recommend them? Yeah, I do. It's a rare case of like a mainstream, you know, fiction series. on Christianity. It's actually really good. If we fail to neutralize the organization of the church in Italy, it could

inspire and coordinate opposition to us through its capillary network of parish churches. Perishioners are used to hearing political messages from the pulpit, priests are used to receiving detailed political briefs from the bishop, and the latter received their instructions from the Vatican.

Our neutralization of the telecommunications facility will not prevent the flow of instructions. The Vatican maintains its own radio station, and this could be used to contact directly the organization throughout the country. There's a reason why so many NGOs are now called Catholic, at least in their title, despite having non-Catholics running them. Isn't it insane that you can just start an NGO and call it Catholic?

And then you look at the board of directors, and every single one of them is of a certain tribe? Non-Catholic, yeah. Yeah, non-Catholic, yeah. Let's call that. Let's call it that, yeah. The Catholic Church plays a similar role in certain other countries, where it has a 99.9% nominal membership in the status of the national religion, but the stronger state structure of Spain and Portugal, let alone France, has denied at the preeminent position it has in Italy. The intervention of the church would, however, be a powerful factor in much of the Catholic world, including South America, especially if the motive behind the coup was identified as being anti-clerical. which has a long history of happening in Latin America,

like the Mexican coups in the early 20th century. Assassinating priests in El Salvador, things like that. Yeah. Islam, which has the comprehensive nature of a religion, a political system, and a civilization is much decayed culturally, is much decayed culturally, but the doctors of Al-Azhar, University in Cairo, one of the main theological institutions of the Muslim world,

are periodically prompted by the rule of the day into openly political declarations. No single leader in Islam has the authority of a pope, but in each country local religious leaders can still be important. Even before its abrupt disappearance, the once very noisy theater of Arab socialism did not impair in any way the position of Islam, and governments that followed an extremely left-wing line in all foreign and some domestic matters were still unwilling or unable to challenge the status of Islam as the state religion. When such a course was tentatively suggested by an obscure member of the nominally bathist, hence nominally secular Syrian government, the leadership was forced to denounce him

officially. Whether this resilience means that the Islamic leadership of particular countries could function as an act of political force as another matter. The structures of Islam as an organized religion are fossilized. The fluid and dynamic Islam of its early days of conquest has been replaced by a dogmatic and extremely conservative set of beliefs whose inflexibility is the major cause of the present travails of the Muslim world. Yeah, just for the in American and Western audience, it's really important to understand that within Islam there's a huge difference in administration between Sunnis and Shiites and Sunnis are essentially congregationalists, which means, you know, every mosque is essentially autonomous in terms of its hierarchy,

whereas Shiites actually have, you know, a defined clerical authority. So it's something more like the Catholic Church than Protestantism in terms of how it's run. When he says the fluid and dynamic Islam of its early days of conquest, I'm wondering if he's referring specifically to like 7-11 Spain through 7-11 through 1492 Spain. Yeah, I imagine he did, which, you know, we know about once. specific group that tend to do very well under early Islam, but the reality is other groups. I mean, there were no shortage of Christians and Zoroastrians who were elevated to an extremely high level. And yeah, they had huge limitations on their political rights, but they were also

exempt from military service, which meant that they weren't the people dying for their state. Well, I mean, something that I've said recently is that, you know, from studying that period 7-11 to 1492 in Spain. As a Christian, you would feel more safe at that time in Spain under Morish rule than you would feel now under the regime that we're under right now. Yeah, ironically, right? I mean, Muslims are much less of a threat in an Islamic state than they are in the West. Yeah. By contrast, there has been a great deal of fluidity and dynamism in the more or less violent Islamist movements that exist outside official or traditional religious institutions, ranging from the historic 1928 Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Al-Iqan al-Muslimun,

which spread to Syria in the 1960s and the jihadi movements of Pakistan that spread to Afghanistan after 1979, including Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, which, for a while had global pretensions to the newest, the Islamic State, which as of 2015, boasted of its own caliph, i.e. the sole legitimate ruler of all Muslim nations everywhere, and of any territories ever ruled by Muslims, such as Spain's Andalusia, Andalusia.

I want to remind everybody that the fact that the IS, our ISIS's head, called himself Caliph, is a lot like the mayor of Orange County, California, calling himself the head of Christendom. It's a very pompous title that nobody in the world outside of, you know, his direct, immediate support and it's actually thought meant anything. And I would also like to remind people that ISIS, when they bombed Israel 10 years ago, took out very publicly to apologize. What the jihadi groups have in common are four rather odd characteristics. First, for reasons that are not easy to explain, they are utterly obsessed with the role of women in society

and rather the importance of their exclusion from society and their reduction to a status not far from that of valuable domestic animals, a status limited to procreation, as a cowcalf, cattle rancher, I get the point, and the servile service of their husbands in and out of bed. Some groups are less restrictive, but none of the jihadi movements afford females any political role whatsoever. they can fight but only as suicide bombers. None allow women to be educated beyond some capacity for reading the Koran, if that. And none believe that an unmarried woman can have any professional existence of any sort or even drive a car. The widows might take in laundry and such.

I don't deny his point about the sex aggregation among most Islamist groups, but I think it's more accurate to say that it's a reaction to the West and the transformation of gender relations in the West and the last century, than anything inherent in Islam. Absolutely, and I'm not going to argue with them at all about restricting women from voting. Second, the jihadi groups always speak in the name of Islam, period, but they only act for Sunni Islam, habitually persecuting or simply killing any non-Sunni Muslim who falls into their hands, whether the Zwheresew or Shia of,

Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Syria, the five or Zaidi, Shia of Yemen, or the sevener, Ishmaelie, Shia scattered worldwide, but also present in Syria. In that regard, while Iran's great Satan is the United States, as indeed it is for the Ayatollahs who must rule incurably pro-American-educated elites. For the jihadis, the great Satan is Iran, not an unhappy conjunction in as much as it sets equally murderous Shia Hezbollah and Sunni jihadists against each other. Now, understanding this point, we can see why it's so ironic that the neocons have always gone other way to identify Sunni and Shiite groups together, despite the fact they hate each other even more than they hate us. And it shows the other strategic incompetence of trying to equate those two groups.

groups when the last 20-something years, there could have been some made at reproachment with countries like Iran in order to in this threat and achieve some kind of lasting peace. Well, I mean, the redirection in Iraq was basically we need to stop empowering Shia, and by doing that, we're going to empower Sunnis. Yeah, and that whole issue, I mean, Scott Horton's talked about out length. and he's demonstrated right under the Hussein regime. So the Ba'ath Party in Iraq was largely a vehicle for Sunni rule as opposed to what it was in Syria. But at the same time, you know, there's some amount of Shias who were co-wopped into the Ba'ath Party.

There are some amount of, what do you call it, Kurdish groups that were, you know, co-opted despite being non-Arabs. So, yeah, it essentially is essentially – or something. essentially required the Sunni majority, or Sunni minority, rather, to actually hold the political power in Iraq. And once we eliminated them, destroyed the Bath Party, you know, that met the Shias, who are the majority, at least in the part below Kurdistan, are going to win any democratic relation, or any democratic situation, which turned, brought Iraq into alignment with Iran, which is why how we end up in a situation where the government backed Iraqi official government, militia, the head of that was assassinated under Trump, you know, and this is somebody that

was empowered by us. So it's the pure asinine incompetence of America's policy in the Middle East. Third, the jihadi groups are, of course, anti-Western and reject Western artifacts, clothing, et cetera, as well as Western ideas, but they are keen and sometimes talented emulators of Western media techniques. Fourth, the jihadis consistently attract volunteers who are notably more committed and therefore potentially more effective than the salaried soldiers and police who confront them across the Muslim world. And because of their skill in utilizing Western media techniques, members of the jihadi movement are able to attract volunteers from the West who bring their valuable Western skills with them. The leader of the 9-11 attack on New York, for instance, was a German engineer of Egyptian origin. Yeah. Again, one of the things that I think our establishment, especially the media, fails to recognize, is that people in the world, many of them actually believe in their religions and are willing to kill and die for them. And it's not just a window dressing that the establishment assumes it is for everyone.

Sandy and I were the other night we were trying to figure something out. Maybe you can help with it. Do you know what an, can you describe exactly what an al-a-white is? Okay, yeah. In fact, yeah, here's a good point, and depending on how long it takes me to explain. All right, it is an endogamous ethnocectarian group in the Levant that is nominally Shiite Muslim. All right. When I say endogamous, it means that it originated in one ethnic group of people who founded was it al-Nusaraya. which I think I'm mispronouncing it, but that was the name of the religious leader out of Iraq who formed this group

centuries ago. Indogamous means it's descended from those people. Unlike the Druze, which are another endogamous group in the area, I think the Alawites actually allow some amount of integration and conversion and the children of mixed marriages to actually integrate in the community. But again, it's an endogamous community. It has what are called esoteric elements, which means, means that they have the outer form of the religion and then fully initiated members of the religion get further secret knowledge as part of it, which is something that historically saw in many religious movements. So the outward facing part of the religion is essentially Shiite Islam. Inner movement, as far as we can tell, is probably some remnant of occulted

Christianity with Gnosticism, with maybe even Hinduism or Buddhism, because they believe in reincarnation and things like that. Again, this is essentially a ethno-religious tribal group, much like certain other groups in the region, that has a close society in which it's not just the matter of being born into a group, because that's a prerequisite, but you actually have to be initiated

into the inner circle in order to become a religious, excuse me, a leader within that community, which means you have a group that's forced to deal with everybody, usually on asymmetric terms, meaning other people have more power than them, so they have to navigate their way historically. but it has a reinforcing discipline and function that requires them to uh you know commit their loyalty to the organization and its movement and its ideas in order to uh to um you know become a leader in that

community which means it uh you know it's forced to both deal with the outside world while maintaining maintaining cohesive um and i know i'm rambling here but um yeah so that religious ethnic community exists primarily in the levant so in syria there are small numbers of them in lebanon There are even some in Israel, in the Golan Heights, some of whom even have Israeli citizenship. I don't know if that answers your question or not. Yeah, it does. He asked the question, and from my study, I just said it's Shiite Muslim, but it seemed like there was like they were closer to Christianity than probably anything else. As far as we can tell. Again, that's one second.

Sorry about that. So, yeah, as far as we can tell, part of the problem is, because it's a closed esoteric religion, we only have a vague idea of what the inner teachings of the movement are, because they're not communicated to outsiders. Like any other esoteric movement, when somebody spills the beans, it's not really clear if they're telling the truth, or just making shit up.

So, yeah, we only have a vague idea of what it is. All right, we only got a few more pages here, and then we'll get out of here. on this little part right here. The political sterility of official Islam in recent times has meant that, though it has been used by governments to propagate their political initiatives, Islamic leaders have only spoken out in response to direct attacks on religious orthodoxy. Consequently, unless our coup has a definite anti-Islamic coloring,

religious leaders in Muslim countries will not initiate any action against us. Clearly, we must prevent our opponents from imposing such a coloring on our coup. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, in the intermittent political warfare between Arab socialists and the monarchies, while the latter was accused of being tools of the Zionist imperialist oil monopolies, the former were accused of wanting to eradicate Islam with their godless beliefs. Actually, even the self-styled progressives did not dream of challenging Islam. These days, with Arab socialism long dead, the competition of rulers with ultra-Islamist jihadis, has resulted in the further Islamization of the Arab world.

Such a phenomenon is equally present in Turkey, but for a very different reason. The downfall of the military-based and fiercely secular establishment has allowed the village Islam of the unwashed Anatolian masses its democratic expression, and what they want is a decidedly illiberal return to Ottoman practices, starting with headdresses on all women. This is a regression that the loudly Islamist justice and development, party, I'm not going to pronounce that as AKP, has been happy to deliver, along with frenetic mosque building, even on previously strictly secular university campuses and Sunni Islamic

policies on all matters, starting with foreign policy. The Turkish AK, go ahead. Yeah, not to interrupt. Now it's a good time to interrupt. Yeah, so the Kamala's regime, named for Kamala Aditurk, who basically transformed the remnant of the old Ottoman Empire into modern state of Turkey as a republic, a secular republic. There were some very key rules that were enforced. Number one, basically religious institutions, number one, they had to be approved by the state. Number two, could not have any direct

involvement in the state. They essentially practiced the French concept of laicite, which means more than just secularization. It means basically the non, it basically forbids the public integration of religion into civil and political life outside of the religious institution, which is why in France so often they have public debates about head scars and things, because it's, for a long time, it was actually illegal in France even to wear a clerical collar outside of church if you're a priest, because you cannot wear or have any kind of public influence of religion into civil and political life. So that was the thing that happened in Turkey, like he said, until very recently with the, um, the, um, the end.

to the political influence of the military on politics. At the same time, the AKP is kind of interesting because, and I'm not approving of it anyway, but it's not quite as Islamist as we would think, right? It's essentially like a Turkish-identarian political movement in which Islam is a key way, or key aspect of the society, the same way that, like, you know, our Catholic niths is essential to being Spanish, despite the fact that, like, you know, we said that Catholic, church tends not have a big political role in Spanish society. So building mosques, even in, you know, public universities,

which to us that may seem weird right now, but keep in mind most old universities in the U.S. had chapels on them, even though they've probably been secularized at this point. Headscars are also a really weird aspect of Turkish culture because it's as much, are seen as much as much as, political social choice by women as anything because wearing a headscarf for a woman is sort of a way of thumbing their nose at modern liberal culture by saying that no religion is important to them and it and I understand it doesn't necessarily mean that they're like the semi-chatel relationship that we

think of in ISIS it doesn't mean that at all and again I'm not approving of the AKP but he's basically glossing over a huge amount of nuance in Turkey where there is a lot of nuance in the real world. All right. The Turkish AKP semi-literate leaders seem to honestly believe that democracy means the absolute rule of the majority, forgetting the bits about the consent of the minority, individual rights, the rule of law, and so on. And there we go. Conveniently believe in those things.

Yeah. They have ruled accordingly with just over 50% of the vote, utterly ignoring acute secular unhappiness, as well as the substantial 15 to 20% minority of alibus, whose faith is entirely too moderate for the AKP. AKP. The Levies are a Turkish-descended ethno-sectarian group that is 12 or Shiite, but essentially preserves a form of like Zoroastrianism within Islam, and they're another one of those really cool but really weird Shiite minority groups.

As pronounced Alevis? I've heard it pronounced a levy in English. My understanding is in Turkey. Alawite and Alevi are pronounced the same way, but they consciously spell them differently and pronounce it just to make it clear that they're not talking about the Alawyids. Okay.

Hinduism is another faith that has no central institutions or hierarchies. Indeed, it is a gathering of many diverse cults that share the same library of ancient texts, some magnificent, of godly characters, each emphasizing this or that text or God, and which was only represented as a unitary religion under British rule. None of this prevents parties and politicians from trying to harness Hindu sentiments for their own advantage, and there are organized Hindu militant groups, including some that repudiate the serene tolerance of most Hindus by murdering Christian missionaries

and organizing anti-Muslim riots. The banning of cow slaughter attracts more mainstream support, and it has been legislated in several jurisdictions, U.S. hamburger chains serve chicken in India or simply go vegetarian. But if we stay well clear of cows and temples, we can ignore Hinduism as a factor. An extreme example of the potentialities of a dynamic religious leadership was the mainline Buddhist movement of Vietnam, as it then was before its political identity was obliterated

by the northern communist conquest of 1975. The almost continual warfare of its last 15 years, along with a politically destructive effect of the DM regime and its military successors, resulted in the collapse of the social and political structures of the country, while its economy was reduced to localized subsistence adjutant agriculture, allied with urban dependence on U.S. aid and U.S. military spending. Precurious conditions weakened more modern, economic, political, and social movements, allowing older groupings based on religious affiliations, to emerge as the only valid civilian political forces in Vietnamese society. Apart from the Buddhist movement led by the monk Tikritu Kwang and other regional leaders by early 1968 on the eve of the momentous tent offensive by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese that ultimately induced the United States to abandon Vietnam, the following array of religious and political groups could be found in the country.

Do you know how to pronounce this? How is that how? How is how it's usually putting in that. Yeah, hohow. A reformed Buddhist sect with a large following in the southern delta part of the country.

Their leadership was politically oriented and except for strictly local alliances was anti-Viet Cong. They had acquired the rudiments of an armed militia. Yeah, the ho-how were important because they didn't believe in monasticism because most Buddhist sects

believe the only people were going to reach Nirvana our actual monks. And again, the whole how had their own militia that the South Vietnamese government had to deal with. Cowdai, an important Buddhist sect with a history of political participation. They're not Buddhist. They're basically a mixture of French existentialism, Catholicism, and Buddhism, as well as a bunch of traditions within Vietnamese folk religion. And basically they're important is the communist didn't like them because they are a very cohesive subgroup within society, and they have a tradition of their own militias. Is this pronounced binjuan?

I think Benjuan or something like that. A small but very active part sect and part secret society. Its main area of strength was in the Saigon region, and before the DM regime displaced them, the bin Juen were said to own both the city's police force and its underworld. The sect had been influenced by the Chinese secret societies from across the river in Sholan, Saigon's vast Chinatown, and the effect of the repression at the hands of Diem was to drive it underground rather than destroy it. Yeah, essentially these were the Vietnamese branch of Catholic, excuse me,

Vietnamese branch of Chinese triads, and the triads actually have a religious orientation or religious origin, which again makes it really hard to infiltrate them. That's really interesting. I'd like to learn more about that. I was saying within Chinese society, the actual history of like eschatological religions, those that actually believe in like some kind of end of the world is just absolutely engrossing.

Catholics. Until DM's fall, the substantial Catholic minority was able to dominate the Buddhist majority. Many of the South Vietnamese Catholics were refugees from the North, and as such fiercely anti-communist, moreover, under the French, many Catholics had cooperated actively with the colonial power and served in the French Armed Forces. As the South became increasingly weak in the prospect of a conquest by the North approach, the Catholic community reached a desperate impasse. Their activity against any pro-Viet Cong

or just pro-peace coup would have been immediate and probably very effective. Yeah. Like we talked before when Dark Enlightenment was on, many of the Catholics in Vietnam. They actually originated from like civil service families, a lot of these that had been like traditionally Confucian. So yeah, they have a strong history in the government. Many of them were even from North Vietnam. You know, they dominated the ZM regime. And even when there was the military coup in South Vietnam and they started purging everybody connected with DM. They end up having huge numbers of Catholics left in the command structure just because they were the competent people. And again, the Catholic Buddhist divide is just so huge in Vietnamese culture. It's like if you ever have or ever live in a city in the U.S. with a large Vietnamese immigrant population, the joke is you will always see at an intersection to Vietnamese restaurants facing each other. And without a doubt, it'll always be one Catholic and one Buddhist restaurant. And that's just the divide in their culture.

All these religious groups could have intervened against a coup. Their meeting places could have been used to assemble and shelter. opponents. The pre-sid could have inspired and coordinated mass agitation against us. Finally, their direct influence on the Army and bureaucratic rank and file could have been used to resist the imposition of our authority. The religious groups that can be important in particular countries will differ doctrinally, but they will tend to be sufficiently similar organizationally to permit us to rely on the same general method of neutralization. Their access to Internet social media must, of course, be impeded if not blocked.

If they operate private broadcasting facilities such as the Vatican Radio or the small radio stations of American missionary sex in many parts of the world, we will put them temporarily out of action. Religious meeting places should not be closed by administrative orders, which are liable to foment rather than stifle opposition, but access to them can be impeded or even barred by incidental roadblocks. Which is part of why when the communists controlled Central Asia, they always limited the ability of individual mosques to, organized events, but they never made any kind of effort to close permanently or ban those mosques. The leadership of religious organizations presents a special problem when it comes to neutralization because of their particular psychological role in the minds of their more committed followers. It will usually be extremely unwise to arrest the hierarchical, the hierarchic leadership, as well as any prominent preachers who will, in any case, be stripped of their social media access.

fortunately, the actual decision-makers within religious organizations will often be younger men who are not in the public eye, but who are the key figures from our point of view. If the real decision-makers are not also the hierarchical leaders, we will arrest them, but if the two roles are embodied in the same person or persons, we will not. In concrete terms, a Tritikwang, who was very much an effective decision-maker in South Vietnam, but not formally in the hierarchy. leadership could have been and should have been arrested, but a Pope who is both representational and the effective leader cannot be arrested without stimulating a great deal of opposition, the impact of which will outweigh any advantage to be gained from the arrest. Yeah, one of the things you see in all kinds of religious and civil institutions is as people live longer, very often the titular leader, the person who's officially in charge,

is not necessarily the person running things behind the scenes as we wouldn't have in the past. Now, the official leader very often has final authority, but it doesn't mean they're the person running around taking care of finances or, you know, logistics and making sure people at remote sites get fed. So, yeah, you have to be reasonably young and somebody willing to show up every day and work long hours in order to do those kind of things. So, yeah, the older the population, the more likely that it is, is that a formal leader will also have, you know,

unofficial leaders behind the scenes who are doing most of the day-to-day work. Okay. The less than two pages left, and I might need your help with pronunciation here if you can. In jihadi movements, the military, political and religious leadership, is usually embodied in the same person, evoking the caliphate, which Muslims of all stripes, even the most moderate, must view as their ideal of governance for the Umah, the planetary community of all Muslims,

and indeed for all humans once voluntarily converted in due course or killed if stubbornly pagan. But modern advocates of a revival of the caliphate, they amount to a substantial semi-public movement in many countries, hardly ever refer back to the famous caliphates of history, from the splendiferous umyad defeated by the longer-lasting Abbasid, which were then distinguished by the, Good. Umayyad and Abbasid.

Umayyad and longer-lasting Abbasid, who were later established by the Mongols in 1258, or the Egypt- or the Egypt-based and tolerant Shia Fatimid, Fatimid. Is that Fatimid? Yeah, it's named after Fatima. They're claiming dissent from Mom's daughter because you never had a son.

Ah, okay. Between or the Ottoman that lingered till 1924, let alone the ex-themed. and genuinely moderate Amadiyah Caliphate that most Muslims condemn is heretical? Yeah, it pronounced as Amidia. Amidia. Instead, supporters of the caliphate wax lyrical about the rule of Muhammad's first four rightly guided successors, the Al-Kulafa al-Rashidun.

Yeah, something like that. Who followed one another after his death in 632, Unable to assume Muhammad's prophetic role, his best-place followers took control of his movement as his successors, or Kulafa, hence the English caliphate. In greatly celebrating the Rashidun, as modern Muslims afflicted by the contemporary difficulties of the Muslim world are wont to do, the violent instability of the institution is disregarded, no doubt because they celebrate are the colossal victories over the infidels who now very regularly defeat them, undermining Islam's central promise of victory. But from the very start, the institution was violently unstable.

The first caliph, Abu Bakir Asidq, had to fight tribal secessionism throughout his short reign to impose his rule. His struggle was further intensified by the very first Shia, the partisans of al-Ibn Abiyah Taleb, Muhammad's son-in-law, There was also a bitter property dispute over the date palm orchids of Fardak. Abu Bakir died, what do you say? No, I just think the property dispute being essential, too, says a lot about humanity as a whole.

Yeah. Abu Bakar died of illness, a privilege denied to the second caliph, Umar im al-Qat-Abib, killed by a resentful Persian son. soldier, or the third, Uthman Ibn Afan, lynched in his own house in Medina, or the fourth and last, Ali Ibn Abi Talib, Mohammed's son-in-law, who was assassinated by a more extremist of the Karajite sect, which demanded unending war against all non-Muslim and denounced all who disagreed as apostates deserving of death. Muhammad had done the same, sending a assassinate. to behead apostates and irreverent poets.

Muslim violence around the world is, therefore, perfectly traditional, and allows us as coup planners, presumably Muslims in a Muslim target country, to act accordingly. The patron saint of modern jihadis, Said Khatib, Katoob, I think. Kutu, was hanged by the Egyptian military dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser, who nevertheless remained wildly popular as of 2015. The contemporary military dictator of Egypt, a fine fellow by all accounts, has procured death sentences against the leaders of the Iquan, the Muslim Brotherhood, without losing his considerable popularity. Hence, any Muslim religious leader who crosses our path can be straightforwardly eliminated so long as our Muslim credentials are solid. It helps to have a dark spot on the forehead left by the bruising of enthusiastic worship in bowing down to the ground.

That's one of many reasons why the Al-Awhite leaders in Syria go out of their way to emphasize their religion as a type of Islam because they were the only people to actually suppress the Muslim Brotherhood. All right. That's where this is a good natural stopping point.

So thank you. I appreciate it. You're going to be out of at a range for a little while. We'll see if We'll see if still doing this when you get back. Yeah. Any time.

All right. Well, yeah, I appreciate it. And take care. Have a good weekend. Thanks, sir. I want to welcome everyone back to part nine of my reading of Kudaita by Edward Lutwak, Christopher Sandbatch is back. How are you doing, Christopher?

Yeah, pretty good, pretty good. I've survived my encounter with all 300,000 people that want to let me know. how ugly Ella M. Hoff is. I've never been pounced so hard. Do you know Davis that runs the pamphletier up in Nashville? He was like, he's like, I've never seen a post that had 300,000 likes and 300,000 views and 100 likes. Oh, it was, I mean, I watched it from afar because I'm like, if I get involved in this, it'll, I'm going to be sucked into the sandbatch vortex.

and I don't need that at this point. Yeah, that's exactly right. Some days you just have to say no to sand badge. All right. We're finishing off chapter four here and he owns chapter five. So I'll start reading. Stop whenever. All right.

Political parties, unlike the other groups that constitute a potential source of opposition to the coup, political parties are our direct competitors in the sense of their primary purpose, like our own, is the accumulation of political power. This will not necessarily make them the main or even a significant potential threat to us, but it will mean that their response to the coup will be particularly prompt. Whether this response will be verbal and purely declaratory or perhaps more direct and effective will depend on a variety of factors, including the nature of their leadership, organization, and membership. Because political parties are as diverse as the countries within which they compete for

power, we will classify them in certain categories as a prelude to examining the methods of their individual neutralization. Before he gets into this, because this is actually one of my, like, keystone issues. I just want to point, because I always like to go into this, and I'll do this, I'll do the whole spiel somewhere else one day. But I always like to point out in the United States that the political parties are not actually constructed similarly. The only thing they really have in common is that there's series 527 organizations that put candidates up for office. Other than that, they're like corporate in the United States in the Anglosphere. They're like corporations.

And they can pretty much operate however they want to with their own bylaws and do whatever they want to do. But I've also worked and I've also worked with African and South American political parties before. And, you know, Americans are used to a certain amount of asymmetry. And, but it's like enough that we don't even, we argue amongst ourselves whether or not it even exists, you know, both parties are the same isn't or whatever. It is astonishing, if you ever deal with third world countries or second world countries, how actually diverse

the party representation is. Like, I mean, like any of you can like go right now over to like Chad. Like look at look at the country Chad and like look at all the political parties there. It's going to be like 10 communist ones, but they're going to be really interesting and they're all going to have their own little niche issue, you know. So this is what he's doing is he's laying these out for us. Some of these will be familiar. All right. Machine parties. Where politics is a business like any other, parties take the form of an association whose purpose is a procurement of votes in exchange for specific and material rewards. The local boss secures votes for the party at election time in exchange for cash and or bureaucratic jobs for himself or his nominees. The deputies in the assembly then deliver their votes to the government in exchange for definite favors, some of which are retained and some of which are passed. down to those who secured their election. The Machine Party can flourish in societies as different as early 20th century America,

Egypt between the wars and present-day South America. Just to point out here also, one of the things he doesn't, he hasn't gotten that. I can't remember if he does get into it. But again, this is actually where I worked. This is the kind of wet work I was doing on K Street. That's what I call it. But I was like working for this like flea-bite consultancy on K Street that did things like represent.

third world parties. Okay, so like, I'm like really, not only does this all happen, an astonishing amount of it actually happens in the United States. Like, like these, like these countries, like Niger or Chad or somewhere like that,

they will have, both the opposition and the ruling party will have separate lobbyists and they'll have separate personnel staffing in Washington, D.C., and they actually do an astonishing amount of their internal politicking in the, you know,

the overall imperial capital. So when you're thinking about this, it's not spatially limited necessarily to the countries in which it's happening. This could be happening in London. This could be happening in America. It could be happening in all three. All righty. It needs two main ingredients, an elective parliamentary democracy and a socially backward electorate. It works. That's such a great sentence. Yeah. In the United States. United States at the beginning of the century, the immigrant communities were largely composed of Eastern and Southern Europeans, whose mother countries were economically and often politically unsophisticated.

Thus, the newly arrived immigrants lacked the political awareness required to obtain direct concessions from the government in the shape of social welfare legislations or labor codes. They soon learned, however, to obtain indirect favors by proposing their support to the local ward organization of the party, i.e., if the vote, votes were delivered on Election Day and the candidate elected, rewards would be eventually received in return. Present-day machine parties do not distribute their rewards as widely as the old municipal machines in the United States. That is so because such parties participate in the Employo Gracia, Jobs for the Boys politics, which dominates political societies in which industry and commerce are undeveloped.

In such societies, politics and its associated jobs in the state bureaucracy are the main avenues of middle-class advancement, if not enterprise, and the party is to vehicle with legal training for the middle-class activity of office hunting. Okay, now this is going to be a kind of long one. I do it. I have to, the first thing we have to do is point out the dazzling, miltonian satanic performance that we've fucking. is putting on here as a literary figure. He's doing something, which is very, he's echoing a historical narrative that is very interesting because he's functionally, again,

we remember him as a defense intellectual. He is suddenly mirroring what we refer to as the narrative of the Anglo-American WASP establishment. Okay. That is about a clear an outline of Anglo-American establishment wasp historiography as you can find anywhere. You know, like, okay, we had these people from Southern Europe and they all, and this is, I mean, this is, the tricky thing here is this is how Lut Fogg's own people arrived here. So he's writing this book for this audience as though he's one of them, but he's explaining what his people did to the United States.

Okay. This is what's going on here. And it's one of those things I'm just like, every time he does this, I'm Florida. And like, I just is who's it. I don't know how many people are in on this joke, but just from a writing perspective, you could understand how he actually managed to make a career out of this book because it is, it has lots of twists and turns. All right.

Machine parties have their rationale in the contrast between constitutional structures and the social order in countries that are both poor and democratic. Their whole manner of operation revolves around. the exchange of votes for rewards at every level. In other words, it requires the functioning of the parliamentary apparatus with its periodic elections. In the event of a coup, this institutional framework would be frozen and the machine made powerless. Even if the machine has a base of mass support, its leadership being a coalition of local power structures without a national presence, will not be able to mobilize it. We will, therefore, ignore the machine parties and will not need to take any particular action in their regard.

You know, we got to stab again. This is like, okay, what he's just laid out for you right there is the strategy of the Democratic Party in the year 2024. He has every single one of the adjectives and the nouns that he's used leading up to this, leading up, leading up to the end of the section is, in fact, these are words, if you could make a word cloud of the way people in coastal. cities look at the inner provinces of the American Empire. That is precisely how they look at. And most of many of them have this book from undergrad in the back of their mind whenever they

think about the sort of wrote politics of Middle America. And that it's actually true to a certain degree that most red state American precincts are in fact run by the political machine that is the Republican Party. So I mean, we're really familiar. with looking at the black vote. I know I know the good old boys are really fond of saying the black vote is delivered by machine so on and so forth. The Republican vote is also delivered by machine. It's just a machine so vast and the individual pieces of it are so like inconsequential that it never gets categorized as a machine politics because it's uniformly the entire opposition party in the United States. All right. That's no.

insurrectional parties. Such parties may or may not participate in open political life if it exists in our target country, but the primary purpose of insurrectional parties is to destroy the system rather than to work it. Like the Bolsheviks did before 1917, these parties live a semi-legal existence with a cellular organization and underground mentality and frequently a paramilitary element. Such parties are characterized by their adherence to a set of definite, ideological beliefs, a rigidly centralized organization, and their preoccupation with the use of direct methods to achieve political ends. You know, you're really shocked when you read this, that he actually brings up the Bolsheviks and not that other group that you would think that he would pick, he would choose. Oh, no, he's one of them. He's like a deep, deep, deep Nazi.

if that's what you're talking about. Like, this is like, this is, he's definitely, if he's a neo-cona Zionist, then, yeah. You know,

that gets into the real tricky internal politics. It's like the relationship between, you know, central Europe. And he is, he's like one of these figures out of like, almost like a,

the spy who came in from the cold or some other, like, John LeCair novel, where he's like this, like, marooned orphan figure that gets like tossed. He's essentially from the same milieu as George Soros.

He just came out on the other side. You know, he's like he's the anti-he came out anti-communist. Because I guess I think it was America or maybe the Greeks or somebody that scooped him up. And so he grew up in the West and he's a, and he's a like the only thing Edward Lutvac wants to do is kill Muslims. and what is the other thing neocons do? Oh, yeah, no commies. But, like, he's got, like, he has the Zionist bloodlust

for the destruction of the Mohammed and empire or whatever. But then he also is a, like, raging anti-communist. And, you know, during the 1970s, those two strains came together and formed a seam for these people to pour into, you know, the neocons are on one hand. Because this is when the black party, in fact, these are the parties he knows best because these are the ones he's talking about.

These are the ones that he manipulates. And that we actually don't really have a corollary to in the United States. Like there's not, no matter how hard MSNBC wants to meme this, there's no corollary to ISIS or the color parties in the United States right now. But these are the ones he knows really well because these two things that he knows how to do, which is like destroy Muslim countries. philosophically opposed communism,

the Middle East in the 1970s was the place to do that. And these were the types of parties. And I used to hang out with these guys, like, would do this stuff. And they would, you know, they'd talk about, these are like the days of like black helicopters and like the special forces

looking like dads on like, you know, their summer vacation. But that's what these guys used to do. And they used to use parties. This was their favorite kind to work. The insurrection. party. In the social and economic conditions of Western Europe and North America,

insurrection parties were insignificant numerically, and their challenge to the system usually unfolds in an atmosphere of unreality, though from time to time they can gather a mass following among certain sectors of the population, which are outside the mainstream of national life. The black power, yeah. The black power movement in the United States, example, had all the traits of an insurrectional party, but only operated among the black communities in areas whose social and economic conditions were those of an economically backward society.

In the third world, however, the constant pressure of economic deprivation can generate a revolutionary mentality among wide sections of the population, which insurrectional parties try to channel and exploit. Their organization, however, is often inadequate to the task. Intersectional parties can oppose us in three main ways. A, through the agitation of the masses to the extent that they have a mass following. B, by direct means such as assassination and sabotage. C. By syndicalist agitation.

It's so specific. Yeah. Insurrectional parties usually have an authoritarian leadership structure, much of their strength in the confused circle. that would follow a coup would derive from the coherence of a centralized leadership. With that in mind, we should make every effort to identify and isolate their key decision-makers. The emphasis on party discipline and the habit of waiting for directives from the higher leadership render many insurrectional parties powerless once the leadership has ceased to function. The social pressures that act as a source of strength of an insurrectional party may lead to its revival,

but this would not take place in the short period of time that concerns us. I guess this really makes the argument for professional soldiers. You see, I'm wondering if this is a portion that he added in the updated edition because if, like, I don't know what year the United States stopped arming, you know, Osama bin Laden, but this is the reason they like to use these intersectionary parties is that section that he just outlined, which is it usually if you cut the head off, the whole thing goes away. So you only have to keep guys near one guy. So whenever this political party, when this card that you have in your deck is, you know, has expired or it's no longer useful, you just shoot the guy that you've been propping up the whole time.

That's how the United States ran quite a bit of its foreign policy in Asia for the second half of it. We probably still do it, but I can't, you know, I have eyes on that. The real, like, sort of dangerous thing, that's like what happens if we cut the head off and it does eventually grow back? And he goes, this won't happen for a long time. How long? 20 years for Al-Qaeda to emerge after we tried to, you know, scuttle it. Oh, man.

Yeah, I mean, this really also, what, he's talking about here is that if you if you think you have a movement within a society and you think it's a political movement and it's run by one person and there's just one person you're looking to and there's no obvious second in command there's no one there to step up if that one person gets taken out you don't have a movement right exactly it's just what you do it and i would compare strong compared harshly with the Bolsheviks who did not operate this way, actually. So like the Bolsheviks are this weird asterisk because they really were a kind of cybernetic entity where if somebody had managed to Off Lenin, you know, there's like there's, there's a whole group

of people that get called the old Bolsheviks that theoretically were all interchangeable with one another, you know. Yeah. The social pressures that act as a source sources of strength of an instructional party may lead to its revival, but this would not take place in the short period. of time that concerns us. The vulnerability of insurrection parties was strikingly demonstrated in the case of the Muslim Brotherhood, a major force in Egypt's Egyptian political life after the war. Its large mass following, its network of economic and educational activities, and its paramilitary youth groups

gave it a great deal of direct power. Its effectiveness, however, derived largely from the coherent leadership of its founder, Shikasan Albana, and the The movement rapidly declined after his death, in unexplained circumstances, just after the failed coup of late 1948. Where necessary, therefore, the committee or personal leadership of the insurrectional party should be arrested and held in isolation for the duration of the coup. Because of the emphasis on party discipline, the beheaded movement will probably abstain from action in the short but critical period following our seizure of power. Paraburocratic parties. In one party, before you get started, yeah, this one's sort of interesting because what he's

doing here is actually collapsing to, you know, I'm actually trying to think about how you would, you know, model it ontologically right now. The way you would do is because what he's essentially doing is taking a structure that we would normally conceive of as differing structures, and he's actually bundling the them all into one into one subclass of political party here. So like, and what interesting things is doing here is he's, actually he's removing the, really removing the connection between, you know,

the people and the parties that are represented. So now he's treating, you know, the bureaucracy as its own, you know, abstract class is what he's doing here. And this is another one of these things. It starts to get really big in the 1960s. And it becomes increasingly important for world systems analysis, geopolitical analysis, and pretty much everything. You know, this is one of these concepts, concept splitting is what I call it.

You have to kind of, if you want to understand the world after 1960, you got to grok what's going on here. All right. Parabiericureancredic. parties. In one party states, such as China most notably, the party itself has lost its major role of securing the allegiance of the masses. Because it is a monopoly, the party is also in danger of appearing superfluous. But like any other bureaucratic organization, the party can survive the loss of its primary function, either as a system of spoliation or as an ancillary

or supervisor of the administrative bureaucracy of the state. African parties formed during the political struggles which preceded independence tended to legislate their monopoly of power as soon as they had attained it. Some, like the Tanzania and African National Union, CANU, have turned into constructive galvanizers of the communal and state development programs. Others like Nakumra's old party in Ghana become adjuncts to the personal leadership and a system of outdoor relief for his activist followers. The majority, however, until swept away by the military dictatorships, have acted as the principal agent in the main local industry. Politics.

This, also, by the way, this is, you know, me, and really my formal field of expertise actually, like, it seems buried in the rubble. Compared to what I actually do now. But it's actually the antebell himself. And, like, the situation he's described, actually describes Southern politics. possibly up to the present. And to such an extent that I tell people frequently that Southerners in a sense aren't even Americans because Americans don't really have politics the way we do

where every interaction with the Southerner is a political action. You know, it's like our cultural, shared ethno-language is politics. Like it's the sort of comparison that I've made before. I'm not as happy with the comparisons I used to be, but that's just something I thought was interesting. The Paraburocratic Party treats the state bureaucracy as its subordinate. It investigates its activities, reports on its behavior to the higher leadership, and often

demands special privileges and concessions. These parties do not have a mass following, except within the framework of normal political life, when they can be relied upon to produce demonstrations for this or that stand of the leadership. As soon as the hold of the leadership is threatened, as soon as the police, apparatus no longer acts as its muscle, the paraburocratic party dissolves. Therefore, we can ignore it in the active stage of the coup. However, its secondary function, that of intelligence and security, will be important and will be dealt with as part of the general defensive measures towards such organizations. Parties in developed countries. Whether it is a two-party system, as in much of the Anglo-Saxon world,

where parties are in effect coalitions of pressure groups, or whether they are class or religion-based parties of much of continental Europe, the major political parties in developed in democratic countries will not present a direct threat to the coup. Though such parties have mass support at election time, neither they nor their followers are versed in the techniques of mass agitation. The comparative stability of political life has deprived them of the experience required to employ direct methods,

and the whole climate of their operation revolves around the concept of periodic elections. Even where there are still nominally revolutionary parties, as in France and Italy, two or more decades of parliamentary life have reduced their affinity and revolutionary methods. Now here we have the actually, this is the, you know, the Iker and break, the neocons right here. This is one of their assumptions that turned out to be. wrong. And it's why there's not very many of them left because they didn't, they didn't,

they actually believed their own bullshit about, you know, this, you know, the Democrat Party doesn't have the ability to deploy mass agitations. It doesn't understand how to use political party, you know, political power properly, so and so forth. This was a real, this is a real actual domestic home front assumption of the neocons that ended up wrong. Well, you know, I think of if they really wanted to, if the Democrats really wanted to unleash, say, like, Antifa, Black Lives Matter or something like that, and unleash it in a way that would cause revolutionary change, it would be in the kind of violence we're talking about here, the court systems would basically not be, would probably not be functioning. So, you know,

crazy white guys with guns could actually fight back and they wouldn't have the support of the state, but they wouldn't have the state breathing down their neck with DAs looking to throw them in jail. Yeah, I mean, it's a seriously ugly situation. Like, should the day, that's, but this is actually the reason why the Democrats, I mean, I'm a registered Democrat. The reason why the Democrats make me more nervous right now than the Republicans do is that, you know, sort of perceived that the United States is at this like particular catastrophic point in its history and that like anyone getting really jumpy will cause problems and the Republicans I'm like I can't

get anything together let's go with them we'll just get four years of relative boringness from the Republicans I don't know the Democrats are like I'm afraid they'll push the advantage and like create some situation like that out of like a dude front a turkey on Thanksgiving or something. I have a tendency to believe, I think Charles Haywood describes it this way, that the regime right now is like a hundred foot tall toddler with a butcher knife. Yeah, that's really dangerous, but all it needs to do is step in a ditch and it basically it's out of commission.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. who that's it the you know the international situation is everybody else is also like everyone else is equally egg shell thin but i also would point heywood is the guy who is making he's like he's gone from shampoo magnate to like you know right-wing genius specifically because he's the guy that has managed to turn a message like create a message out of what i just said which is this was one of the neocons assumptions that turned out not to be true that's like that's his whole that's whole stick. All right. You're right. Yeah, keep going. Yeah. Yeah. The apparatus of the party with its branches and local organizers can, however, allow them to perform a role of information gathering

and coordination, which could be potentially dangerous. Even though their leadership may not take any action, the apparatus can still serve as the framework for anti-coo agitation. Coup agitation, period. Closing administratively, the network of branches should be sufficient to neutralize this particular threat. The only serious threat from this direction will come from the trade union movements affiliated with the mass parties of the left. Their experience of industrial agitation has provided a natural training for mass intervention against the coup, but this will be dealt with separately below. this sounds like that that part sounds like he wrote it in the 60s that doesn't sound like

yeah from the yeah i was gonna put that as well he's like literally talking about longshoreman stevedores and this is that old left you know actually logo daed was of all people pointed out this yesterday that had like most of us been around at that point we would have been hanging out with the longshoremen in the like communist unions just because they were cooler like this is like the early beat dude like the early beat generation, which is kind of like one of my, like, hobby horses. They were around at the tail end. So this is the very tail end of, like, the actual influence of the wobblies and the Democrat Party. And before the unions turned into fronts for the mob, I mean, they kind of already were. But it was before it got decadent when, like, the unions could still deliver actual muscle. All righty. Next section.

Deal with trade unions. Wherever there is a significant degree of industrial development, and in many countries where there is not, trade unions are a major political force. I guess we'll just have a little history here. I mean, my dad was UTT. His stepdad was Teamsters. Oh, really?

All these stories grow up. Oh, that's wild. See, that's an aspect of, that's the aspects of the American experience that fascinates me. Because I mean, I am from, like, as like stale white red wasp family as you can get. And like I like always look up when I meet other people. I'm always amazed. And that is one of the, it's like one of the like lineages of American that I think is super cool.

But like it's so foreign to me. It's amazing. I have stories. I'll tell you privately because if I told them publicly, no one would believe them. Yeah, yeah. The stories that I was told, no one will believe them. But, um, all right.

Because of their experience with industrial agitation, which can be readily applied to political purposes, the response of trade unions to the coup could constitute a serious danger to us. The mass following of trade unions, unlike that of political parties, is in continuous session. Polling booths are only open once every five years, but factories work all year round. the immediacy of the threat presented by trade unions will depend on their size, cohesion, and degree of militancy. The fragmented syndicalism of the United Kingdom with its purely electoral politics would not, for example, add up to the threat of, say, the Italian movement with its centralization and long history of political strikes. So, question, could one of the purposes of moving manufacturing off continent be to, just break up the

power of trade unions? That was certainly a theory that was floated at the time and there were a lot of Jimmy Carter voters that thought that was what was going on. That's totally a thing. Whether or not it happened, I don't know.

This is like, okay, once you get to this point, this is like one of the reasons why I like have to give like a serious conspiracy theories serious conspiracy theorists, like a glass of sweet tea and like sit on a porch with them at the barbecue because I'll sit there and listen to them and I'll be like, yeah, it's true, man, it's true because like almost everything is true to one degree or another. Like, yeah, they were because of that paraburocratic party, the thing we call the deep state where all these federal

agencies in the hive mind in D.C. are working at cross odds and not really ever share. information. I don't know if you know this about federal agencies. They don't do much data sharing. They never have. They still don't. They have not, you know, they don't, like the, you know, state doesn't really talk to DOD, so on and so forth. There's a lot of like par, you know, there's a lot of room for these, you know, groups to maneuver around in. And any of them deciding to get that, you know, we need to get this industrial muscle offshore. That makes kind of sense, because in the 1970s, we were getting very nervous about the, you know, effectiveness in particularly the Zapatista government for us to do something like offload. So we get rid of our communist labor movements and we go down there and we establish free trade movements and get cheap labor. So I have never thought about that, but that lines up perfectly. That's totally what happened.

Yeah. We're going to finish up this chapter and just end it because we won't start chapter five. And plus I got a, I just got a message. I got to go do something. So we have time to finish this up. All right. The experience of Bolivia after its April 1952 revolution, which upended the social order, illustrates how a single trade union and its activities can dominate a country's political life.

Bolivia was the poorest country in all of Latin America with an economy characterized by subsistence farming and the activities of the large tin industry. Before the revolution and the nationalization of the mines, owned by the Patino, Aramayo, and Hochschild family, one of those doesn't seem like the other. The miners had worked in physical and economic conditions of extreme harshness. Following their emancipation,

they naturally wanted to achieve immediate and substantial improvements in these conditions, and Kamabol, the state, pin mining organization started immediate reforms. It was soon discovered, however, that the geological and economic conditions of the industry required an increase in productivity which could only be achieved by introducing much new machinery and reducing the labor force. As the only source of capital was the United States, the miners' leaders opposed to reforms

on the dual plank of no junkie or junkie, green Yankee, capitalism, and, and, and and no redundancies. Such problems are, you got something on that? I love, I love, I just love Latin American politics, like genuinely, like when Bolivia, when Venezuela was threatening to invade that French colony or last year, I got like, I got genuinely romantic for the, you know, the Venezuelan national cause for a minute. They crack me up. I feel like, if like, if like everything goes, I'm, I'm thinking of moving to El Salvador,

where it was like, let's just do it. Just go full banana republic. Well, get down there before it starts getting expensive. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Mexico City is already bad. Such problems are familiar from nearer home, but the crucial difference was that the miners were also an army. They had been armed by the middle class leaders of the revolutionary

Movemento Nationalista Revolutionario Party, MNR, in order to act as a counterweight to the old army dominated by associates of the mine owners. The revolution disbanded the army so that the miners could not only exert political and economic pressures, but also more direct military methods. Until the MNR leadership found a counterweight in the unions organized against the peasant farmers, the Indian campassinos, who were also armed, the miners had things pretty much their way. led by militants of the Katavi Siglo Vente mines. I wonder who owns that.

It's the Vatican Bank eventually. You know, literally all of this is going on. The miners impose the control on Kamabal and therefore on the country, which depends on it as the major source of foreign exchange. Certainly no coup could have held on to power without the minor's consent. and had the central institutions in La Paz been seized the real power base in the mines would still have been under the control of the union leaders. Even without the special circumstances that existed in Bolivia,

trade unions will often be a major political force, especially in terms of the situation immediately following a coup. But much will depend on the particular organizational structure of the trade unions and crucially on the degree of effective centralization and the nature of their political affiliations. In the United Kingdom, with its much weakened trade unions, their main focus of decision-making is the executive of individual unions. But in some of them, it can easily shift to the shop floor. Apart from this fragmentation, which would at least impair the speed of reaction to a coup,

the largely mainstream politics of British labor would not be a suitable framework for direct measures. Yeah, like there's nothing in the – there's all. Also, by those, there's nothing in the UK that can move on, this is the reason why they have so many problems right now. The only entity inside the UK that can move, can mobilize enough people at one time to be politically effective as Muslims. And that's the reason why, like, it's become terror island now. It's because the only, literally the only group that can exert any kind of like coherence is the, like, is the migrant one. So like my, you know, game over. Sorry.

Had a good run. I just alienated a third of the audience. Sorry about that. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely from the outside looking in. Definitely looks that way. Yeah, it's just not good. In France and Italy, the trade union movement is not divided on craft lines as in Britain

or on industrial lines as in the United States. States and much of northern Europe, but on political lines. Individual industrial unions are affiliated with central organizations, which, in turn, are associated with political parties. In both countries, the largest organization was long controlled by the country's Communist Party, with smaller social democratic and Catholic trade union organizations affiliated to the respective parties. The communist labor organization, CGL in Italy and CGT in France, expressed their

militant activism in political and general strikes, but all that ended long ago with the collapse of the respective communist parties. Unless our coup is directly linked to them, the central organizations of French and Italian trade unionism would react to it and do so in unpredictable ways. Immediately after the coup, they would, A, try to establish contact with our Democratic forces to form a popular front opposition. B, contact their national network of branches to coordinated general strike, and C, put into execution their contingency plans for underground activity and illegal survival. The only tactic which would present a threat to us is the general strike, which would be

organized with the deliberate intention of confronting the forces of the coup. Our general measures would affect the overall performance of this emergency program, but specific action would be needed as well in order to avoid the confrontation that the use. unions would probably seek. Both the CGT and the CGL have memories of the wartime resistance movements, both are aware of the destabilizing nature of open repression, and they would therefore try to provoke us into using violence. Now, that's an interesting thing.

That's gone now. That's the, that's the, well, you know, argue, we still see more of it in France. This is the reason why France is by far the most interesting European countries, because they have they still have some their part their political party stuff some backbone and they do still have some like measure of militancy in the in their population and it's a big country and it's spread out there's a lot of reasons but there's but like the francis you know france this is no how there's no way to put it these conditions have receded significant there's nobody in the you've had french resistance guys to mobilize back then you know we don't have that now

Though some form of confrontation may be inevitable, it is essential to avoid bloodshed because this may well have crucial negative repercussions among the personnel of the armed forces and the police. The avoidance of bloodshed intense crowd situations as a matter of technique and competent handling of our incorporated armed and uniform forces will be essential. The incidents of Reggio Emilia in Italy in summer of 1964 in which seven people died following a political strike illustrated how an incompetent police force can impair the authority of the government it is trying to protect. If the trade unions of our target country approximate to Franco-Italian levels of political effectiveness, approximate to Franco-Italian levels of political effectiveness, it will be necessary, assuming that our coup is not politically linked with them, to identify and arrest their leaders and close their headquarters in order to impede the operation of their secondary leadership.

Elsewhere, it will be a matter of orienting our general measures to deal with the particular threats which trade union movements could present. And that is the end of chapter four. Now, chapter five, the chapter, no, well, not really well. I'm in the middle of the only thing I think probably most people are interested in it, probably aware of it. And in the middle of writing some really wonky stuff. It's actually getting psychedelic. I may even talk about the psychedelics a little bit on my blog. So like the blog is alive in case you in case you follow it.

So go check it out. Oh, it's the name of it. It's Ecologica Americana. Yeah. I will link to it like I did the last time. I appreciate it. Not meaning to rush you off or anything, but I do got to. I do got to do it before someone closes.

So thank you, Christopher. I appreciate it. Until the next time. Yeah, no problem. Oh, yeah. Talk to you later. I want to welcome everyone back to part 10 of my reading of kudata by Edward Lutwak. John Fieldhouse is back.

How you doing, John? Doing well. How you doing, sir? Doing good. Took a week off, cleared my head, and, yeah, ready to jump back into this. Got one chapter left, a long chapter. I think I counted it almost 50 pages. So now I'm able to do it in one sitting.

But best to start. getting going on it because I'm sure this is the part everybody has been waiting for the chapter five the execution of the coup yeah before before we get into I was just going to say look wax organization of his chapters doesn't necessarily make the most sense because the strategy and preparation chapters obviously overlap and a bunch of the execution stuff he's already talked about but this is short for him anyways this is a chapter all right All right. Chapter 5, the execution of the coup d'etat. A couple quotes. As soon as the moral power of normal, as soon as the moral power of national representation was destroyed, a legislative body,

whatever it may be, meant no more to the military than a crowd of 500 men, less vigorous and disciplined than a battalion of the same number. Madame de Stahl, referring to Napoleon's coup d'etat. I came in a tank, and only a tank will evict me. Abu Zaire, Yaha. Is that, do you know how to pronounce that? Yaha? I think it's pronounced Yaya, which is Arabic for John.

Okay. Abu Zahir, Yaya, Iraqi, Iraqi, Iraqi Prime Minister, 1968. All right. Start with the text. The active phase of a coup is like a military operation, only more so. If the general principle of tactics is the application of force at the right place, the coup achieves this with surgical precision by striking at the organizational

heart of the whole state. If speed is very often important in military operations, in the coup it is an essential requirement. But the coup differs from most military operations in one crucial respect. While in war, it is often advantageous to retain some forces as reserves to be used in later, and possibly more critical phases of the fighting, in a coup the principle of total commitment applies. The active stage takes place in one short period of time, and forces held back today will be useless tomorrow. All our forces must be used in our single decisive engagement. The fact that the coup has practically no time to mention means that we will not be able to correct significant errors made during its execution. In war, tactics can be changed. Weapons can be

replaced, plans reshaped, and soldiers retrained on the basis of combat experience. In the coup, however, there will be no sufficient time for any feedback mechanism to work. In this, the coup is similar to the most modern form of warfare, the strategic missile strike, and the time factor places that entire burden of decision-making in the planning stage. Every target must be studied in detail before the coup. The team assigned to seize it must match it in terms of size and composition, its every move must be planned in advance, and no tactical flexibility can be allowed. With this degree of detail planning, there will be no need for any

sort of headquarters structure in the active stage of the coup. If there is no scope for decision-making, there is no need for decision-makers and their apparatus. In fact, having a headquarters would be a serious disadvantage. It would constitute a concrete target for the opposition, one that would be both vulnerable and easily identified. As soon as the coups starts, the ruling group will know that something is happening. But unless coups are very frequent in the country, they will not know what that something is. It could be a mutiny, an insurrection, the opening of a guerrilla war, or even the beginning of an invasion by a foreign power. Yeah, on that, go ahead.

Go ahead, please. Yeah, so the big thing he's talking about not much need for headquarters, obviously you're going to have somebody in charge at some level with subordinates in charge, you know, in radios and whatnot to coordinate them. But a lot of what goes into a headquarters that you don't see unless you're in one is battle tracking and management type stuff. And like the American military is seen as one of the worst for just growing and growing its headquarters to involve more managerial functions there to the point that it forces every army that interacts with them to basically grow their staffs to the detriment of the rest of their forces.

And so this chapter so far is, in a lot of ways, it's a lot more important than even it sounds at first glance, because it really shows how, hypothetically, an American-style army is completely unfit for this kind of an action. All right. All these forms of conflict represent threats to the regime, but they are all different in terms of their immediate significance and more important,

in terms of the measures required to meet them. We should avoid taking any action that will clarify the nature of the threat and thus reduce the confusion that is left in the defensive apparatus of the regime. Our teams will emerge from their bases and proceed to seize the designated targets while operating as independent units. Their collective purpose and their coordination will remain unknown until it is too late for any effective opposition. The leaders of the coup will be scattered among the various teams,

each joining the team whose ultimate target requires his presence. Thus, the spokesman for the coup will be with the teams that will seize the radio, television stations, and the prospective chief of police will be with the team whose target is the police headquarters. As each team will be both small and highly mobile, and as there will be no functioning headquarters throughout the active phase of the coup, the opposition will not have any single target on which to concentrate its forces. In this way, their numerical superiority will be disdiscuous. and the smaller forces of the coup will have local superiority in the area of each particular target.

This will be key to the victory of the coup. Yeah, so the big takeaway here is having a headquarters, having any kind of an organization works both ways, and anything that you have that is there in order to provide, you know, very rigid, regimented command and control, something that's also a target for the enemy to destroy, no matter who that in. is. And along with he says, it's important that you allow the enemy to continue to be confused until you actually take power. It's, so his rule is all wars based on the deception. Don't let the other guy know what you're doing until you've done it. Okay. All right, new heading on the eve. In chapters two and three of this book, we surveyed the planning of the coup in terms of

neutralization of the professional defenses of the state and the selection of those targets that would assist the neutralization of the political forces. We analyzed the structure of the armed forces and of other means of coercion, and we saw that much of the armed forces, a significant part of the police system and some of the security services could not intervene, either for or against us, in the event of a coup. This was due to their remote location, dispersed deployment, or because their training and equipment was inadequate, unsuitable, and over-specialized. Then we infiltrated the relatively small part of the apparatus that did have an intervention capability so that much of it was technically neutralized and some of it totally subverted. This will ensure for us the neutrality of much of the

defenses of the state and the active cooperation of some of its parts. The infiltration of the army and police has given us an instrument, the units that we have incorporated and that forms the forces of the coup. Additionally, we have prepared for the utilization of this instrument by selecting the targets on which it will be used. We have identified the physical targets that must be seized and those that will have to be sabotaged or otherwise interdicted, and we have selected the leading personalities among the potential opposition, both in and out of the government, and prepared for their arrest. But one major task has not been covered in the planning stage. The forcible isolation of the hardcore loyalist forces.

Hopefully the strength of those forces we have been unable to infiltrate, assuming they have an intervention capability, will not be very great. But even if they are weak in absolute terms, we dare not ignore them. To do so would be to invalidate all the measures we have taken to insulate the capital city and ourselves from the intervention of hostile forces.

The extreme instability of the balance of forces during the active phase of the coup means that what in other circumstances would only be a minor threat could then have disastrous consequences. If the hardcore loyalist forces are large in relation to our own, we will indeed have to divert a considerable amount of our forces to their isolation. Though we have been unable to penetrate these hardcore loyalist forces, two things will probably have to be achieved. One, their number, quality, and location will be known to us.

And two, our general measures of neutralization will have reduced their overall effectiveness. Their fighting capability will not have been eroded, but as table 5-1 illustrates, their intervention against us will be delayed and disrupted. Table 1 is the mechanics of intervention of the loyalist forces. Some of this, I believe some of this was covered in chapter 2 and 3, if I'm not mistaken, right? Yeah, most of his charts, it's just, it doesn't make sense to read them out aloud in a format like that. But, and again, it's imperfect, but he's a lot of these, the chess game, the move and counter move of things that you'll have to deal with. And again, since we're talking about one internal military, loyalist generally means any person you haven't infiltrated. So that's the big issue.

It's like all the techniques we've used in the past to neutralize forces don't work because we weren't able to get. in the position to neutralize them. All right. Reading on. Our purpose is not to destroy the loyalist forces militarily. We can deal with their cadres administratively after the coup, but merely to immobilize them for a few crucial hours. The tactics that will be used must be exclusively defensive, a ring of blocking positions

around each concentration of loyalist forces, or, if this is not possible, a similar ring around the capital city. Thus, though we will be on the strategic offensive, in the sense that we are the ones who want to change the situation in general, we will also be on the tactical defensive, and this will give us important technical and psychological advantages. By using defended roadblocks to isolate the loyalist forces, we will put the onus of initiating any fighting on them. Our forces will be content to wait, and it will be the loyalist forces that will try to pass through. Should a column of loyalist forces arrive at the roadblock,

their leaders will be faced by opposition numbers wearing the same uniform and belonging to the same armed force, perhaps even to the same regiment. Both sides will state that they are obeying orders, but interestingly enough, the orders of the leaders of our forces will probably appear more legitimate than those of the leaders of the loyalist troops. Owing to our arrests and our interdiction, of the physical facilities, the legitimate orders will probably have taken an unusual form.

The source of the orders to the Loyalist troops will probably be somebody other than the appropriate superior in the hierarchy. The method used to convey them will probably be an unusual emergency one, and the actual orders will likely be indistinguishable in form from ones that might have been issued by the planners of a coup. There's a lot here, too, that's really intelligent. But as he said, if part of our goal of infiltration is taking charge of whoever issues the orders in whatever the official procedural way is to these different units, if we can take possession of that, take control of that office, you know, they're not going to have anything that looks like a proper word or where the guys actually attempting the coup will have those. And as he said, it's going to be people exercising initiative on their own to stop the coup. And depending where you are, lots of armies don't exactly work around or develop initiative intentionally in their leadership.

You know, there's a reason why coups frequently work, you know, so smoothly in the third world. Whereas when it was attempted in the Third Reich, the SS was able to break it in a few hours, partly because they were trained for initiative. and things like that. And to his other point about using roadblocks to block loyalist forces, the easiest way to have a roadblock in place is to make it not look like a roadblock. Everybody understands what construction is. Most people want to avoid construction. So there are lots of ways to control an intersection without making it look like you're intentionally controlling an intersection. And if you can delay troops for those, you know, a couple crucial hours, it has the same effect either way.

Thus, the officers of the Loyalist forces may have received orders stating, move into the city center, hold the parliament building and the radio station. The leadership may have added that they would be acting against the forces of a coup, but even so, such orders would have insurrectional undertones. When army officers find themselves doing unusual things, their natural reaction is to try and fit them into familiar patterns. The most familiar pattern of all will be to arrive at the coup. conclusion that the politicians are guilty of yet another mess. The most probable course of action

will be to request clarification from their superior officers. It is to be hoped that these officers will have decided to remain neutral or else have been arrested. In either case, the clarification will never arrive. If on the other hand, the loyalist units decide to force the roadblock, we will benefit from the tactical advantages of the defensive. These include the opportunity of choosing the place, natural obstructions such as bridges and tunnels, and the opportunity of deploying and camouflaging weapons and men. In order to make the fullest use of both the psychological and the tactical advantages, the blocking position should have a dual structure, a largely symbolic, first line composed of some suitable physical obstacle, such as cross-parked

heavy vehicles, with a few men bearing orders to forbid all passage. Beyond this, there will be a second military line, much stronger numerically, with weapons and men deployed to repel an eventual assault. The operational detail involved is discussed in Appendix B. The idea is not to ambush the loyalist to inflict maximum damage. On the contrary, the defenders of the blocking position should inform the incoming loyalist forces that there is such a second line of defense in order to deter them. Because the strength of a camouflaged force is hard to assess, it can serve as a deter turn, even if it is numerically weak as compared to the opposition. It's got to be restressed so many times that the goal was not to fight people from your

own country. The goal is to get their compliance for those few hours without hurting anybody. The situation at each blocking station will require delicate handling, and it will be necessary that the soldiers on our side understand that their primary function is to avoid combat rather than to engage in it successfully. In concrete terms, their mission will be a delaying operation rather than a decisive one. And this will have precise implications in terms of the weapons and tactics to be employed. Is that, so it seems like if you would have, if there would be infliction of violence upon fellow citizens, if you're, if you're teaming up, if you're conspiring with the forces that may be outside, outside the country, like, even, like, say, a

PMC, that they would probably be ones that you would have to worry about inflicting violence upon your fellow people. You'd have to have a talk with them first, right? Yeah. Yeah. And again, that's part of the issue we talked about in the planning stages. is it's you're engaged in a legal action. So it's really hard to prepare and to do the necessary training beforehand like you would for any other military operation. But we want to attempt to do that to the degree we could. So yeah, outside forces.

Yeah. And again, outside forces carry the obvious risk that everybody around to include random civilians knows, hey, that's not our country there. So it looks like an invasion. So it has, you know, lots of issues. If you do, you get to use them. which is why like when the Soviets deposed the communist regime in Afghanistan before invading, they had Spesnos troops, mostly, most of whom were ethnic, Central Asians, you know, Tajiks and Uzbeks and whatnot,

wearing the local uniform so that they didn't look like a foreign country. Hypothetically, something like that, generally the kind of troops that you would send in that situation are probably going to be better trained, better disciplined. But again, the coordination is always an issue. If you don't coordinate, that's how you get fractured in the battlefield. That's how you get fractured side in something like this. Okay. New heading.

Timing, sequence, and security. Ideally, the timing of the coup will be completely flexible so that we can take advantage of any favorable circumstances that may arise, the temporary absence of the leadership from the capital city, for instance, or the outbreak of some coincidental civil disorders. This flexibility, which would be highly desirable, is only rarely possible, however, because the infiltration of the army and police will be a dynamically unstable process. The circle of those who have decided to join us will grow and continue growing as a bandwagon as a bandwagon effect is generated.

But unless the coup materializes, there will eventually be a movement into neutrality or even opposition. Notice that Biden decided to quote, he decided, quote, to cancel his presidential campaign, What was it during a weekend when most of his primary staff was out and then, you know, loyalists in the DNC were around in order to make the decision for him? So it wasn't necessarily a real coup in the proper sense. But man, it looks an awful lot like the one. Meanwhile, the danger of denunciation will also increase as more and more people become aware that a coup is being planned or at any rate that something is up. The timing of the coup will therefore be dictated by the,

progress of our infiltration of the armed forces and police. As soon as a satisfactory degree of penetration is achieved, the coup must be executed. This implies that it will not be possible to designate a date while in advance of the coup that can be communicated to the various teams. This is just as well because it means that the date cannot be leaked to the security agencies. Actually, it is quite likely that some information about us will have reached to security agencies, but this should not affect the outcome. As the preparations for the queue proceed, more and more truthful information about our actions

will be in circulation, but it will be increasingly obscured by noise. Another operational sequence and timing flow chart that there's no way I could possibly describe. It looks like a business process flow chart. So yeah. Every move we make will generate information that could equally read,

to security agencies, eventually reach to security agencies, but the consequences and misinterpretations of our actions will generate an equal or greater amount of noise. This will make it increasingly difficult for the analysts of the security agencies to identify the nature of the threat because their capacity for processing information is not unlimited. This process is illustrated in figure 5, too, in which O to Z is the normal level of noise received at all times. O to A, or is that zero at A? Is the processing capability?

What do you think? I don't know. Yeah. Received it all times. I'm going to say zero. Zero to A is the processing capacity of the analysts at the security agencies. And X is the point beyond which the total flow of data exceeds processing capacity so that Each item of real data is accorded a diminishing amount of attention.

And then we have a graph that people can, they buy the book, they can, and they listen along, check it out for themselves. Yeah, bottom line is anytime you communicate at any level, from the perspective, the enemy, the guys listen again at intercepting intelligence, you know, the question is you have hard information, then you have the noise that's surrounding it, you know, which may or may not be true, which is, you know, rumors and everything else. It's, like, the best example of that would be, like, pre-9-11, when, you know, multiple agencies, the FBI and CIA knew about the guys training at, training to become airline pilots who didn't want to land, which is an important data point. Unfortunately,

it's drowned out with every other, you know, possible threat, you know, a lot of them domestic, or at least allegedly domestic threats that they're more focused on. So that's always the issue, right? Intelligence has a limited ability to predict what's happening based upon what they've intercepted because they're just going through so much shit. Even if the security agencies could isolate the real data from the noise, they will not usually take immediate action.

Their professional instinct will be to try to uncover all the ramifications of the plot so as to be able to arrest all its. participants. And it may be hoped that the coup will be executed while the security agencies are still engaged in their investigations. But their people will be aware of this timing problem and therefore are quite likely to respond to a possible threat by going ahead to arrest those of the planners of the coup that they have identified. This nervousness presents a special problem on the eve of the coup. Our final preparations will probably generate a sharp increase in the total flow of signals received by the security agencies.

Even without separating them from noise, the mere increase in the total flow of information could be interpreted as a danger signal, as it certainly would be by competent analysts, and this might trigger the arrests. In practice, that... Yeah, I was going to say that's always the issue, and it's one of those things in hindsight.

It's always 2020 that you had a huge spike in noise before a major event. I know people doing open source intelligence analysis, all of them said that they had so much increased activity, like right before the October attacks in Israel. But knowing that something was going to happen is not the same thing as knowing what was going to happen when and where. So that's always the game of cat and mouse between the two sides. In practice, it will rarely be possible to achieve total security within all the forces of the coup. And we should assume as a working hypothesis that they

have, in fact, been infiltrated by the security agency. This leads to the general defensive procedures discussed in Chapter 3, but it will also have precise operational implications. A, each team will be told well in advance what equipment and tactics will be required to seize this particular target, but not the exact designation of the target. B, each team will only be told this designated target when it actually receives the signal to proceed to its seizure. C, each team will be alerted individually, with only as much advanced warning as it requires to prepare for a particular task, instead of a general go signal for all teams.

Because the teams will have different starting points and different targets to go to, the use of any one general signal would either give insufficient warning to some teams or an unnecessarily long one to others. The longer the time between the announcement that the coup is on and its actual execution, the greater likelihood that information will reach to security agencies in time to prevent the successful execution of the coup, because this will be the moment at which their operatives in our ranks could send out warnings. The most important takeaway from this is operational security is important to everything. And the biggest reason why you limit knowledge on a battlefield based a need to know is nobody can torture you for information you don't have. That makes sense. The problem of warning time and lead time is illustrated in figure 5.53.

If we give all our teams a 10-hour warning period by sending out a general call at hour 10, then team number one will just about reach this target in time. but all the other teams will have received excess warning. In other words, information that will have been distributed before it was essential to do so. If we give all the teams a two-hour warning period, then excess warning will be zero, but team number five will reach its target several hours before team number one, and those defending it will probably be on a full alert. The solution appears to be a simple one. Make warning time equal to lead time so that each team is alerted just in time to allow it

to reach its target by the zero hour. This is probably the most important, most important specific requirement in a hypothetical coup. In reality, the problem is more complex. It is not a matter of simultaneous arrival at the target, but rather the simultaneous penetration of the early warning system

maintained by the security agencies of the state. If, for example, team number two has to cross the entire capital city to reach its target, the security agency will probably be alerted, as soon as it enters a city at, say, hour two. Thus, by the time team number four reached its target, the opposition would have had two hours to prepare for its defense. We may have had very little information on the functioning of the security apparatus, but we can operate on the assumption that a team, if it is large and or equivalent armor, will be noticed and reported

as soon as it enters the capital city. We must therefore ensure A. The protection of our security position against an internal threat, which is achieved by minimizing excess warning time, and B, the protection of our security position against external observation, which is achieved by simultaneous penetration of the capital city area. Both aims will be achieved by sending the teams into action at a time corresponding to their lead times to the capital city boundary or other applicable perimeter. This is illustrated in figure 5'4. This is illustrated in figure 5.4. whole issue with lead times does become one of the most challenging thing because as he said hypothetically or he said specifically you don't want to have a headquarters unfortunately adapting and then issuing issues issuing orders based upon the appropriate lead time is exactly the kind of thing that you need a headquarters to do so it becomes sort of a command and controlled challenge that i don't think he really solved but i think he explains you know absolutely perfectly

heading into action. The actual execution of the coup will require many different qualities. Skillful off-the-cuff-cuff diplomacy at a blocking station confronted by loyalist forces, instant personnel management at radio and television stations to persuade their technical staff to cooperate with us, and considerable tactical abilities in the case of targets that are heavily defended. Our resources will probably be too limited to form fully specialized teams out of the pool of those units and individuals that we have incorporated, but we should nevertheless match broad categories of targets with appropriate teams. We can distinguish between three such categories of targets and their corresponding teams. New heading, A targets. These are the more

heavily protected facilities with armed guards and strict access pass control, such as the Royal or Presidential Palace, the Central Police Station, and the Army HQ. In times of crisis, of course, such facilities may be provided with full-fledged military defenses, and in many countries, the crisis is permanent. Partly in order to minimize bloodshed, which could have a destabilizing effect on the situation, and partly in order to reduce the total manpower required, these targets will have to be seized by sophisticated teams using various blends of infiltration, diversion, and assault. Yeah, so obviously something like the Pentagon is not really feasible. right you would probably need at least a battalion to take it and the fact that we have such a weird patchwork system for law enforcement makes it even harder the sake of comparison iraq during the occupation the mody building and the m oi building mody's mystery defense it's the regular military m oi's police and john der marie and whatnot each of those probably had at least a company worth of troops there but on top of that all the military and police personnel and both those buildings carry their sidearm

So, again, it worked both ways where it basically was impossible to storm the building without major bloodshed, since literally every person there was armed with a weapon that they could steer it theoretically use. At the same time, every so often, you know, there would be a disturbance and something loud that sounded like a gunshot would go off. And people would start shooting each other in the halls of the Iraqi Pentagon or Iraqi National Police headquarters, which this isn't so much relevant to this discussion is an explanation of what this looks like in real life. Though it will usually be necessary to prepare for a fairly extensive military operation and a complex one as well, unless we have great numerical superiority in the area of the target, this should not result in much actual combat. When those who guard the target in question are confronted by our extensive preparations, they are unlikely to put up much serious resistance. the fact that our general measures of neutralization have cut off or impeded their contacts with the leadership,

the fact that the clear patriotic issues of international warfare will be missing in an internal conflict, and the fact that we will make every effort to allow them to give in gracefully by simply leaving or giving up their weapons, we will all militate against a prolonged defense. That's part of why a lot of these fairly soft targets you want to arrive with overwhelming force. it's not to defeat everybody. Well, it is to defeat it, but not to do it by fighting. The goal is to make it so that they understand that there is no benefit to fighting so that they comply or surrender quickly. If we are fortunate enough to have incorporated a very large number of troops,

and especially if they're equipped with impressive weapons such as armored vehicles, it will be still less likely that the actual combat will take place. These targets will nevertheless indirectly present us with a very serious problem, though it is political rather than military. The formation of the large teams required by these targets will raise a delicate issue of the coup within the coup danger. During the active phase of the coup, the situation will be confused and extremely unstable. While the other teams will be too small to tempt their leader into trying to usurp our control, the operational leaders of the A teams may well succumb to temptation.

The man who leads to tanks that have just seized the presidential palace may easily pursue, swayed himself that he can also seize power on his own behalf, and if the A-team is sufficiently powerful, he may do just that. Our satisfaction at having carried out a coup successfully would be an insufficient reward for all our efforts unless we also retain power afterwards. It will be necessary, then, to adopt measures to prevent the leaders of these large teams from challenging our position. This can sometimes be done by forming the A-teams from many small subunits under the overall command of an inner member of our own group. Go ahead.

No, I was just going to say that's the biggest challenge here is you can perform the coup successfully and who and having somebody who didn't intend to take over, take over. And very often that is the issue, like in Latin America, when you have a junta, theoretically, this council of officers in charge. But councils don't really rule very well, especially councils of military leader. So somebody's going to be in charge, even if they delegate all their authority and who's that going to be? And as far as I can tell from the histories of coups and process, a lot of times it seems to be a roll of the dice that we're going to figure out after things happen. Where this is not possible, the A teams will have to be dispersed into smaller groups assigned to secondary targets as soon as they have fulfilled their primary mission.

Thus, the possible threat presented by the A teams will be deflected by applying the energies of their leaders to other teams. tasks. The operational commanders of the eight teams will probably need a certain amount of time to readjust to the fact that they are no longer isolated individuals engaged on a dangerous endeavor and to start thinking in more ambitious terms. Matters should be arranged so that they are deprived of their large and unified teams before the transition is made in their minds. And again, this gets back to the issue that he talks about. We're going to we're going to simplify the planning to what is absolutely necessary outside the core inner circle nobody's going to know about the whole plan or the plan as a whole and once you actually do the initial coup is when it

suddenly becomes apparent and as he said everybody's going to become ambitious in that way in that look time and that's not necessarily a bad thing because ambitious people doing things on on behalf of a collective is you know how every polity in the history of the world has functioned but the issue of comes to that point, how do you integrate them on behalf of what you as the coup plotter see as proper since, again, you've deposed whatever the established legal authority was. So doing that a second time becomes much easier. Be targets. These are the technical facilities that will not usually be heavily guarded, and which in any case, we want to neutralize rather than seize, among them any central telecommunications facility and radio television stations.

Each of those targets will be assigned to a small team whose personnel will include a technician whose presence should help to minimize the amount of physical damage resulting from sabotage. It is possible to interdict these targets by minor and external sabotage. The B team may consist of just one or two technically competent operators, even if the actual building has to be entered for a short time, the B team will still be a small one. In this case, however, it should be overt and consist of uniformed soldiers or police. The most important thing he says here, technical facilities, it's things like radio, telecommunications. It could be things like, you know, power stations and whatnot. The most important thing is you want control of that, but you don't

want to blow it up because you've got to fix the thing afterwards. And as he said, the goal is to minimize the size of the team. So we know we need the technicians. And we're order to take control of it and make sure things aren't being damaged and, you know, as much security as they need in order to make that happen and not much more, because the bigger you have, the easier it is to intercept it. C targets. These are the individuals we wish to hold in isolation for the duration of the coup. In the case of the main leader leaders of the government, the arrest will be subsumed in the seizure of the presidential palace and similar A targets. The other C targets should not present a penetration problem, but they will present an evasion problem.

A radio station or a royal palace can be very difficult targets to seize, but at least they cannot escape or conceal their identity. The personalities whom we wish to arrest will try to do both. It will therefore be essential to devote our early attentions to these targets to ensure that they are seized before they can evade our teams. This will usually imply that the sea teams will go into operation marginally earlier than the other teams, and they can do so without breaking the rules of simultaneous penetration of the early warning system because they should be sufficiently small and dispersed to act covertly. And again, and he'll repeat this.

The goal is to take those people, whoever, you know, potential key leaders outside of just the presidential or royal administration out of action. The goal is not to hurt them, at least not at this stage. The goal is not to kill them. The goal is to take them out of action where they can't communicate with their organizations. They can't work against us. And in a very effective coup, a lot of times you take them into something that looks a lot like protective custody, with them and their families are taken care of, or suddenly it becomes

really agitacious to cooperate with the people who have you as a prisoner. Because of those targets are human, they will be inherently more problematic than some of our other objectives. The individual is concerned, apart from escaping or concealing their identity, could also try to subvert the very team sent to arrest them. In the case of particularly charismatic figures, our teams will have to be formed from especially selected personnel. In some cases, they may even be necessary to include an inner member of our group. These C-teams will be small, since their task will be a matter of entering a private residence and overpowering one or two guards. The exact size of

each team will depend on the overall balance of resources and requirements under which we operate, but will rarely exceed a dozen men or so. So a good example of when this wasn't done properly is like we talked about the preface to the revised version of there will be war by Jerry Pornel. He talks about that tank battalion that goes to take Yeltsin into captivity where the commander goes in, talks to him an hour later, comes out, and he's on his side, and he turns the tank around. So, as he said, you know, a charismatic person who has some kind of moral and legal authority can be the guy who undo does a coup just by convincing the soldiers who come to arrest them, not to arrest them. Once the individuals that form this group of targets have been arrested, we will have to ensure that they are kept under a secure form of control. Our purpose in arresting them is to prevent them from using their command authority and or personal charisma against us, and this can only be achieved if we can insulate them from the public for the whole duration.

of the coup. Such individuals are often the only casualties of otherwise bloodless coups, because it is often easier to eliminate them rather than to keep them as captives. If we do keep them, the ad hoc person used must be both secret and internally secure. The liberation of a popular public figure could be a powerful focus of the counter-cue actions on the part of the opposition, so secrecy will be a more reliable defense than any physical barrier. While the teams that are on their way to the respective targets, our other allies, while the teams are on their way to their prospective targets, our other allies will also come into action. The individuals we have subverted in various parts of the armed forces and bureaucracy will carry out their limited missions of

technical neutralization. And the groups assigned to the blocking positions will be moving to take up their planned locations designed to isolate the loyalist forces. In the case of those dispersed individuals whose contribution will be extremely important, though almost totally invisible, there will be a signaling problem, since they are scattered throughout the sensitive parts of the state apparatus. It will be difficult to reach them individually. Furthermore, they may include informants of the security agencies because, unlike the personnel of the various teams and blocking forces, they have been recruited as isolated individuals. Hence, the mutual surveillance exercised on our behalf and the teams will not operate. It would be dangerous to give them advance warning of the coup,

and their signals to go into action will have to be our first broadcast on the radio television station, except in particular cases where the facility to be neutralized requires early attention. Our operational control over the various groups cooperating with us will aim at achieving two objectives, A, as always, maximum speed in the execution of the tasks, and B, the use of the absolute minimum of force. This will be important not only because of the psychological and political factor, as mentioned previous, but also for a more direct technical reason, the external uniformity between the two sides of the conflict. Our teams will, of course, be nationals of the country in which the coup is being staged, and most of them will be soldiers and police officers wearing the same

uniforms as those of the opposition. The uniformity will give us a measure of protection, since the loyalist forces will not readily know who is loyal and who is not. Usually it would be a mistake to prejudice the protective cover by adopting distinctive armbands or other conventional labels, since we will need all the protection we can get. Thus, as the teams move around the capital city, probably at night, they will probably not be fired upon unless they open fire first. To do so, however, would be to facilitate the work of the opposition, since this will be their only way of distinguishing between their own forces and ourselves. And since our teams have always been kept separate, initially to prevent the penetration

of the security agencies and now to protect our own position within the forces of the coup, there will be a danger of conflict between our teams. The confusion we generate in the minds of the opposition could, therefore, exact a price and confusion with our own ranks. This may... No, I say fractureside is always the issue. even in conventional war with the best trained troops, you know, mistaking one thing for another thing and shooting your own guys is a problem in a case where everybody's wearing the same

uniforms, that's even more of a problem. And the fact that we're in a situation where firing our weapons, our goal is generally bad. We want to accomplish things without actually having to fire our weapons. So these are all concerns. Okay. This may have serious consequences unless our forces respect the rule of a minimal and purely defensive use of force. I'm going to end it right there for today.

I have a hard out. Anything you want to wrap up on this? No. Like you said, the goal is to avoid fighting. You have weapons basically to force compliance, and hopefully that works without having to shoot people. Awesome. Awesome.

Thank you. And I hope you'll come back and finish this with me because you, you got me into this. So you're going to get me out of this. Yeah, I'm sorry. All right, John. Thank you very much. Yes, sir.

Welcome everyone back to the finale, part 11 of Kuday Ta by Edward Lutvach, and John Fieldhouse is here to finish it up with me. How you doing, John? Doing well. I think we're both ready to get this damn thing over with. Yep. Let's kill this and move on. All right.

Just going to start reading. Let's go. Heading, the immediate post-cue situation. Once our targets have been seized, the loyalist forces have been isolated, and the rest of the bureaucracy and armed forces have been neutralized, the active and more mechanical phase of the coup will be over. But everything will still be in the balance. The old regime will have been deprived of its control over the critical parts of the mechanism of the state, but we ourselves will not yet be in control of it, except in a purely physical sense, and then only in the area of the capital city.

If we can retain our control over what we have seized, those political forces whose primary requirement is the preservation of law and order will probably give us their allegiance. Our objective, therefore, is to freeze the situation so that this process can take place, until the actual execution of the coup, our aim was to destabilize the situation. Afterward, however, all our efforts should be directed at stabilizing, or rather restabilizing it. We will be doing this at three different levels. A, among our own forces, where our aim is to prevent our military or police allies from usurping our leadership. B, within the state bureaucracy whose allegiance and cooperation we wish to secure,

and C, with the public at large, whose acceptance we want to gain. In each case, we will be using our leverage within one level in order to control the next one, but each level will also require separate and particular measures. Yeah, about that, there's, I would say, two things. Number one, traditional military operations, we always say the most dangerous part when you're conducting a direct attack on an objective is right after you seized it. Because at that point, the adrenaline's down, you start having physical fatigue set in, but you haven't fully consolidated the target, so it's really easy for somebody else to come along

and attack you and drive you off the objective at that point. The second one is, I've heard it described, anytime you're having a takeover of authority, the best analogy is probably the call of a while the chapters where Buck takes over leadership of the pack. So in the beginning, he is outrightly attacking authority. He's instigating insurrection. He's trying to create discontent. But once he's an authority, he has to crush all that, preferably with soft power. But you are now the authority, so you have to act as an authority.

A, among our own forces where our aim is to prevent our military or police allies from usurping our leadership. From your reading of history and studying some coups, how often does that happen? Keep in mind, coups can be hard to really analyze because most effective coups, you destroy the documents afterwards. So the lead-up is, it tends to be conjecture and it tends to be materials you have from The evidence remaining tends to be from Western journalists who not only are their biased, they're also oblivious anything that happens in the real world. But that tends to be fairly common, right? Because essentially you're having a coalition of people who are cooperating to achieve their objective. And every member of that coalition has their own idea of what should happen afterwards.

So I'd say basically every coup is something like that. The question is who wins? New heading. stabilizing our own forces. During the planning stage, our recruits in the armed forces will be fully conscious of the fact that the success of the coup and their own safety depends on the work of coordination that we perform. Immediately after the coup, however, the only manifestation of all our efforts will be the direct force that they themselves control. In these circumstances, they may well be tempted into trying a coup of their own, and they could do this by establishing

in contact with the other military leaders we have recruited so as to secure their agreement to our exclusion from their leadership. Apart from the dispersal countermeasures discussed earlier, our only effective defense will be to retain full control over all horizontal communications, or, in other words, to remain the only contact between each military leader we have recruited and his colleagues. This can sometimes be done technically by keeping under our control the actual communication equipment linking the various units, but this would only be effective in unusually extensive capital cities and would, in any case, break down after a relatively short period of time. Typically, we will need somewhat more subtle political and psychological methods to keep the

various military leaders we have recruited while separated from each other. This may involve promises of accelerated promotions to selected younger officers who could not otherwise expect very rapid advancement, even within the limited context of those who have participated in the coup. It will also be useful to remind our military and police allies that their colleagues outside the conspiracy may try to displace them and block unless they and we form a tight and mutually supportive group. In general, we should ensure that all those who could pose an internal threat are kept occupied on tasks which, whether essential or not, will at least absorb their energies and that there are divisive factors operating between them.

As soon as we begin to receive the allegiance of military and bureaucratic leaders who were previously outside the conspiracy, our leverage with our military and police recruits will increase very substantially. The problem of retaining control against such internal threats will, therefore, be largely short term. As soon as our position has been establish our best policy may be to dispose of our dangerous allies by using all the usual methods available for that purpose, diplomatic posting abroad, nominal and or remote command positions, and promotions to less vital parts for the state apparatus. Because it is possible that an embryonic coup within our coup has existed within our forces

from the very beginning, the general security measures we designed to protect ourselves against the penetration of the security agencies will also serve a use. useful supplementary function. They will prevent the lateral spread of the conspiracy. If our internal security procedures are sufficiently good to prevent all contact between the separate cells, so that any infiltration by the security agencies is contained, they will also prevent the coordination of this inner opposition. It has been calculated that in a defensive military situation, even if only 20% of the troops of a unit are actively loyal, the units concerned should operate successfully and perform their assigned function.

There's a couple things that are really important here. The first off, he talks about the need to effectively control lateral communication amongst your coalition immediately afterwards, which that's something I wouldn't have thought of, and that's a very great point because it makes, basically you're trying to prevent your allies from coordinating around you. The downside of that, the difficult part of that, And again, the counterproductive part of that is effective militaries have huge amounts of lateral communication, horizontal communications.

Very often they will have more communications horizontally than vertically because junior leaders are trained and empowered. I know empowered's a stupid word, but we can say empowered to exercise initiative in order to achieve their objectives, which means that by eliminating horizontal communications, no matter how temporarily, keep in mind, we are also. harming our own combat effectiveness. So it's something we need to be very concerned with, and it's part of why he emphasizes the need to consolidate power and move on, because we don't want to hang out in that situation for very long. Another thing, he talks about ways you would eliminate either allies who could become a risk or other people in the power structure who become a risk afterwards, and there's a tendency to immediately think, well, we're going to have a purging and we're going to kill them all. And not just morally,

creates huge problems with your legal structure because it basically undermines any faith in your legal structure. And it definitely harms, you know, the whole, you know, collective cooperation at that point. So one of the most effective ways to purge people, effectively purge people from an organization after something like that, is to promote them and retire them and maneuver them in a situation where they can't do things. you know, most militaries have academic posts either at the military academy or higher command schools or sometimes even teaching at various level universities where you put military historians at the end of the career. All of those are great ways where you can promote somebody, you know, give them a nice cushy assignment into retirement, but while, you know, effectively purging them from the organization.

So creativity matters and the big takeaway from Machiavalli's The Prince is, you know, Sometimes you have to behave altruistically in order to, you know, get what you want from a power politics standpoint. Stabilizing the bureaucracy. Our attitudes toward the second level, the armed forces and bureaucracy, which were not infiltrated before the coup, will depend partly on the degree of control that we have over our own incorporated forces. Assuming that we have a reasonably firm hold over them, we should not try to extract any early commitment from the majority of soldiers and bureaucrats who, first information of our existence will be the coup itself. Not knowing the extent of the conspiracy, their principal preoccupation will be the possible danger of those of their positions in the hierarchy.

If most of the officers of the armed forces or the officials of a ministry have joined the coup, those who have not are hardly likely to be rewarded subsequently by rapid promotion. If the soldiers and bureaucrats realized that the group participating in the coup was, in reality, quite small, they would also realize the strength of their own position. The fact is that they are collectively indispensable to any government, including the one to be formed after the coup. In the period immediately after the coup, however, they will probably see themselves as isolated individuals whose careers and even lives could be in danger. This feeling of insecurity may precipitate two alternative reactions, both extreme. They will either step forward to assert their loyalty to the leaders of the coup,

or else they will try to foment or join in opposition against us. Both reactions are undesirable from our point of view. Assertions of loyalty will usually be worthless because they are made by men who have just abandoned their previous and possibly more legitimate masters. Opposition will always be dangerous and sometimes disastrous. Our policy toward the military and bureaucratic cadres will be to reduce this sense of insecurity. We should establish direct communication with as many of the more senior officers and officials as possible to convey one principal idea in a forceful and convincing matter,

manner, that the coup will not threaten their positions in hierarchy and the aims of the coup do not include a reshaping of the existing military or administrative structures. This requirement will, incidentally, have technical implications in the planning stage, when the sabotage of the means of communication must be carried out so as to be easily reversible. Yeah, I was going to say on that regard, one of the interesting things, in the NSDEP taking over authority in Germany. And how just because of my research currently, what was brought about or was brought to my attention is.

Reinhard Hydrick was known very much when he was made ahead of political police that he largely kept in charge the technical people, the skilled professional investigators in those agencies. He eliminated one or two major leaders. And he eliminated any person he was seen as being actively opposed to the health and well-being of the German state. Generally, these are people who are closet undercover communists.

But for the most part, he co-opted them because he said most of these people, even when there were his political enemies, were German patriots who really wanted the security of Germany. So if he could actually co-op them, he ensured that not only did they not become punished as enemies of the new regime, but he actually gave the mistake in the new regime to the point that Hydra's inner circle largely consisted of men who didn't join the SS until he made them join the SS. The information campaign over the mass media will also reach this narrow but important section of the population, but it would be highly desirable to have more direct and confidential means of communication with them.

The general political aims of the coup as expressed in our pronouncements on the radio and television will help to package our tacit deal with the bureaucrats and soldiers, but its real content will be the assurance that their careers are not threatened. In dealing with particular army or police officers who control especially important forces or with important bureaucrats, we may well decide to go further in the sense that an actual exchange of promises of mutual support may take place. We should, however, remember that our main strength lies in the fact that only we have a precise idea of the extent of our power. It would be unwise to enter into agreements that show we need

support urgently. More generally, any information that reveals the limits of our capabilities could threaten our position, which is essentially based on the fact that our inherent weakness is concealed. Again, as in, go ahead. No, I was going to say, like any clandestine event or activity, just like war itself. The goal is to know as much about your enemy as possible while concealing as much of the facts about your situation from the enemy as possible. Again, as in the case of our incorporated forces, we should make every effort to prevent communication between the cadres of the armed forces and bureaucracy outside our group. Such communication would usually be indispensable to those who may seek to stage a counter

coup. The ignorance of the extent of the conspiracy will discourage such consultations. It is obviously dangerous to ask somebody to participate in the opposition to a group of which he is himself a member. but we should also interfere with such consultations directly by using our control of the transport and communications infrastructure. New heading, from power to authority, stabilizing the masses. The masses have neither the weapons of the military nor the administrative facilities of the bureaucracy, but their attitude to the new government established after the coup will ultimately be decisive.

Our immediate aim will be to enforce public order, but our long-term objective is to gain the acceptance of the masses so that physical coercion will no longer be needed in order to secure compliance with our orders. In both phases, we shall use our control over the infrastructure and the means of coercion, but as the coup recedes in time, political means will become increasingly important, physical ones less so. Our first measures to be taken immediately after the active phase of the coup will be designed to freeze a situation by imposing physical immobility, a total curfew, the interruption of all

forms of public transport, the closing of all public buildings and facilities, and the interruption of the telecommunication service will prevent or, at any rate, impede active resistance to us. Organized resistance will be very difficult because there will be no way of inspiring and coordinating our potential opponents. Unorganized resistance is on the part of a mob will, on the other hand, be prevented because the people who might form such a mob would have to violate the curfew while acting as individuals, and not many will do this without the protective shelter of anonymity that only a crowd can provide. The impact of our physical measures will be reduced outside the capital city, but to the extent that the capital city is to focus in the

national network of transport and communications, both physical movement and the flow of information will be impeded. The physical controls will be purely negative and defensive in character, and our reliance on them could be minimal because their con-comitment, commitment effect is to enhance the importance of the armed forces we have subverted. Our second and far more flexible instrument will be our control over the means of mass communications. Their importance will be particularly great because the flow of all other information, notably social media via the internet, will be filtered or blocked by our controls. Moreover, the confused and dramatic events of the key,

coup will mean that the radio and television services will have a particularly attentive and receptive audience. In broadcasting over the radio and television services, our purpose is not to provide information about the situation, but rather to affect its development by exploiting our monopoly of those media in the context of filtered or blocked social media. We will have two principal objectives in the information campaign that will start immediately after the coup, to discourage resistance to us by emphasizing the strength of our position and to dampen the fears that would otherwise give rise to such resistance. Our first objective will be achieved by conveying the reality and strength of the coup instead of trying to justify it. This will be done by listing

the controls we have imposed by emphasizing that law and order have been fully restored and by stating that all resistance has ceased. One of the major obstacles to active resistance will be the fact that we have fragmented the opposition so that each individual opponent would have to operate in isolation, cut off from friends and associates. In these circumstances, the news of any resistance against us would act as a powerful stimulant to further resistance by breaking down this feeling of isolation. We must make every effort, therefore, to withhold such news. If there is, in fact, some resistance, and if its intensity and locale, are such as to make it difficult to conceal from particular segments of the public, we should admit its existence, but we should strongly

emphasize that it is isolated, the product of the obstinacy of a few misguided or dishonest individuals who are not affiliated with any party or group or significant membership. When you read that, it suddenly becomes clear why that any kind of mass or any kind of local organizing against any kind of central government bullshit, like the school system in northern Virginia, when they were organizing against trans activists who were, you know, raping their daughters or the stuff that's currently going on in Ohio against Haitian migrants, there's a reason why they first tried to, you know, block any kind of discussion of that and then portray it in a completely different light.

Is they're trying to, above all else, making sure that people see themselves as eye-isolated. Well, also that, and in the process, they're demonizing that group. to people on the outside. Yeah, I mean, probably the biggest form of communication management, information management of your enemies is trying to control and dictate their morality. Yeah, there really is no better example right now going on than what's going on in Springfield, Ohio. Yeah. When I was just reading this and I just passed this along to a friend, to try and get some information on it.

24 houses were sold last year. Three of them, one was valued at 18,000, another at 24,000, another 48,000. And each of these 24 houses, including those three, were sold for $1.6 million a piece. Jesus. So I'm at the point where I think even the migrant situation, is there to try to cover up something else. It's helping. It's a part of it.

This is all a part of something. But apparently there is either some insane money laundering going on there or, you know, something else. And that's what I'm trying to figure out. This gets in the realm of conspiracy theory just because we have no hard evidence because, again, they're controlling what we have access to. but one of the issues that's been brought up, the fact that we essentially, we're not going to have a collapse population-wise, but we're going to have a demographic crunch where, you know, our native population, because of birth rates combined with aging, we're just going to have a contraction in total population. Among other things, one of the quickest things that affects is housing prices, real estate,

both housing prices and commercial. Elon Musk has pointed out that one of the biggest negative consequences, in terms of the establishment of COVID, is suddenly all of that commercial real estate that banks hold on their balance sheet as assets is basically valueless or as negative value. So the process of moving migrants in the U.S., no, that doesn't do anything for commercial real estate,

but it can make private real estate, residential real estate, increase in value just because you have suddenly an increased number of people demanding, a product in a market that has limited ability to grow, but so fast. Yeah. Yeah, this is all a, you know, when you look at this, it's, Yaki talked about that from his study of history,

it doesn't matter why, but whenever large groups of foreigners are moved into an existing location that has a high culture. the existing, the existing population stops their birth rates decline. Yeah. Like something metaphysical, like it's like it's something metaphysical or there's something happening there that basically causes that to happen when people see this influx and then all of a sudden they, they stop having children. Yeah, that's an interesting point because that seems to hold up for whatever reason. When we're done offline, I've got a document for a suggested.

next read that deals with this directly. Okay, cool. All right, let me, let's finish this. We can, you and I are definitely, you and I are definitely the rabbit trail kind of people. Yes. All right. The constant working of the motif of isolation, the repetition of long and detailed list of the administrative and physical controls we have imposed, and the emphasis on the fact that law and order have been reestablished should have to affect, should have the effect of making resistance appear both dangerous and useless.

Then he just goes through a first communicate choice of styles, romantic, lyrical, messianic, unprepared, rational administrative. It's just different kind of, I guess this is different kind of styles that you would use to communicate with the people to let them know what's going on and to seek to get them on your side. Yeah, that's what it looks like. And again, all the charts he has are worthwhile, but none of them are really good for reading in this format. Right.

So for listeners at home, you can get this book for free any number of places and just look at those. Yeah. If you're reading along with this one, make sure to get the updated version. I believe it's 2016. Yeah. A lot of this is not going to be in the original version. Yeah. The internet was not a big issue in the 1960s.

New. No, you wouldn't have been talking about social media. Table 5.5.2. Yep. The second objective of our information campaign will be to reassure the general public by dispelling fears that the coup is inspired by foreign and or extremist elements, and to persuade particular groups that the coup is not a threat to them. The first aim will be achieved by manipulating national symbols and by asserting our belief in the prevailing pieties. In the Arab world,

the new regime will announce its belief in the Arab identity and Islam, where the Ba'ath Party was institutionalized, as in Syria, it would have been necessary to establish. assert our loyalty to the true bath, not the corrupted one of the deposed dictator. In Africa, the new regime will announce its intention of fighting tribalism at home and racialism abroad. In Latin America, we need to secure social justice will be invoked. Everywhere in the third world, nationalistic rhetoric will be used in references made to the glorious people of X and the glorious land of X, which the last regime has degraded, above all, repeated denunciations of neo, and not so neo-colonialism are de rigueur.

Such denunciations will be particularly important where there is a large foreign business enterprise operating in the country in question. The inevitable suspicions that the coup is a product of the machinations of the company can only be dispelled by making violent attacks on it. These being verbal and not unexpected will pacify the public without disturbing the business interests, and the attack should be all the more violent if these suspicions are, in fact, justified. While the religious attitude leads to the praise of the gods for one's successes and self-blame for one's failures, the nationalistic attitude is to attribute successes to the nation and to blame foreigners for its failures. Similarly, the chance and praise of the gods have been

replaced by ritualized curses variously addressed to different groups of foreigners and their activities. It's really odd that Litvak would be choosing foreigners as to scapegoat, isn't it? Just, just, there's nothing personal there, right? There's a certain amount of projection going along. Thus for the phrase, the imperialist neo-colonial power block read the Americans, or if the, or the friend, if it is spoken by Africans of their former colonies. Similarly, the phrase, Zionist oil monopolist plotters

translates into Jews and Christians in the subconscious of the Muslim Arabs who make use of it. It still continues to be true. How could you argue? There may be a purely ideological element in these denunciations, but even in the 1950s,

when the American extreme right used to denounce the international conspiracy of godless conscience. communism, it was, it is significant that they stigmatized it as un-American rather than anti-capitalist. We shall make use of suitable selection of those unlovely phrases, though their meaning has been totally obscured by constant and deliberate misuse. They will be useful as indicators of our impeccable nationalism, and if that is not, in reality, our position, they will serve to obscure our true policy aims. The flow of information emanating from all the sources under our control should be coordinated with our other measures.

The impositions of physical controls will be announced and explained, and the political moves to which we now turn will be suitably presented. Physical coercion will deter or defeat direct opposition, while the information campaign will lay the basis of our eventual acquisition of authority, but only political means will secure for us a base of active service. support. Where the pre-coup regime was exceptionally brutal, corrupt, or retrograde, the leaders of the coup will have little trouble in gaining a generalized form of acceptance. Even then, however, the active support of specific groups can only be gained by political accommodation, i.e., by sponsoring policies to serve the interests of particular groups, thus giving them reasons for becoming committed to, or at least interested in, our survival. In some Latin American countries, for example,

we could gain the support of the landless peasants by announcing our intention of carrying out a program of agrarian reform. In West Africa, we could announce our intention of increasing the prices paid to peasant producers by the cocoa marketing brand. In Greece and Turkey, where there is a heavy burden of agrarian indebtedness, we could announce a general cancellation of bank debts. Each of these policy announcements will bind the interests of a large and politically powerful group to our government unless we are overtaken by other rival announcements, but it will also lead to the hostility of other groups whose interests are damaged by our intended policies. In Latin America, where the peasants would benefit, the landlords would lose. In Africa, the urban population would be

the loser. In Greece, the taxpayer would bear the burden of agricultural debt relief. thus the backing of one interest group will generally have at its comcomitant the loss of support of or even actual hostility from other groups. Clearly it will be a good. Hence an effectively anti-white American regime. Yeah. Thus the backing of one interest group will generally have at its con commitment the loss of support of or even hot. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's why that this continued process has been, part of this in the last couple of years, has been the intentional purging of anybody who is to the right of essentially George W. Bush from the American military. There hasn't been organized purge, but they're intentionally sidelining any kind of senior officers who would appear to have that kind of orientation. It's a way of furthering, you know, their security because they know that the, American and military is historically a very right-wing, at least informally cultural institution. And they know they're largely opposed to that. So they're trying to remove an opposing center of power.

What about NCOs and down right now? That becomes an issue. I don't really have a good feeling on that. Keep in mind, senior NGOs like the Sardin major levels basically go through the same level of review as general officers. keep in mind then different subcomponents of each service are very different. Increasingly, the regular U.S. Army is a full employment program for black women. I will continue and just let that hang. Clearly, it will be necessary to estimate the net political support that a given policy announcement will degenerate.

This will mean taking into account not only the police. political significance of each group, but also the immediacy of its political power. In the context of a Latin American post-coup situation, for example, the goodwill of remote and dispersed peasants will not help us much against the immediate and powerful opposition of bureaucratic and military cadres. If on the other hand, our short-term position is strong, but we are threatened by the longer-term usurpation of power on the part of our military allies, our objective will be to create a counterweight capable, eventually of becoming a source of direct strength, a peasant's militia, for example. Thus, whether we opt out for a left policy of land reform and longer

compassino support, or for our right policy of peasant repression and immediate landowner support, will depend on the balance between the strength of our short and our long-term positions. The almost mechanical elements that are important in the special climate of the immediate post-coup period will distort the normal balance between the political forces of the country concerned. If, therefore, our short-term position is not fragile, we should repress the agitation of those forces that possess a disproportionate strength in the short-term and concentrate instead on cultivating the support of those groups whose longer-term strength is far greater. An element in our strategy after the coup is halfway between the information and the political

campaign, the problem of legitimizing the coup. Clearly, the coup is, by definition, illegal. But whether this illegality matters, and whether it is possible to counteract its effects, will depend on the total political environment of the country in question. Reminders that the United States of America is a product of two coups in a row, the secession from the United Kingdom, followed by the overthrow of the Articles of Confederation for a Constitution, which means if you win very often, you can legitimate what you've done and the fact that it was illegal, nobody's really going to care about.

We have seen in Chapter 2 that in much of the world, except for the rule of law countries, the legitimacy or lack of legitimacy of the government will not matter greatly. For example, as of 2015, Italy is ruled by Matteo Renzi's government, whose ministers included young and attractive female parliamentarians of his own Partizo democratically. as well as defectors from the Forza Italia Party of Silvio Berlusconi, who also promoted female parliamentarians so long as they were pretty, and members of several minor parties, giving Renzi a total of 395 seats out of 630, enough to rule. But all were elected, along with Renzi himself in 2013, when his party was headed by Pierre Luigi Bersani, not Renzi. In fact, Renzi only became the head. head of government by winning an internal party primary and then cutting a deal with burlesconi

essentially italians ended up being ruled by a politician whom they never elected except as parliamentarian but good no it sounds pretty you know pretty appropriate and pretty much our situation at the moment since uh we're probably about 70 percent chance because of fortification um but i was just going to say the fact he keeps harping on the fact they would only let female parliamentarian who are attractive, and that's got to be some Israeli projection, just considering their successful women politicians have not been. Yeah. You tell me golden in my ear wasn't a looker?

It speaks for itself. But this in itself generates oppositions to the young and personal Renzi. First, what Renzi did is allowed by the constitutional system in place, even though it allows a post-electoral primary that leaves most Italians unrepresented. Besides, in Italy, illegality is, in any case, optional, especially in politics, with contempt for the law, much intensified by the transparently politicized prosecutions of Italian magistrates who openly consort in political groupings of their own, notably the left-wing magistratura democratica. As far as we are concerned, Italy is definitely not a rule of law country, and

our illegitimacy will be easily swallowed if all else is in place. They're never going to forgive Titus, are they? Oh, well, that's what I was saying increasingly. It sounds like the United States. Yeah. Oh, yeah, so much of this right here. And even when he goes up here when he says, you know, they were never elected and everything, I mean, that's just the administrative state.

We just, it's just different here. It's much bigger and much more spread out here. And, you know, I know, I know a lot of people have tried. to describe our government as being highly centralized. And I think it's just highly decentralized. You have no idea who's in charge. Elements of it are, yeah, even then, right, like a formally hierarchy state, one of the things I've heard those described as is polyarchies,

where, yeah, you have a central authority figure who can overrule a lot of things. But even if they have the effective ability to make an exception, understand the human attention is finite, so they can only focus energy on so many things at once. So huge elements of a large bureaucratic state are going to be effectively decentralized to a lower level, even if they're authoritarian, just because that's the reality of, you know, human concentration. One way of legitimizing the post-coup government has already been mentioned in discussion of the selection of the personalities to be arrested. The retention of the nominal head of state where such a constitutional role exists as our own highly nominal head of state as well.

Just to point out, again, we know about monarchies, most of Western Europe as parliamentary states. The monarch's head of state, but they're not head of government. And the amount of authority varies from state to state. And, you know, so they're relative. So we tend to think of as monarchs as being powerless, even though very often they have more power than they exercise on a daily basis, which is why there can be borderline civil wars in the 20th century when they actually did what they were allowed to do. But keep in mind a parliamentary state that's a republic, you will have a president as head of state, along with a prime minister that's head of government. But in most of those states, the president is a meaningless title. And usually it's where you put a retired politician who's, you know, lucid enough that he continued to receive, you know,

state envoys and stuff and shake hands, but doesn't actually have to do anything, and it's very often not allowed to do anything on a routine basis. From what I understand, the British system still allows for the monarchy to dissolve the parliament at any time and take it over. It does, and well, they're required within X number of days to actually call for an election and to also put in a cabinet in the interim. So they don't get to rule by personal rule for more than a couple of weeks. But yes, they do have that authority.

Was it Margaret Thatcher, you know, famously everybody calls her, you know, crazy because she asked Queen Elizabeth to do that. But keep in mind, was it 10, 12 years before that? Elizabeth dissolved the parliament in Australia and calls for election. So it's something that's happened, not in mind in your lifetime, definitely in a lifetime of our parents. And again, it depends from monarchy to monarchy. With some of these actually having huge amounts of authority

in the field where the military is concerned, believe it or not. In this way, the appearance of continuity will be maintained and with it an appearance of legitimacy. Where the head of state is not nominal, as in presidential regimes, other taxis will have to be used, the announcement of forthcoming elections or a referendum as a sort of ex post facto legitimization, or alternatively, the coup can be openly admitted as an extra constitutional intervention, but one made against an unconstitutional regime.

We have to eliminate Trump in order to preserve democracy. Yeah, I mean, that's basically what this is. I mean, it's, we've seen this, if we haven't seen this action, we've definitely seen this rhetoric in our lifetimes. I think we've seen everything except for the use of armed force. So everything but that last step of a coup, we've seen de facto occur in our lifetimes. One illegality will then be represented as being the cause of the other, but we shall declare that whereas the illegality of the pre-coup regime was voluntary and permanent, only hours is necessary and temporary. Such techniques will be of limited value in conducting the political processes required to create a base.

of active support and to secure our authority because everything will depend on the specific political environment in which we shall be operating. One particular problem, however, requires further exploration. Recognition by foreign powers. Before we go too far, I was going to definitely emphasize the idea that a coup expressing itself is necessary and temporary. Interestingly, enough, an effective coups, very often that is the case. One of the things that's been brought up about military governments after following a military coup and a coup is effective. Very often one of the first things the military sets about doing that transfer doesn't happen immediately is going back to some kind of civilian rule professionally, some kind of semi-democratic constitutional rule because

the act of actually running a state on a day-to-day basis where you have to take the best and the brightest out of the military and put them in charge of things like trash pickup and making sure that, you know, sanitation system works, is it undermines and degrades the ability of that military to fight, because suddenly all of its leadership is more consumed with things like, you know, making the mail service run instead of preparing for war in the future. All right. So talking about the problem of recognition of foreign powers, this is almost always important, but for the poorest countries whose pay is real, what is that? Are you familiar with that term?

real? It pays real. It's a French term. I can look it up. No, let's see, we can do it in context. This is almost always important,

but for the poorest countries whose pays real lies outside their own borders, it will be a crucial problem. I would assume, uh, uh, yeah,

let's look that up real quick. Yeah, I'm looking up now. Uh, the real country was, no, okay, that was the name of a newspaper.

That was Maras newspaper also, but that's probably not what he's referring to. Real country, legal country, conversely. Oh, real country over the legal country. I would have to look. I'm guessing it's the case of where the cultural and ethnic and national ties are, yeah, definition of a, you know, a community may not be coterminous with the state, which is a huge issue, at least in the Western. in Europe, definitely a huge issue in Africa where certain ethnic groups, like Swedes and Fens, cross both borders. So the question of, you know, one of the issues is you don't necessarily take control of a people when you take control of their country because, you know, a huge

portion of their population lives right across the border and has effectively lived there forever. Right. Okay. Gotcha. When much of the available disposable funds come from foreign aid, both official and via non-governmental organizations, and when foreign cadres carry out vital administration, technical, and sometimes even military functions, the maintenance of good relations with the particular donor country or country's concern may well be a determining factor in our political survival after the coup. Are they talking about Ukraine here? 2016, he might be, but that would probably be too early. Keep in mind he is living as a strategic forecaster often to service to the United States, so he's not necessarily going to be

that blunt about American mistakes. Correct. Premature recognition by a foreign power, i.e., recognition granted while the old regime still retains some degree of control, is becoming regarded as a form of aggression in international law. Beyond that, however, recognition is usually granted even to very illegitimate governments after a polite interval if there are convincing assurances about their continuity in terms of foreign relations. These assurances are conveyed simply and publicly by formal announcements stating that membership and alliances and groupings will be maintained, that foreign agreements and obligations will be respected, and that legitimate foreign interests in the country concern will not be harmed.

Thus, the leaders of Ghana's well-named National Liberation Council, formed after the overthrow of the historic independence leader Nekuma, Krumah, announced that Ghana would retain her membership in the Commonwealth, the Organization of African Unity, and the United Nations, and would respect all obligations assumed by Enkrumah's regime. Similarly, Arab post-ku regimes habitually announced that they will remain in the Arab League, and Latin American regimes pledged to remain members of the Organization of American States. far more important than these declarations is a considerable diplomatic activity that will take place after the coup and sometimes even before it.

The purpose of these diplomatic exchanges will be to clarify the political situation and nowadays to indicate or to disassemble the ideological orientation of the planners of the coup. Most countries of the world follow British diplomatic doctrine and granting recognition to regimes on the basis of their effective control of their territories, if only after a decent interval. At present, the rabidly Islamist AKP government of Turkey opposes the overthrow of Egypt's Islamist government by the armed forces fearing that Turkey's armed forces might do the same, but does not withhold recognition. Turkey is a history of overthrow, the military overthrowing their government. In any case, the doctrine of effective control is as flexible as definitions of control, so that recognition can sometimes be flexible.

if the pre-coup regime retains even a tenuous hold over some part of the national territory. I was going to sit in a good. Sorry. Yeah, one of the funny examples of this is the Spanish Civil War. You know, most of the world except the Franco regime as being the legitimate government of Spain within a couple of years of winning. But if you didn't and the communist Republicans of Spain continue to maintain recognized embassies in foreign countries like Mexico into, I don't remember what it was. It was like 20 or 30 years after fact.

I think it was until the 60s in some places. How shocked I am that it would have been Mexico. Yeah. After the necessary exchanges of information and assurances, the new government will usually be recognized. This will occur even if its illegality is an embarrassment, as in the case of the United States and Latin American coups, or if its ideological orientation, it's distasteful, as in the Ghanaian and Indonesian coups were for the Soviet Union at the time.

Prolonged non-recognition as a rarity. One example was to widespread refusal to recognize Madagascar's hot authority de la Transition. I'm assuming that that's French, but my French pronunciation is just awful. The average person of Madagascar does not speak proper French anyways. which came to power and Madagascar didn't they dodge a bullet? Which time? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

In the 1940s, they really dodged a bullet. Which came to power by force in 2009 and did not organize elections until the end of 2013. It did, however, restore democratic rule in 2014. Diplomatic recognition is one of the elements in the general process of establishing the authority of the new government. Until this is achieved, we will have to rely on the brittle instruments of physical coercion and our position will be vulnerable to many threats, including that of another coup d'etat. And that is it.

Yeah, I know. And it's amazing how if a country, if there's a coup d'etat in one country, how it's almost like by magic, they would be very apt to have another one. happen and pretty soon. Yeah, and again, that's part of the issue. Once you break the seal, as it were, as soon as you make it acceptable to have one, you've made it acceptable to have another one. So that's, again, that's a huge part of why legitimizing what you're doing afterwards is such a goal, you know, such an important part.

It also goes further to explaining why in an effective military coup, you know, they want to get out of the governance business when they can. Well, I appreciate you recommending this and joining me because I just, there's a lot of books that I can read that I have the, I have the knowledge and the backgrounds of comments upon, but the historical knowledge that yourself and Darrell for one episode and Lafayette for one episode brought, but you for all the other episodes, I think it's invaluable. Sandbatch and Dark Enlightenment as well. Oh, Sandbatch and Dark Enlightenment, yeah. Yeah, through that episode, I had a lot of people reach out wanting to, recognizing what was happening and wanted to say hi. Just, and they'll say that, you know, they appreciate you,

appreciate you, each one of you individually. Yeah, I appreciate it. And like I said in the beginning, I mean, part of it's just the fact is a disabled veteran that they kept paying for college. So I kept going, especially since very often, they paid me more money in my day, you know, as a stipend than what I would make in my daily pay. So I'm glad somebody's getting some value out of my hair education. All right.

Well, I appreciate it. And I'll have you back on real soon to do this again. Sounds good to be, have you back on soon to do something other than a reading. Okay. Let's have you back on and talk about some real stuff. Yeah, probably had to talk to Thomas and see how much we can go down rabbit holes at some point. All right, John.

Appreciate it. Thank you.