epoch
Epoch - You can bid on a copy of Windows XP signed by Bill Gates. The cool thing is, I scooped Robert Scoble on this one.
Now here’s a real scoop: “Microsoft Dumps Passport for Liberty Alliance, Sun Adopts Passport”. This article is just about as fact-based as any other I’ve seen on the subject.
Hmm, Mumia might get his sentenced reduced to life in prison. I find it interesting that this gets front page coverage, and misleading headlines like “Mumia sentence thrown out!” It’s complete non-news, so why the attention? Maybe it’s because Mumia is such a photogenic funkster with his dreds and intellectual-revolutionary glasses. Maybe the whole Bin Laden thing has again piqued people’s curiosity about those coolio urban gangsta insurgents who stand up and “fight the power”. I can’t wait to read what entertaining pieces Guerrilla News will publish in response to the latest Mumia parade. Unfortunately, reality is not as interesting as conspiracy. The official Department of Army Field Manual on Counter-Guerrilla Operations is almost boring; I guess I just couldn’t find the manual about “how to capture dangerous b-boy funky reporters as political prisoners to feed the system’s lust for corruption”.
The DA doctrine documents are pleasantly common-sense. The basic Marine Warfare Doctrine Paper on the Quantico site shows how much foresight the authors had. Some quotes include:
“Although the state remains the predominant entity in global
politics, its preeminence in the use of organized political violence
has declined. One of the trends of modern conflict is the
rise of powerful nonstate groups able and willing to apply force
on a scale sufficient to have noticeable political effect.
… Because of the youth bulge, an increasingly large part of the population in the developing world will be both unproductive and prone to disruptive behavior.”
and one from Martin van Creveld:
“… there has been speculation that war itself may not have a
future and is about to be replaced by economic competition
among the great ‘trading blocks’ now forming in Europe,
North America, and the Far East. This … view is not correct.
Large-scale, conventional war — war as understood by today’s
principal military powers — may indeed be at its last gasp;
however, war itself, war as such, is alive and kicking and
about to enter a new epoch.”
I dunno what you think, but the new epoch seems pretty stupid, if Soulja Mumia is the kind of hero we get to look up to.