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It probably comes as no surprise that I read quite a lot.  And while I mostly read e-books, I still take plenty of notes about what I'm reading, if I find them useful or interesting.

Anyway, I'm going to dump my notes online as well.  I'm working through them, and adding to them, but there is a lot, and its entirely possible that someone else with run with, or work from, something I found but did not have the time, imagination or inclination to follow up on.

First book is After Authority:

As states open up to the world economy, they begin to lose one of the raison d'êtres for which they first came into being: defense of the sovereign nation. Political change and economic globalization enhance the position of some groups and classes and erode that of others. Liberalization and structural reform reduce the welfare role of the state and cast citizens out on their own. As the state loses interest in the well-being of its citizens, its citizens lose interest in the well being of the state. They look elsewhere for sources of identity and focuses for their loyalty.

Instead [of military power], police power and discipline, both domestic and foreign, are applied more and more. Even these don't really work, as any cop on the beat can attest. Order is under siege; disorder is on the rise; authority is crumbling.

The heedless pursuit of individual self-interest can have corrosive impacts on long-standing institutions, cultures, and hierarchies, and can lead to a degree of social destabilization that may collapse into uncontrolled violence and destruction.

Whereas it used to be taken for granted that the nation-state was the object to be secured by the power of the state, the disappearance of singular enemies has opened a fundamental ontological hole, an insecurity dilemma, if you will. Inasmuch as different threats or threatening scenarios promise to affect different individuals and groups differently, there is no overarching enemy that can be used for purposes of mass mobilization (a theme of one of Huntington's more recent articles; see Huntington, 1997). Those concerned about computer hackers penetrating their cyberspace are rarely the same as those concerned about whether they will still be welcome in their workplaces tomorrow. Whereas it used to be taken for granted that threats to security originated from without—from surprise attacks, invading armies, and agents who sometimes managed to turn citizens into traitors—globalization's erosion of national authority has managed to create movements of "patriotic" dissidence whose targets are traitorous governments in the seats of national power

In short, loyalty to the state has been replaced by loyalty to the self, and national authority has been shouldered aside by self-interest. The world of the future might not be one of 200 or 500 or even 1,000 (semi-) sovereign states coexisting uneasily; it could well be one in which every individual is a state of her own, a world of 10 billion statelets, living in a true State of Nature.

I do propose here that, in the long view of history, the two hundred-odd years between 1789 and 1989 were exceptional in that the nation-state was unchallenged by any other form of political organization at the global level.  That exceptional period is now just about over.

One of the much-noted paradoxes of the 1990s is the coexistence of processes of integration and fragmentation, of globalism and particularism, of simultaneous centralization and decentralization often in the very same place. James Rosenau (1990) has coined the rather unwieldy term "fragmegration" to describe this phenomenon, which he ascribes largely to the emergence of a "sovereignty-free" world in the midst of a "sovereignty- bound" one. Rosenau frames this "bifurcation" of world politics as a series of conceptual and practical "jailbreaks," as people acquire the knowledge and capabilities to break out of the political and social structures that have kept them imprisoned for some centuries.  Rosenau's theory—if it can be called that—is an essentially liberal one and, while he acknowledges the importance of economic factors in the split between the two worlds, he shies away from recognizing the central role of material and economic change and the ancillary processes of social innovation and reorganization in this phenomenon.

Rather than being understood as some sort of atavistic or premodern phenomenon, cultural conflict should be seen as a modern (or even post-modern) response to fundamental social change. The unachievable dream of political theorists and practitioners is stability, now and forever; the undeniable truth is change, always and everywhere.  During periods of "normality," change is slower and more predictable; it can be managed, up to a point. Over the past few decades, we have been witness to more rapid and less predictable changes, brought about by globalization and social innovation. These changes have destabilized the political hierarchies that rule over social orders—even democratic ones—and provided opportunities for those who might seek greater power and wealth to do so.

Today, culture has become the language under which political action takes place, and elites operate accordingly. In all cases, it is the contractual basis of social order that is under challenge and being destroyed. When people find their prospects uncertain and dismal, they tend to go with those who can promise a better, more promising future. Cultural solidarity draws on such teleological scenarios and pie in the sky, by and by.

Polanyi's argument was, however, somewhat more subtle than this. He claimed that there was, in effect, a structural mismatch between the emerging system of liberal capitalism and then-existing social values and social relations of production.

The Concert of Europe was able to keep interstate peace, more or less, but it was hard pressed to address the domestic turmoil and disruption that followed social restructuring.

Rather, it is that modern capitalism was made feasible only through massive, social innovation and reorganization (which are sometimes described as "strategies of accumulation") affecting Europe, North America, and much of the rest of the world. When the first industrial entrepreneurs discovered that they could not entice labour out of their homes and into the factories in exchange for a full day's pay, they found ways of rendering unviable the family and social structures that, in the towns and villages, had provided some degree of social support even in the midst of privation.

the intention of U.S. policy was to reproduce domestic American society (or, at least, its underlying structural conditions), as much as possible, the world over. The implicit reasoning behind this goal, although specious and faulty, was that stability and prosperity in the United States were made possible by capitalism, democracy, growth, freedom, and social integration. If such conditions could be replicated in other countries, everyone would become like the happy Americans.

Left to its own devices, the information revolution might have gone nowhere. Just as in the absence of the impetus of markets and profits, the steam engine would have remained a curiosity with limited application, so were the dynamic of capitalism combined with political and economic instability required to really get this latest industrial revolution off the ground. That these elements were necessary to the new regime of accumulation (if not essential) is best seen in the trajectory and fate of the Soviet Union. The USSR was able to engineer the first steps of the transformation and acquire advanced military means comparable in most respects to the West's, but eventually it was unable to engage in the social innovation necessary to reorganize the productive process and maintain growth rates

What was ironic, perhaps, was that Buchanan and his colleagues blamed political "liberals," rather than hyperliberal capitalism, for the problems they saw destroying American society.  To have put the blame on the real cause would have been to reveal to the listening public that the new economic system is not—indeed, cannot be—fair to everyone, and that those who begin with advantages will virtually always retain them (Hirsch, 1995).  Admitting such a contradiction would be to repeat the fatal mistake of Mikhail Gorbachev, when he announced that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was no longer the vanguard of socialist truth: Attack the legitimacy of your social system's ideology, and there is no end to the destruction that might follow

Just as some did extremely well by the First and Second Industrial Revolutions, so will many benefit from this one. A global class of the better-off (numbering perhaps 1 billion, if that many) and a global class of the poor (as many as 8 to 10 billion) will emerge. Many members of the better-off class will reside in what today we call "developing countries"; a not considerable number of the poor will live in the "industrialized ones." If things work out, by the middle of the twenty-first century we might even see a global middle class that will provide bourgeois support for this new global order and, perhaps, demand some form of representative global democratization (see chapter . Then, again, we might not.

as countries lose sovereign control over their borders and the possibility of managing the movement of people, goods, and ideas, they seem to be focusing more closely on the new subjects of transnational sovereignty, the individuals, in the hope that keeping a watchful eye on such free subjects will serve also to discipline them (Gill, 1995; see also chapter 7).

He's right.  Piracy only really comes under the rubric of terrorism because its non-state actors with significant geopolitical implications.  In actuality, its more like organized crime, if you have to pigeon hole it into something.  Of course, there is a lot of operational crossover between terrorism, organized crime and insurgency (my dissertation dealt in part with this topic), and many of the same sort of actor move through all three at some point in their career, but its not a simple case that piracy = Islamofascist lunatics who are gonna impose Shariah Law on YOUR ASS.

I think the other reason lots of people conflate piracy with terrorism is because of the Barbary Pirates, and their role both in history and national mythology.

That doesn't surprise me.  Crime is a growth market in the third world.  Invest now!

He's a Chinese god who got conflated with the Buddha later on (somehow).

Bump

Rendlesham Forest, time unknown

Ryan was relaxed.  He wasn't quite sure what was going on, but everything was nice and soft and easy.  He looked around.  It was fuzzy, indistinct.  He was trying to remember something, something important...nope, it had slipped him again.  But it didn't matter now, because Cheryl Tweedy was here.  His dreams were always better once she showed up.

Dreams?

"Wake up Ryan", she said.
"What?"
"Wake up."  She was gone now, but he could still hear her voice.  Teasing little minx.
"I am awa-" he said, then opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was a face above him.  Not wasting a second he screamed "don't you dare use those fucking anal probes on me, you little gray bastards!"
"Yep, he's awake" the upside down woman's head said.  "If a little confused."
"Oh, that's right" he said.  His memories had just come rushing back.  And so did the pain to his head.  "Ow, what the fuck did you do to me?"
"Sorry about that" said another voice, male, from somewhere to his side.  "I was up in the trees, directing the lights when I saw you.  I didn't know if you were a soldier boy, so I decided to not take any chances."
"You jumped on me from a tree?"  He tried to get up, then slumped back down again, feeling dizzy and nauseous.  "Oh shit, I think I'll stay down here for a moment."  His mind then decided to remind him of another problem.  "Uuuh, did you find Jessica anywhere?"
"Jessica?" the girl with the upside down face asked, looking puzzled for a second.  "Oh, the girl.  Yes, we found here.  Wouldn't tell us her name though, even when he gave her some of our coffee."
"Yeah, that sounds like her.  Can I have a hand up?"
"Sure" she extended her hand and he managed to, with some help, drag himself up onto his feet.  He blinked a few times, hoping the lights would eventually go away, but it wasn't working.  The nausea had decided to move to the pit of his stomach as well, and was sitting there, waiting to jump out on him.
"Oh jeez, maybe I should have stayed on the floor."
"Ryan, is that you?"  It was Jessica, sounding a little muffled.  She then rounded a couple of trees, and ran up to him.  "What the hell happened to you?"
"Later.  I want to ask questions, before my dinner comes back up.  Man my head feels bad."  He bent double for a second, letting the blood flow to his head.  The euphoria took the edge off the nausea.  Then he stood back up.
"OK then."  He fixed the guy who had jumped on him with a stare.  He looked to be in his late twenties, done up in self-bought camouflage gear and twiddling with something that looked like a portable projector device.  "Let me guess" he started, you use that, somehow, to give the appearance of some sort of aircraft flying over the base?"
"Pretty much" he grinned.  "Its a little more complex than that though.  You see, the thing is-"
"The thing is, you need something to reflect off up there."  Ryan turned to face the Irish voice that had completed the sentence.  Another man had stepped out, from behind the trees.  He vaguely recognized him as the guy from earlier, who had been speaking orders into his mobile.
"Hi I'm Martin, how d'you do?" he asked, coming up and shaking Ryan by the hand.  He then sat back on a log and lit up a cigarette, not even waiting for a response.
"Uh, I'm Ryan, Ryan Linford.  I work for..."
"Yeah, the local paper, I remember hearing it just before you nearly got your head opened back there."
"Would you mind telling more by what you meant?  What are you using up there, to reflect the light?"
"Coloured gas, with tiny crystal particles" he answered.  "We were totally stumped for a while as to how to do this well, without having something up there which would show up on radar.  We used kites and the like as well, but they can be tricky, depending on the wind.  Well, so can this, but the idea is to get a steady stream of gas being put out and then aiming the light through it, to give the impression of a moving object.  With five or six different output machines, we can make it look like the night sky is being invaded by some sort of bizarre, fast moving, light emitting object.  Pretty clever, eh?"
"Very" Ryan replied, feeling totally lost.  He looked to Jess, then started with another question.  "Martin, if you don't mind me asking...what on earth is all this for?  I mean, is it a protest over tensions with Russia, some sort of anti-militarism thing, is it for kicks or something else entirely?  It seems a lot of work, not to mention somewhat dangerous, to be doing this out here."
Martin looked him in the eye, then answered.  "Well, now is not a good time to tell you.  Not now generally" he hastened to add, seeing Ryan's expression, "I mean here, right now, in the woods.  Y'see, we're just packing up ourselves.  Most of the gas-pump operators have already buggered off for the night, and in fact the only reason we were hanging around was waiting for you to wake up."
"OK, but I don't see the problem..."
"The problem is, Ryan, that it looks like the base may have wind of our being out here.  That was what my last call was about."  He waved his mobile, as if to make a point.  "Now technically, we're in the right here.  This part of the wood ain't on the base, and there are no laws against pretending to fly things over RAF bases.  However..."
"However the law tends to mean little to men with guns." Ryan concluded.
"Ah, I could tell you were a perceptive man.  Yes, that is indeed part of the problem.  There might be something else, too though.  I'm not rightly sure what it is myself, and if I told you my suspicions you'd think me crazy.  At least, until I could give you my explanation.  Suffice to say, some odd stuff has been happening in these woods, and my people have had nothing to do with it.  We're probably OK here, for the moment, but we should get a move on.  I'd be grateful if you and the other reporter could give us a hand packing up our gear.

Ryan nodded his approval, and moved to work quickly, helping disassemble and pack away the complicated machinery and remove any rubbish from the hastily made camp site.  He noticed that Martin's team members, whoever they were and whatever their purpose, seemed to be working quieter now, after his chat with them.  Presumably they too knew about the possibility of soldiers on the way, and wanted to get out as quickly as possible.  Within a few minutes, the work was completed and Martin gathered the team, plus Jess and Ryan, back around again.

"OK what I want to do is split us up" he whispered.  "Better chance of getting out without being seen.  I want you" he said pointing at the man in the trees, "to go with Alex and Lucy and take Route F out of here.  No torches, and keep the noise to a minimum.  If you need to call me, do so.  And remember, meeting point 3 afterwards, then back home if there is a no show."  The man nodded, then set off.

Martin, now alone, turned to Jess and Ryan.  "And that leaves me with both of you" he whispered.  "I know a fairly quick way out, but unfortunately it runs close to the base.  I have a safer route, but its much longer and will be much more tiring.  Do you think you're both up to the former?"  Jess nodded immediately, whereas Ryan took a second to think about it.  He was feeling better, no doubt, but not entirely well.  Still, if he had to...he also nodded.
"Great" Martin whispered.  "Please, follow me."

They set off at a brisk pace into the woods.  Ryan and Jess looked at each other briefly, as if to convey the oddness of their situation to each, and followed Martin's lead.  It was hard going, without a light, and more than once did the reporters in the group stumble.  Their new leader, on the other hand, seemed to know the territory very well, and managed his way past the stones, hidden ditches, roots, branches and other annoyances with ease, nimbly sidestepping or jumping over them.  After almost 10 minutes of solid walking he stopped, then moved behind a thicker cluster of trees, beckoning Ryan and Jess to follow.  As soon as they followed him around, he crouched down low, near the floor and whispered at them.  "I think I've fucked up badly" he said, so lowly it was almost unintelligible.  "I dunno if you can hear that, but I think we're near a bunch of troops."
A patrol?, Jess mouthed at him.  He shook his head.
"No, not a patrol.  This is different.  We're going to need to crawl through the bushes to get past this."  He pointed through the undergrowth to his intended pathway.  "And another thing", he said, almost reluctantly.  "I need to get close enough to at least see what is going on."  He fished around and pulled out a camera phone.  "Company policy" he smiled, almost sadly.  "Well, no use avoiding it, we may as well get on with this farce.  Follow me."

Keeping low, they moved from tree to tree, then, once in the bushes, crawled along the ground, pausing momentarily in order for their now troubled guide to listen out for movement, or get his bearings.  At first, Ryan couldn't hear the noises that the Irishman had been talking about, but now...now he could.  He heard low voices, likely carried on the wind.  And something else he couldn't quite place...

Probably not help.  They're remnants of the Islamic Courts who, funnily enough, are the only guys in Somalia right now that are crazy enough to want to rebuild the state.  I suspect they're wanting to kick ass, take names and reappropriate ships for their newly captured port (Marka).

Of course, the wonderful thing about Somali politics, insomuch as such a thing exists, is that its not 100% sure.  Islam has rules about raiding, dating back to Mohammed's time, but its not totally against the activity, so long as it is carried out within those rules.  Plus, those pirates really are making a nusciance of themselves, whether its to the hypocrites in the House of Saud or the Americans and British.

Michael Howard is an asswipe.

We should be offering to aid the Somali pirates, for a cut of the profits and immunity for our own vessels or those intended for our ports.

Just like the good old days.

Exactly.  And Howard, being a Conservative, should be in favour of the old way of doing things.  All the time.  Even if they don't make sense.

Michael Howard is an asswipe.

We should be offering to aid the Somali pirates, for a cut of the profits and immunity for our own vessels or those intended for our ports.

Its probably due to cultural change.  Both Hermes and Eris were originally portrayed negatively, because of attitudes towards trade prevalent from the 10th-6th centuries BC.  Because of a spate of tyrannies during the 6th century, alot of traditions got chucked by the wayside and merchants gained much more power.

In a military context, competition is bad (see: Thucydides), however in a trade context it is usually good.  But that trade context really did not exist much before the 6th century, and was distrusted by aristocratic elites and their priest allies.  As times changed, so did attitudes.

They even have legal advisors now, so when they get captured by various navies they can demand the rights they are afforded by the law, such as phone calls to relatives.  According to the Brits, they also make sterling prisoners when captured, and are really very nice chaps, chosen profession aside.

What's an alt?

I'm also here to befriend someone who knows more about internet anonymity than I do, so I can learn to be less accessible. Like I said, I'm paranoid. The healthy kind.

You are on the internet, you are not anonymous.

That said, this article will interest you http://cryptogon.com/?p=624

Some names that might help.

Lyotard
Michael Foucault
Jacques Derrida
Deleuze and Guattari
Lacan

I'd hold YO MOMMA up as an example of postmodernist art, but I'm afraid my arms would break.

But yeah, lack of grand narratives. Skeptical of binary opposites.  Strange obsession with pop culture.  The self is a fiction.  Interpretation takes precedence over creation (in literary circles).  Subversion and destabalization of meaning.  Etc.

Its worth having some literary analysis skills before delving into postmodernist/poststructuralist works

In philosophy, its a critical and normally somewhat nihilistic attempt to uncover hidden implicit assumptions within Western philosophical frameworks, then expose them, then write long books which sound like gibberish explaining it.

To really understand postmodern philosophy, you may want to look into Critical Theory first. 

Like most things, it has its applications, but someone (yes I'm looking at YOU Lacan) tries to take it too far.